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Thinking about Male Fragility
I lost a friend over a movie.
I went to see The Hate U Give on the same day as the shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue. After the movie, I posted something on Facebook about how good it was, urging my friends and family to see it so we could talk about it. (I don’t have a television, and I had my phone turned off that day, so I hadn’t heard about the shooting.)
Then I went to bed.
In the morning, I discovered that my (male, Jewish) friend had written a blistering comment on my post, basically saying I was anti-Semitic and a terrible person because I did not acknowledge the shooting.
What followed, offline, I still don’t quite understand. We exchanged text messages, we talked on the phone. I thought we were starting to have real and tender conversations about hurt and fear and how trauma informs behavior. Then, he suggested we shouldn’t be friends. And we were done.
I did my own processing. I realized that I was better off without that “friendship.” Our whole relationship started with manipulation, lies, and gaslighting. It moved into one-sided support where I would sit quietly and calmly on the phone while he told me how his life was falling apart. I didn’t lose a friend. I lost a narcissistic manipulator.