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Key points
- Both family and friends are important to your happiness.
- When relationships don’t work out, sometimes it’s better to remain friends.
- Being “just” friends may mean having to compromise on the kind of relationship you most want.
- Sometimes happiness depends on accepting a relationship for what it is and making the most of things.
Gayle met Jake in her condo’s elevator and, for a while, it seemed they’d just glide on upwards forever. They adored each other. But Gayle would never have been my patient if they’d lived happily ever after. The events that defined their breakup upended Gayle’s life. For starters, she wondered who her family was anymore. Was Jake’s now her own, or had she lost that too?
The idea that we feel so close to people that they become “family” is hardly new. But Gayle had never thought about it. She had her own family—far-flung and massively dysfunctional—and she had friends, mostly women attorneys like herself. But now here was Gayle, closer to an old boyfriend’s family—Jake’s—than she was to anyone (alas, including Jake). It felt awkward. She thought she had to pull back but couldn’t stop loving them, just as she couldn’t stop loving Jake. She was seeking my advice.
Over the course of their two years together, Gayle had become enormously fond of Jake’s mother, who kept urging them to get married. Both Gayle and Jake were in their 30s, and his mother kept saying “It’s time. I want grandchildren.” They’d all laugh and continue laughing as Jake’s father chimed in with stories about Jake’s growing up. How refreshing. At the time, Gayle felt as though she had finally found a family—open-hearted, funny, totally normal people who welcomed her without reservation. That family became her backstop. When she was upset at work, she’d call Jake’s mother who’d calmed her down. Over the holidays, Gayle would spend days at a time with Jake’s family, and it felt like coming home.
So how did all the trouble start?
Gayle had always thought that sex with Jake wasn’t great. But it was okay, and Jake made up for it by being . . . Jake. As she got to know him, she saw that Jake exuded his parents’ warmth, especially his mother’s uncanny ability to respond to people on exactly their wavelength. Jake always knew what she was thinking. On a few occasions, Gayle had this feeling—again, inchoate—that Jake’s intuitions were female.
You know where this is going.
At around the two-year mark in their relationship, just as Gayle had settled in her mind that mediocre sex was a small price to pay for a soulmate, Jake came out with his declaration: “I’m gay.” For some months, she had felt that Jake was repressing homoerotic tendencies, in part because he loved her and wanted to make things work. “He said we’d always love each other, but that it was time for him to be himself.” Gayle had perhaps anticipated Jake’s decision, but she had a hard time accepting it.
Gayle called Jake’s mother. His mother was aghast. If she regarded Gayle as a second daughter, she also expected her to become a daughter-in-law.
Gayle wondered how—and whether—to be part of this family whom she had come to love. Jake told her that they would always love her. She knew she would always love them, but she also felt displaced, outside all the cozy assumptions that everyone had so recently shared. Was any sort of reset possible?
Gayle and I talked about what felt right for her, and, at times, she wavered. She wasn’t sure what she felt.
But slowly, clarity emerged. Jake introduced Gayle to Martin, his new boyfriend. So here was another challenge. Jake and Martin offered still more friendship based on everyone’s love for Jake. Gayle admitted that she couldn’t resist.
When they all went to visit Jake’s family, however, it was the moment of truth.
At first, you could have cut the tension with a knife. Jake’s mother took Gayle aside and asked whether she thought this would last. Gayle said she didn’t know, but couldn’t say anything to either of them without provoking a scene. “There were these unspoken rules,” she told me, “and I had to live within them if I wanted to stay friends. I caught myself wanting to stay friends.”
Gayle still wanted Jake, but had begun to accept that it wasn’t to be. “I’ve become an expert in acceptance,” she told me. “At first, I was willing to give up great sex for real love, and now I have to accept no sex at all if I want to be friends.”
She knew that if she stopped being friends with Jake and Martin, it would be harder to remain part of Jake’s family. That’s because if his family were forced to choose between them, she was sure they would (however sadly) choose Jake. “Then I’d be out in the cold.” Gayle wanted a family—Jake’s family—so she did what she thought she had to, and enjoyed it as best she could.
So, in trying to make sense of her situation and find some measure of happiness, Gayle decided to choose friendship with Jake and a loving relationship with his family. “We’ll have an intentional family,” she said. For Gayle, this made sense, since we all need a place where we belong, where we share a common history and offer each other support. Gayle said of Jake’s mother, “She knows Jake as well as I do, she knows what I’ve lost and why I’m still sad.”
It’s likely that Gayle will always feel sad, to a degree. But sadness can still leave room for happiness. Life is rarely all one or the other. Gayle looks forward to when she finds someone else and can introduce them to Jake and Martin. “It may feel a little weird,” she said, “but I am getting used to weird.” Happiness sometimes requires us to give ourselves permission to act in ways that we never expected to. It’s okay.
You don’t always know what happiness will look like when you set out to find it. You may not even know whether some situations equate to happiness until you experience them; figure out your level of tolerance; and, finally, accept what compromises you’re able to make. Gayle said that she accepted “a dumbed-down version of happiness” because it was all that was available. But that’s not exactly right. She accepted reality and made the most of it.
