Men Who Leave Women Friends for Women

Women don't abandon other women for men. Or if they do, they don't do it twice.

Men do.

At least one man did, and I don't understand why.

By the time a person hits fifty they must have some experience in romance behind them. It's not as though puppy love just pawed on the door for the first time and dragged them off, you know? So what excuse can a man, a man I thought was my friend, have for abandoning our friendship when he began dating a new woman?

Was his new love jealous? I asked at the beginning of their relationship if she was the jealous type, fearing I would never get another walk or lunch out of him.

"No," he said, "or she wouldn't be with me."

Did he go all ga ga over a lover and lose track of his life? Hard to believe; he's pragmatic to a fault.

Okay. What I'm left with is that the friendship I thought was in place wasn't. Or, to co-op a pop phrase, he just wasn't that into me.

The loss is unlike any casual rejection I've experienced. This man, a friend of my husband's, was the person I had chosen to enter my inner circle as an adopted brother. Over the course of a year I had shared much with him, and thought he enjoyed spending time with me. Now, the memory of all that has soured with the silence of two months. I wonder how long it will be before he remembers me, or the things he said we would do this summer? As much as I miss him, I won't be the one to break the silence. Not this time.

The sorrow I carry deepest in my heart is that it wasn't a friendship at all. It was one person being kind to another person in cancer treatment.

I was Cancer Chick. Hear me peep.