[NOTE: This letter has been condensed but hopefully remains intact where it counts. Exotic British spellings retained for sense of adventure. ]
How do I move on from an intense friendship with a neighbour, without physically moving? The friendship has run its course. The friendship was not only between me and my friend. But our two families and critically, between my 7 year old daughter and her 7 year old daughter. Her daughter has dumped my daughter in favour of a new neighbour. My daughter is heartbroken. I want to grieve and heal and move on. I am finding the healing and moving on part nearly impossible when I see her and her family every day. I am putting quite some energy into helping my daughter through, while trying to also let her find her way. But…7!
So I guess I have 2 questions:
1. How to heal and move on with such proximity? Some days I just want to move house, but know this is not the answer.
2. How best to support my heartbroken daughter (when my own heart is also ripped out by all this)?
Neighbors are unpredictable players in our existence. They literally bookend our lives on either side, and there’s one across the street washing his car in a toxic level of shirtlessness. But we may not have much in common with them intrinsically except maybe income and the determination that the area schools are good enough for kids with as little potential as ours. Maybe we wave at our neighbors, mildly request their presence at a barbecue, or stand at the invisible line where our lawns meet and rumormonger about someone new on the block.
But, somehow, you got really lucky, at least for a while.
I don’t know the specifics of how everything went south with your neighbor. Was it something small that gradually metastasized because the two of you didn’t tamp it down early on? Have you lost sight of why you’re truly at odds? Or are you all too aware of the reasons why, with punches, kicks, and submission holds having been exchanged? I ask because if you’re at all on speaking terms, even the most rudimentary of them, maybe it’s worth focusing on your daughter and approaching your neighbor about that particular situation. It’s possible your neighbor's daughter has simply observed the hostilities between the grown-ups and is mimicking them with your own daughter. Can that much be addressed? If so, even if the adult relationship truly is done for, maybe the kids can be reconciled. And, who knows, maybe that’d be an oblique way of at least exploring the possibility of reassembling your own friendship.
Or maybe I’m being too optimistic for, come to think of it, the first time in my entire life. Maybe all the relationships in question are dead, full-on skeleton. I still think focusing on your daughter is the path forward because her happiness will replenish your own. Now, I don’t have kids or even nieces or nephews, but my understanding from TV is that they just need a punchbowl-sized serving of Trix to be happy. If explosive levels of sugar are not your bag, however, then maybe you should focus on gently nudging your daughter into situations where she can make other friends and rediscover that she is wanted by her peers. This might be both delicate and difficult, but I think those people are out there. And finding them will do you and your daughter both a world of good.
One thing to keep in mind is that with kids, this kind of thing is going to happen alllll the time. Not all kid friendships are forever. That doesn’t excuse the neighbor kid from acting like a jerk, but it may be helpful to just focus on helping your kid navigate relationships knowing that families handle things differently and everyone has their own side of the story. Personally - and idk if this is healthy or not - I avoid making close friends with my kid’s friends’ parents and neighbors now having been hurt in this exact way. Better to keep a little distance - friendly, but not good friends. It makes it easier overall and leaves me to focus on friendships of my own making. Good luck! It ain’t easy.