In Friendship, Night...

You may be the receiver of the dark night where, it wasn't your choice to end the friendship or end the pattern of friendship intimacy. It may have been your friend's choice, or maybe it was circumstances outside your friendship that demanded a significant change in friendship intimacy. But because you had an intimate friendship, you experienced or are experiencing a dark night. If you have deeply cared for your friend, trusted your friend, opened your heart and became vulnerable in the presence of your friend, the suffering is a risk you took.

Although painful and confusing, going through this is formational and character-building....

The dark night of friendship can happen when "one of the friends is incapable of sustaining the degree of intimacy wanted by the other in order to push the friendship into new depths" observes Mary Hunt. There are myriads of different types of dark nights in friendships.

There is another kind of dark night. The dark night of internal dynamics within your soul and within the friendship. This takes place in many ways in myriads of deepening and deep friendships. The friendship grows because of this dark night, is strengthened and renewed through this dark night. {the rest}

[via Faith Dance]