Divorce

A lawyer is never entirely comfortable with a friendly divorce, anymore than a good mortician wants to finish his job and then have the patient sit up on the table. ~ Jean Kerr

 

Over the years I have often wondered “can you divorce your friend”? Sometimes we have a friend or friends that just don’t seem to live up to our expectations or even enter the realm of what we constitute  a friendship. I am pretty sure we all have at least one friend that this pertains too. I know I am not alone in feeling this way - a few years ago one my friends asked me this very question. My answer, I think you can but I have no idea how one went about it.

Over the years some friends haven’t exactly embraced the term friend or at least my definition of it.  I always thought that most people understood what it meant to be your friend, but over the years that I have discovered there is more to being friends than sharing crayons.  I know we are all busy with work and families etc but I still think it’s important to share things, big things, life changing things and celebratory events with our friends even if it’s just through an email or on facebook (not really my favorite medium but hey whatever works). I mean isn’t getting married, getting a great new job, or having a baby an event worthy of sharing with your “friends”? I always thought so but lately I think for some people they live in such a bubble they forget about people outside the bubble. These people don’t even realize that they are on the inside of the bubble leaving their friends on the outside, maybe they do and they just don’t care. It makes me ask Do I need to have a friend contract? You know like a per-nuptial agreement or a co-habitation agreement? Do we have some kind of friend-commitment ceremony?  I hope not friends are important, life without them would be pretty boring and unfulfilling.

I know that this topic of divorcing friends seems a bit strange but I think we all have one person whom this applies to. I do. I have tried unsuccessfully over the years to divorce a friend of mine. I say unsuccessfully because each time I think the divorce is official and we have both accepted the fate of our friendship something happens to sort of kill the divorce proceedings...I think the question I need to ask them is “What do they consider a friend”. Perhaps I don’t really want to know what the answer is because I don’t want to really know if it’s that easy to divorce your friend(s).

So back to my question “can you divorce your friend”? If the answer is yes how is this accomplished? Is there some kind of friend therapy out there? Can I search the internet and find a legal separation document for friend divorce? The answer appears to be no – I checked.  However, I did find a website pertaining to divorcing friends; it provided me with 15 basic how-to-steps. The end result is that I will be “liberated”. Hmm... part of me thinks this is total BS. Sorry but seriously I don’t think it’s that easy. And for me personally to feel liberated I need more than just advise to “let them go”...but then again maybe not.