An old friend who gets on your nerves? I gave up mine – and regretted it for years | Sindhu Vee

I'm at the stage in my life where if I don't like something or someone, I'm fine with deleting them. If it's wrong, unfair or stupid, I'll pay my debt in this life or the next (I'm a Hindu), and that's fine with me. But I'm also at the stage in my life where I know there's only one exception to this hard-earned self-care practice: my closest girlfriends.

There is no doubt that these women are in my life to stay - no matter how irritating, infuriating or frustrating they irritate me. Why? Because the plain truth is: these girlfriends are the scaffolding of my life. Whenever they are absent, I peel off. I need it.

Leaving someone you've loved and shared your life with for many decades - AKA your "life partner" - is an absolutely devastating experience. Yet it often happens and is even sometimes celebrated as a new beginning. Sure, there's a certain protocol - get professional advice, don't bitch with the kids, and get ready for some really amazing sex - but if I see a woman who left her partner because "it just wasn't working out everything just not" and she's happier now, I think: good for her - go ahead, you!

Divorce is one thing, but the "GFD" - girlfriend divorce - is another. Choosing to leave someone you loved from a time when you didn't even understand the weight of that word is different. Choosing to leave someone who can remember times in your life you've long forgotten, who held back your hair as you puked drunk in an alley, upset about the guy who didn't call back and who, eight years later, indisputably suited the bow in your hair when you married that same guy - when you dumped that person "because things were really wrong", there's no celebration, no fresh start and absolutely no protocol.

I know because I've been there. And, boy, does it suck. I won't go into all the reasons why we arrived (after a long and wild roller coaster ride of repression/resentment/guilt/gaslighting) at GFD and the extremely brutal final break. But I can share with you the consequences.

After divorcing my girlfriend, the map of my road in life so far became blurred, and the needle on the compass that showed me where to go next got wobbly. There was no one to relive what happened when I was 25 that made me give up on an arranged marriage, or the fight with another close friend that left me in tatters. Of course, I could tell these things to other friends and the old ones might even remember them, but only as static stories - no one had experienced them with me, from the inside, like she had.

After my initial self-righteous fury wore off (it took a while), every time it crossed my mind, I felt a blinding sadness. Gradually it turned into a pain of confused shame that I couldn't have done better around her. And then my life went on: new baby, new house, new friends, yada yada, yuck yuck, puke.

Then one day she emailed and I said, and that's the beginning of the story of how we got back together. But the real point is that I learned (in a devastating way) how important my closest girlfriends are to me. Reconciling with her was the only way to start making sense of myself again.

But the threat of shit hitting the fan still lurks. These days I depend on a mix of therapy, my spouse's ear (he'd rather chew glass but he can't handle another cataclysmic implosion in any of my friendships, so he keeps fighting) and to keep my mouth shut. I also learned to lean on my other close girlfriends, and sometimes on alcohol and lies. Because no matter what, I'm not going back to yada yada, yuck yada, vomit-land.