Is it Empathy, Sympathy or Pity?

I like to think of myself as someone who is empathetic. The definition of empathy, as described in the online dictionary of Oxford Languages is “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.” I guess this translates loosely as being able to put yourself in the position of a friend, (ok, it doesn’t have to be a friend, but for the purpose of this article, and my writing in general,  let’s say it is a friend) and not only understand how they are feeling, but also to feel it with them.

In that context, I am not always an empathetic friend, at least not to every single friend in every single situation. Sometimes, is probably as close as I can claim, for some friends, I am empathetic. Although I take too much responsibility for the feelings of others at times, that is acutely different to feeling it for them, or with them. And for the most part, this is probably healthier than being an empath, who absorbs and takes on all the feelings of all the people around them.

Perhaps what would be more accurate, would be to say I am a sympathetic friend. The definition of sympathy, also as described in the online dictionary of Oxford Languages, is “feelings of pity and sorrow, for someone else’s misfortune.” Loosely translated, once again in a friendship context, this is perhaps the ability to know that your friend is struggling and feel genuine sadness for them. So, for example, I might worry about a friend in an abusive or controlling romantic relationship, and feel sadness for my friend having found themselves in this situation, I myself do not feel hurt or abused or controlled. However I would feel the need to help my friend escape this situation in any ways I could, and not judge them for their choices that led them to the situation.

That said, I can’t escape that right there in the definition of sympathy is pity…. The online Dictionary of Oxford Languages describes pity as “the feeling of sorrow and compassion, caused by the sorrows and misfortunes of others.” I can only conclude that the difference between sympathy and pity therefore would be, if in the example above, I felt sorry for my friend, and implied that they had made stupid choices that I would never make, and felt no urge to be of assistance because I felt they got themselves into the situation and should get themselves out of it too. A quick google search affirms this, finding that the main difference is that pity implies an element of superiority.

Why does it matter? Because a few months ago, one of my closest friends called me to share some particularly heavy health news. This news not only leaves her in a state of limbo for the rest of the year, but also has a direct impact on her future, dreams and life planning. She had received the less than happy news a few days earlier, and stated, although I didn’t ask (or demand to know,) that she hadn’t told me, because she couldn’t handle me being “too much.” At the time, she was very upset, and I chose not to address this comment, take her advice at face value, and just listen to her.

I had been in the car, dropping my son at his casual job at the time of the call, and I stayed parked there in the carpark as I listened, and for a while after the call ended, immediately googling the name of the condition, the treatment, the prognosis. I let the tears fall as I drove home, heartbroken for my friend and knowing how devastating this news had been. Wondering what I could say or do, to assist or help her feel better, or, at least, less alone. Alas, there was nothing I could say, nor do really. All I could do was share the weight of this news, carry it with her and feel our way through it, together.

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When I got home, I sent her a message to reiterate that I was there for her, that she wasn’t alone in this and some hopeful statistics meaning she shouldn’t lose all hope. I didn’t share that I was heartbroken, although I had said on the phone that I was terribly sorry to hear this news and that she found herself in this predicament. I didn’t mention that I had cried, because I didn’t know if that would be “too much.” It’s such a vague critique, but I could only suppose she had meant that she couldn’t carry my grief on top of her own. Which was fair.

Chatting some more about it the next time we saw each other, I hugged her and said that I was so sorry. Teary, she said “don’t be sorry, it’s not your fault.” Of course, I knew it wasn’t my fault so I explained further that I was just so sad for her, and I knew it was crushing news for her.” Sitting on my couch, she looked at me and said “but you don’t know. You can’t possibly imagine.” She was right, of course, despite my sadness, the news ultimately didn’t affect my life, my future or my dreams. I couldn’t imagine, and I hadn’t tried. My sadness was for her, and her loss, while her sadness was for the loss of a life not yet lived, a path not taken. A path, I might add, that I had taken, lived and experienced. An uncertain future, with unknown goals or aspirations. A resistance to acceptance, with no other real option. Could she, would she, ever be happy? I had no answers.

When I cried after that phone call, that was pure empathy. Absorbing her grief. I suppose though, it was also mixed with sympathy. Absorbing her grief, and feeling sorry for her misfortune and my inability to make the situation any better. But I maintain I did not feel pity. I have always loved and admired my friend, exactly as she is. Although we have taken distinctly opposite paths in life, I have always enjoyed sharing in her journey, perhaps as a glimpse into the other side. She too, represented to me, a path not taken, a life unlived. That said, I didn’t grieve that path, as much as I envied it at times. I know it is different.

What my friend was not saying, when she said I didn’t really know or understand, that I couldn’t imagine, was that she feared I would pity her. That everyone would. She did not want to be perceived as a failure or as weak or broken or less than. And although I would never see her in this light, as she is undoubtedly one of the strongest most capable women I know, this is how she secretly felt inside, and worried others would see it too. Not to mention that when she shared in my journey in life, there was not only envy, but pain, and resentment. Through no fault of my own.

My friend had anger towards me for the life I had led that she had not. She knew her anger was misplaced and unfair, and that I don’t pity her. The truth is, she has self pity right now, so she is seeing the world through that lens. I wanted to reassure my friend that I am in this with her, that she isn’t alone, that I am invested and I care just as much as she does. And they’re pretty words, but ultimately not quite true. So instead, I let her cry, held space for her emotions, let her talk it out, and change the subject when she was ready, or too exhausted to talk about it further.

She didn’t need me to be empathetic or sympathetic and she certainly didn’t need my pity. She needed to feel loved and heard and supported, not pitied. She just needed a friend, a neutral safe space, and for me not to feel anything outwardly at all so she could process her own feelings and hear her own thoughts. So that’s what I’ll be. Enough. Not too much.

❤ Love,
Your Best Friend ForNever
xx

Can friends be like Family?

A while back I wrote a post titled “Friends are NOT the family we choose for ourselves.” This proved to be a controversial post, and upset some of my readers, so I wanted to take the time to address this today.

I acknowledge that I write from a place of privilege in regards to this piece as I am blessed with a close and loving family on whom I can trust and depend in times of need. And in times of celebration too. I have never been in a situation where I was forced to replace family with friendships…. Well, sort of, but not in the true sense.

As my family emigrated here a tiny bit before I was born, I do not have the large extended family network here in Australia that many of my friends do. And I observe both the pros and cons of having the extended support networks available to them. Largely I notice that these large family networks keep my friends quite busy and less available for friendship, which, in turn can at times exacerbate by own sense of loneliness, as they are the people I would turn to for my social needs, while their own needs are met more directly by their families.

However, I do understand that is not the same as not having any family around  me for love and support and creating those bonds with friends instead. Let me clarify that I have absolutely no issues with this concept. I do not feel friendships are inferior to family and I do indeed believe they can be just as close, if not closer than actual family.

I obviously failed to articulate myself well in my previous post as many of my readers took the post to mean that I didn’t believe in the concept, when really, what I was trying to say was that friends can in fact be closer to us at certain times, perhaps at all times, because they are usually not related to us by blood.

The factor of separation is actually the beautiful part of friends who are as close as family. They choose to love us, they are not obligated to do so. They probably didn’t know us since birth or have hefty expectations of who we may become in the future. They simply liked us exactly as we were. Sometimes family are so close they are unable to separate themselves from us enough to allow us the freedom to be truly ourselves for fear of how it reflects on them.

At times it may feel with family that they had to love us, or that we have to love them for no other reason than birth circumstances. Whereas with friendships that is simply not the case. In that sense, yes, friends can be the family we choose for ourselves. They often very literally are. But the point of my post is that what allows this is the very fact that they weren’t family in the first place.

Personally, as I grew up with a family that emigrated, we tended to socialize with other families who also emigrated. These friends were family friends, so whilst I  knew they were not family, they did become part and parcel of special occasions and I always knew if I really needed to I could turn to them in a crisis. Their children were probably more like cousins to me than my actual cousins on the basis that we saw them much more often. Yet, I never considered them to be cousins or really family at all.

I have friends who say I am like a sister, or even a wife to them. Friends I have known since high school or even pre school. Friends I know would be there for me when it really came to the crunch, and friends I am dedicated to being there for in return. While I don’t consider them the family I choose for myself, I definitely don’t consider them any less important than family.

I definitely have friends with whom I discuss matters I would be unlikely to raise with the family, and friends whose family I am very familiar with. I have a few who certainly blur the lines between friend, family and relationships.

Because I do have family to turn to though, I would not expect them to be the first in line to help me if I needed it, whereas there is an unspoken expectation that family is the place I turn to first and foremost for help and support and guidance. I have greater expectations of them to be more heavily involved and invested in the lives of my children. My family hold weightier expectations of me in return too. If they need assistance or care, it would be assumed I would be first in line to provide that care and they may ask favours of me that they wouldn’t ask of friends.

This may not be the case for some of you. If you do have a strong network of friends in replace of your family, and you hold each other to the same standards and expectations of family that you can comfortably rely upon, I congratulate you. I am beyond happy that friendships have taken on such an important role in your lives and you have found safe people on whom you can depend.

I would like to formally apologize to anyone who was upset by my former post and took it to mean that I did not feel friendships were as important as family or that they could not serve the same purpose. When my point was really just to say that our family are not always our friends. Our family are sometimes too close for comfort to enable that more relaxed and accepting relationship we sometimes need.  And that friends can indeed step in and close the gaps here for the simple reason that they aren’t technically our family.

So maybe I should have said yes, friends can be the family you choose for yourself, even if your family are not the people you would choose to be friends with. It’s not a competition in any sense regardless, both have their place if you are fortunate enough to have both. Some people only have friends, and some only family.

I am one of the lucky few who have both. I don’t need my friends to be like family, or my family to be like friends, but I am fortunate that I do like my family and do have friends I could depend on like family if it came down to it. Each are just as important to me and I hope to everyone.

Friends are every bit as important as family, however you class them.

❤ Love,
Your Best Friend ForNever
xx

New Years Reconciliations!

Usually at this time of year I would write about new years friesolutions, making new friends, being a better friend to yourself, saying yes to more opportunities to make new friends or renewing your friendship style. So this year, I wanted to write about reconciling and reconnecting with existing friends to make your old friendships feel like new ones. Or at least renewed ones!

Last week I wrote about the seasons in our lives and in our friendships that may make us more or less available to one another or close to each other at any given time. After a season of being particularly distant to a friend I am generally closer to, I wanted to make a bigger effort to re-spark our friendship fire.

It would be easy to blame her for the distance that grew between us this year, and it would be just as easy for her to blame me. How often do 2 people stop communicating by each reasoning that the other hadn’t reached out? When the truth is, if that silence grows, both parties have contributed to the quiet.

It’s not that I didn’t try to address it with my friend during the past 12 months, I did. And it’s not that she wasn’t receptive, because she was. We were able to acknowledge that we were somehow floundering, that our friendship felt forced and unnatural, despite our best efforts to soldier on. Earlier in the year we had exchanged heated words, that resulted in each of us feeling tender and unsafe in a connection that had previously been strong.

Although we got over ourselves and apologized and attempted to move our friendship forward, we had apparently cracked the foundation of our friendship, and so any bricks we attempted to lay to build new bridges crumbled into piles that seemed to build walls instead. We could still see each other, but we couldn’t seem to reach each other.

It’s a pattern I am sure many of you may recognize in some of your own friendships, where there is a hurt, spoken or unspoken, and one person withdraws a little. Then the other withdraws a little as a result of their friend withdrawing. The first friend senses this and withdraws even further…. Until you are so far apart you don’t feel comfortable using the word friend to describe each other anymore. Somehow you aren’t sure it fits. It doesn’t feel representative of your connection.

My friend and I have a Christmas Roast tradition. Which basically means we write each other a mean letter full of jokes at the others expense. And this year, I chose to use that letter to light heartedly address our issues, and let my friend know I missed her. That I felt the distance and I was sorry for the part I played, and that I hoped we could renew our connection, but that if we couldn’t, there was no hard feelings and I wished her nothing but happiness for her future.

She immediately admitted to feeling similarly and apologized for her own role in our drift, and we discussed where the issues were arising and where we could each improve. We noted that we really had to make more effort to spend quality time together which had been lacking and immediately actioned a plan to rectify the rift. We both agreed to start showing up again.

And so far, we have been. She sets off for an international holiday tomorrow, and I know the flight details. It’s not a necessary thing, but it is something I would have known in the past and never bothered to request on her travels in the last 12 months. So I requested the information – not because I need it, just to show that I care. And she let me in on some pretty big health issues she has been facing, hence letting me in, instead of shutting me out as she had been doing.

She spent a day with my kids and I doing something fun, which we haven’t really done much since they were much younger, and it was a nice way to remind us both that there is always a place for her at our family table and she is welcome.

We have been sending memes and short messages most days. Nothing of massive importance, but just pumping some blood back into the veins of our communication and making each other smile. We gifted each other a few tickets for things – an opportunity to book quality time now in advance. A promise that we will make time, actioned, if you will.

To be honest, before this, I wasn’t sure we would even make it to 2025 intact. It felt to me like she was done with our friendship, and I had been working on gaining acceptance about this and letting it go gracefully. Which has never been my strong point. But just as I felt I reached that stage where I was willing to let it go, if need be, she realised that isn’t what she wanted at all. That it was a comma, a pause, not a full stop.

So here is to writing a fresh new friendship chapter this year and seeing if we can keep the connection strong, now our cold winter season has passed. Hopefully our spring will see something new and fresh bloom.

I encourage you to do the same, to make this the year you try to recover old connections and refresh them. Let’s call it 2025 keeping connections alive!

Happy New Year Readers! Thanks for your continued support. Wishing you all the best for 2025, and hoping it is your best one yet! Make it one to remember, not one to forget!

❤ Love,
Your Best Friend ForNever
xx

T’was the season… or was it a reason?

Sometimes when a friendship ends, you ponder, was it a season, a reason or a lifetime friendship. If it ended it is often, not always, but often safe to assume that it wasn’t the latter, which leaves only a season or a reason. The idea that it was a season might indicate that it was short or fleeting… but seasons in friendship are quite a bit different to seasons in the weather.

This is because people live their lives in seasons of sorts. Teens is a season, as is twenties, thirties and forties etc….. Also people have a season of singledom and committed partnership seasons too – which may change quickly or frequently. Raising young children is a season and so is raising teens. Retirement is a season, as are the working years. Studying is another.

There are also other sorts of seasons, for example a season where you are less socially connected. Seasons where you might have a rift in your family. Seasons of illness and injury. Seasons of loss and grief. Seasons of joy and success. And in these different seasons, we attract different types of people. We have differing needs and energy levels to offer friendships, different time restrictions or availabilities and different priorities.

https://www.smallripples.com/seasons-of-life-which-one-are-you-in/

So if, for example you and a friend were very close as you raised young children of the same ages together, and then grew apart more as the kids grew up and chose their own social circles that took you more towards other parents, that could be considered a season. You probably didn’t think of it as such when you were in it, particularly if it lasted a decade or more. I am sure you probably would have considered it a lifetime, IF you had given it much thought at all.

It can be jarring therefore, when your season comes to an end. This is true whether or not you saw it coming. Whether the distance was slow and gradual or a more sudden and obvious change. But sometimes, what was a season for one of you, may have actually been a reason for the other. And that’s not something I really considered much before. I always kind of assumed it would be a mutual thing!

And maybe, in the above example it was a mutual season, or it could even have been both a reason and a season for one or both of you. If you feel the friendship brought you something or taught you something in its season it probably was both. But let’s say, for example, as is often the case, you are in your married season, and you meet a fun friend in her single season… you might find that when their single season comes to an end, your friendship kind of comes to a close with it. That is one of the most common friendship problems.

In this case, it is highly likely that while you were a season for your former single friend; someone to have fun with and pass time pleasurably with while they played the field, for you, perhaps it was more of a reason. Perhaps for you, the reason was to remember yourself, and to learn how to build and re-eastablish friendships outside of your couple. To regain a sense of individual identity and remember that it is ok to have frivolous fun from time to time. Or maybe it was a lesson, if you discovered how much you yourself actually longed to be single and were attempting to live vicariously?

A season friend of course, is no less valuable than any other. They had their purpose, regardless, and although it can be painful if your season ended before you were ready, there is a good chance that you too have been a seasonal friend in someone else’s life without realizing it or meaning to be. For instance that person you used to be close to at work who you didn’t keep in touch with when you left, although they did attempt to catch up with you? Or that person you were close to before you had kids but kind of drifted away from after they were born.

It’s not intentional, nor something that happens with malice. It’s just that when our circumstances change, inevitably our circle changes somewhat with them. Often it’s not even something you are really aware of in your conscious mind.

I know during the years after I had my kids, I gravitated towards other mothers of youngsters who could relate to my struggles. These people were also more available as most weren’t working full time either – on maternity leave or stay at home parents, which made time together more effortless. It wasn’t my intention to spend less time with my working childless friends – it just sort of happened without me really noticing or giving it much thought. But my childless working friends did notice, and did give it a lot of thought and weren’t too pleased with the change.

Similarly I have been on the rotating end of a season where I found it difficult not to notice and accept while my friend didn’t seem to notice the distance the changes put in our path.

All in all, the most important lesson to take away is that a season in someone’s life, be it yours or theirs, isn’t necessarily obvious until it is over. So we must enjoy our friends and thank goodness that we are included in this season and that ours has aligned with theirs at this stage.

We only really ever have today. Yesterday is gone, tomorrow is not promised and definitely not promised to be the same. So be present in today. Be present in your friendships. When things change tomorrow, know that their presence was not unimportant or any less meaningful just because it ended.

❤ Love,
Your Best Friend ForNever
xx

5 More Sleeps til Christmas

It’s hard to believe that in just 5 days Christmas will be upon us. As a kid I used to live for these last 9 days before Christmas. I have a dear childhood friend who was born on the 16th December and each year I would excitedly exclaim “It’s less than 10 days until Christmas now!” You know, instead of “happy birthday!” Because I hadn’t quite mastered the art of friendship at that stage. Luckily she stuck with me anyway so she must’ve seen some true potential somewhere! That is a gift, truly.

As an adult, the excitement is more about when the day, or should that be month/s will be over, so you can actually sleep again. While it never seemed like Christmas as a child and those last 9 days dragged on for what seemed like an eternity while I tried my hardest to be good for Santa’s elves and talk a lot about how neat and tidy I was going to be at school with my books etc the next year… as an adult my promises are actually true and it feels like it is always Christmas!

That is in large part because I start making the lists in the first quarter of the year, then I tend to buy things in stock take sales midyear, and wrap them in the third quarter, leaving the fourth quarter for writing cards, making advent calendars, planning treasure hunts, and of course attending events! So it really is low key simmering in the back of my head always. Luckily for me, I do love and look forward to it.

But, I know most of you don’t. And I know many of you will be using these last 5 days to make lists and buy gifts and wrap them and write cards and make foods and plan events… so I will not hold you up with a long winded post.

What I will say, is that your support is a gift that I value and treasure. Thank you to all the loyal readers and supporters who tune in each week. Now go and spend some time with your in real life friends and have fun.

Make it one to remember, even if it’s one you can’t remember, because you are a bit too merry! Haha

❤ Love,
Your Best Friend ForNever
xx

It’s a Wrap Christmas Recap

There isn’t much I haven’t written about Christmas!

The planning often starts way back in November, particularly if you want to plan an advent calendar, or a virtual calendar or annul newsletter.

There is certainly A LOT of planning that goes into the festivities this season, and so my first tip is about the art of friendship at this time of year and the ways in which friendship itself is a gift worth giving, and receiving. If gifting isn’t your thing, I suggest presence over presents. As it is such a busy bustling period, it is important to plan your time appropriately, and know who is important enough to be making time for and with. So that you can go ahead and actually plan some time together! To make this easier, you might choose to create some Christmas Traditions with friends, that way they happen seamlessly each year without so much planning and forethought?

But if you aren’t much of a planner, this one might make you smile.

We all know there are a million parties and events to celebrate too, which often require a plate of food to be presented, so if you are looking for some cute Christmas food ideas to impress, look no further.

Once you have got the planning in motion of how to spend your time, who to spend it with, it is time to start making a list and checking it twice to find out who’s been naughty and nice! This refers to who is on your list, and should they be there? If they should be there, do you know where to even start with a gift list? It can be very overwhelming! Or maybe your Christmas list went through the wash with the whites? Haha

If you want to know one simple tip on selecting the right gift for your friend, or are looking for a meaningful gift idea or 5 for your female friends this festive season,  or maybe you are looking for a gift alternative for a friend that is particularly hard to buy for?  Click the links! What if you have left buying gifts to the last minute? …..But buying all the gifts is just the first step isn’t it? What about wrapping and storing them for that matter? How about a wrapping party?

If you are looking for a way to add some excitement to the presentation of your gift outside of wrapping, here is a recipe for a Christmas treasure hunt!

Even the people who don’t make the gift list often make the Christmas card list. If you simply don’t know what to write in your cards, I have you covered. If you accidentally picked up the blank card and need poem inspiration to fill it, don’t panic!

If you are lucky enough to have the logistics sorted for the day, which can be problematic in of itself, you still have to be mindful to remember to send some love to any solo friends, who might be feeling the pinch of loneliness if they couldn’t be with you, or anyone else, on the day. It could be as simple as sending them a funny friendship Christmas meme?

Whatever advice it is you are searching for this Christmas, I’ve got your back! So sit back, click the links and get busy following my ADVENTurous advice! Haha

Happy Holidays

❤ Love,
Your Best Friend ForNever
xx

Santa Claus is coming to town. He’s making a list, and checking it twice, he’s going to find out who’s naughty or nice….. Have you checked your list for the same thing?

It is typically around this time of the year that we find ourselves evaluating our lives, thinking of new years resolutions and taking stock of what we have achieved in this last year. It is also the time of year where we often start making lists. To do lists, to buy lists, to cook lists, and of course, gift lists. This year, as you make your gift list, I thought it might be wise to do a quick health check of the friendships that appear on your list to see how they have developed or changed in the past 12 months.

Perhaps you might find some names on your list that you have grown apart from, and actually buying them a gift might feel a bit out of place given the shift in your friendship. On the other hand, you might have made new friends that should probably be on the list, being how quickly your friendship developed closeness this year. Maybe you have a few that have stayed steady, and a few who were a bit erratic this past 12 months?

The point of this exercise isn’t to say if someone is a good friend, or a good person. It is more to gauge how your unique friendship sits and feels compared to how it felt in the past. And, to serve as a general guide on how to evaluate a friendship, instead of assuming or pretending you are good friends, because you always were good friends.

Do their words and actions align?

One of the most confusing things about a friendship is when someone tells you that they consider you to be a close friend, however, they don’t treat you in such a way that this feels true. It might be something obvious, like always being too busy to spend time with you, but making plenty of time for their other friends. Or it may be something more subtle such as making negative “jokes” about you or at your expense, or not being happy for you when something good happens. If you find you are feeling confused in regards to where you stand with your friend, that is likely because their words and actions aren’t aligning. Most of the time, people will show you things that they won’t tell you.

Are your expectations reasonable?

If you are finding that some of the names on your Christmas card or gift list are causing you some confusion, because their words and actions aren’t in sync, the next question to ask yourself is if you are expecting too much? If your friend had to cancel 2 catch up’s in a row, you might be jumping the gun to assume that your friend no longer likes you. Similarly, if you expect close friends to speak daily, and they only speak to their other close friends once a month, this could be causing you to misinterpret their actions. If however, you used to speak everyday and they gradually started pulling it back, and now you hardly hear from them, it might be worth accepting that your name probably isn’t going to be on their gift list, and take them off your own.

Do they communicate well with you?

Communication is a skill, and some of us are better at it than others, but as a general rule, you should feel like the people on your list should be people you feel you can talk to openly. They should be people you feel safe with, people that actively listen and show interest and apologise when there are misunderstandings or upsets between you. If your friend is constantly minimizing how you feel, shrugging you off or calling you dramatic, then this is not someone who can handle your emotions or who is showing care and consideration for your feelings. Maybe you do have a tendency to over react, but they should still care that something hurt you enough to trigger such a big reaction from you and want to help resolve things. If you have a friend who never listens, only ever talks about themselves, never asks about you and refuses to take accountability for any of this, it might be time to ask yourself why they are still on your list?

Are they reliable?

Our friends should be people we can depend on and count on. If you called your friend in an emergency, do you think they would be there for you? If they say they will meet you at 12 on Saturday, can you feel assured that they will be there at 12 on Saturday, or do you know they will be late, probably cancel and then spend the whole hour you scheduled together on the phone to someone else, or playing games, answering work emails, or whatever else? Not every friend is going to be able to be your emergency contact and I understand that. But we all have people in our lives that we would rush to in an emergency and if they are on your list and you aren’t on theirs, that warrants some self reflection as to why you are prioritizing people who are not doing the same for you?

Is the friendship balanced?

We tend to fall into patterns with our friends, which might mean that one initiates more than the other, or one calls more than the other. But if one of you stopped this, would the other person notice? Would they care? Would they make efforts to close the gap? In my own life I do tend to be an initiator, however I will become resentful if my friend NEVER suggests time together, because it starts to feel like I am carrying, if not forcing, the friendship. I have a friend who always calls, and if she stops calling, I am highly unlikely to call her. Both because I know she is unlikely to answer anyway, and because I am not a caller. That said, I will message and ask how things are, or suggest a catch up. If you sat back and stopped putting in effort to your friendship, do you feel confident that your friend would notice, and care enough to take steps to bridge the gap?

I would like to point out here, that all friends don’t have to be all things. You may well have friends where neither of you would be, or expect to be the emergency contact, and that is perfectly fine. You might have friends who are too busy to make time much in person, but show up for you in other ways or keep in touch frequently. You might have a friend who does talk about themselves a bit much, but you know their life is chaotic and that if you needed them they would stop and listen to be there for you.

This shouldn’t be about comparing your friends to each other, but comparing them to themselves and your connections with them in the past and how they sit today. It is about comparing how you feel for them to how you perceive them to feel for you. It is about looking at your gift list and seeing who deserves to be on it and asking yourself who is on it out of habit? And asking yourself if that person is still worth the investment or if they are actually costing you emotionally.

If you are mindlessly exchanging $50 gift cards with someone habitually each year, although you no longer actually spend time or talk, wouldn’t it be easier to just keep your $50 for yourselves and let it fizzle? If you are buying extravagant gifts for someone, does your emotional investment still match that financial investment or has it begun to feel like an expectation rather than an expression of genuine friendship? Is your gift of a box of chocolates for someone really an empty gesture because you don’t know how to end things?

Now you have taken stock of your list, are there people on the list who probably don’t deserve to be there anymore? Are there people who probably do deserve to be there who aren’t? Are you brave enough to make the switch?

❤ Love,
Your Best Friend ForNever
xx

Falling out of like with each other.

A few months back I posted about if we always like our friends and if they always like us. I came to the conclusion that we probably do like our friends, even if we don’t ALWAYS like them, or like EVERYTHING about them. That’s unrealistic. I also concluded that it was unlikely our friends would be our friends if they didn’t like us either. I do stand by this, but today I wanted to talk about the territory you might land in when you love your friend, however you no longer like them. And, as a result, we will also explore the opposite, when you like your friend, but you actually couldn’t say you do love them.

If you are a regular reader of mine, you will know that I do consider friendships to be like platonic relationships. This is because I don’t have a large circle of friends, and because the few friends I do keep, are close in nature and spend plenty of intimate one on one time together. I could easily say that I love them, because I do. And, I feel fairly confident that most of them reciprocate that love. Most. That means I do feel I have a few friends who either don’t believe in the concept of platonic love, or that they just don’t feel that strongly about me. And I do understand because I suppose it is fair to say that I do have some friends for whom I do not feel love either. They aren’t close friends, in my eyes, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t consider me a close friend that they have love for.

Of the friends I have that I do love, I can definitely say there are ones I struggle to like. Don’t get me wrong, I obviously used to like them, as that is what drew me to them in the first place. Maybe their charms wore off, or maybe once I got to know them better I saw things that didn’t sit so well with me. Or maybe we have just grown apart, no longer have shared interests or values and don’t vibe each other the ways we used to.

This is all fairly normal within friendships, but the reason we struggle to let go of old friendships that don’t really fit anymore is because of love. We liked each other once, we spent time together, bonded, shared memories, shared secrets and heartbreaks and triumphs and worries… and we grew to love each other. So when you start to realise you no longer like someone you have love for, you land in a very difficult position.

Friendships aren’t family, they aren’t blood, so you aren’t obliged to keep them in your life. There are no legal ties or formalities like marriage to keep you tied together, and yet, this doesn’t seem to make it any easier to leave them behind. I think loving your friends, and yet not really liking them anymore is the platonic equivalent of “I love you, but I am just not in love with you anymore!” Except in those circumstances at least you can say “can we still be friends” and when the pressure of romance has dissipated, maybe you can be. It is also acceptable not to want to be friends either. Yet in the concept of platonic bonds it is unfriendly to end things!

Because you love your friend, it isn’t always as simple as that. Just like relationships, you wonder if you can save the connection and find that spark again. Learn to like each other again. On the other hand, sometimes the love is what makes it too painful to endure and causes you to end it. The better news for friendship, is that the love that exists, and the more casual arrangement, paired with the lack of monogamy means it is easier to silently let space grow there, yet still hold love for each other, still be there if one of you needs it, and just see if it comes back together in time. It often does.

This is much easier if the feelings are mutual. If only one person has lost the like, the person who hasn’t may struggle to understand the space, and either end things, or cling to things, making things a bit more complicated. But what happens if you love your friend, and they in fact never loved you? They liked you just fine as a friend, maybe even a good friend, but for them, it always stayed a bit more in the casual territory than the close category? It is kind of like the platonic equivalent of unrequited love, where one person wants to be friends, and the other wants more. And actually, it has a fairly similar outcome in that the person who feels less, holds all the power, because they are less invested and there is nothing you can do to change that. They can’t meet you where you are with love, so you have no choice but to settle for like. Eventually this kind of mismatch tends to weigh heavily on the more invested party and they may indeed start falling out of like, and hopefully, out of love, too.

Maybe the real issue, is when someone loves your friendship because they know you are a good friend. They know you’re a good person, and they know they benefit from having you in their life…. But that doesn’t mean they like you, and certainly doesn’t mean they love you. They love having you in their life and like the benefits and security you provide, but yet you can almost feel the resentment they hold towards you for having to tolerate you in order to reap the rewards of your friendship. These are the most dangerous friends. You might not spot them immediately, but your intuition will start telling you something is off quite quickly. Listen to it. If they only want you when they want something, that is the biggest red flag.

The last aspect to cover is when you run out of love for each other, but retain the like. Although this seems counterintuitive, it can happen in friendships. And this is where you both agree, either verbally, or non verbally, that you have grown apart, and going your separate ways is the healthiest outcome. You thank each other for the times you shared, and wish each other well for the future. There is no ugly parting, no animosity or hard feelings and no awkwardness if you do bump into each other in the future. You can still be polite and amicable, show interest and remember the qualities you liked and admired in one another. This is probably the happiest ending…. And the least common.

Do you have friends you love but don’t really like very much anymore? How about friends you like, but never quite loved? Do they love you? Is it awkward? Send me your stories and let me know!

❤ Love,
Your Best Friend ForNever
xx

Friendship Festivities; Gifting Via Treasure Hunt - A Recipe For Fun

Christmas Friendship Festivities – the treasure hunt

Ok readers, those of you who have followed me for a few years already will know that I love all things Christmas. I know some of you are groaning at the mere mention when we haven’t even hit December yet… But this one takes some planning in advance. And honestly, if you start now and reduce your December stress, you may actually start to feel more positive about the festive season! One of the best parts about Christmas is the opportunities or reasons it presents us to connect and spend time with our friends just having fun.

In a few of my posts I have referenced doing a treasure hunt to make gifting more of an “experience” even if the gift itself isn’t all that exciting. So, in the spirit of fun, I decided to post a recipe for a Christmas gift treasure hunt.

NOTE: This is NOT an affilliated post.

MATERIALS

Pen

Christmas tags or paper to write clues on

Suitcase or bag that can be padlocked shut. If using case with a 4digit numerical lock you will need a pack of playing cards and for a 3 digit lock you will need red, white and green jellybeans)

Keyed luggage padlock (or any suitable keyed padlock)

Lockable diary with key

Lockable book safe with key

Zip ties

Pair of scissors

Board game

Physical Dictionary

Reusable advent calendar

METHOD

Place or hang the advent calendar in the room.

Place the board game on the table or somewhere around the room unhidden.

Make a little stack of books or books on a shelf in the room.

Put their gift in a suitcase locked with a small keyed luggage padlock.

(If you are using a suitcase with a numerical lock, instead of hiding the key in the advent calendar in the next step, write a clue that says “Christmas engagements seem romantic don’t they? First you exchange a heart and a diamond, but in the END you’ll wish you had a club and a spade!” Use the heart card for the first number of your code, the diamond for the second number, the club for the third number and the spade for the fourth number. Example if your code is 1234 you would use the ace of hearts, the 2 of diamonds, the 3 of clubs and the 4 of spades.

If you only have three numbers, use the clue “the Christmas colours are red, white and green, how many of each colour can be seen? Once the code is spoken, your treasure chest should open”  You will need however many red jelly beans as your first digit, however many white jellybeans for your second digit and however many green jellybeans for your third digit. Example if your code is 999 you would need 9 of each colour of jellybeans.)

Write a note from the grinch that says “You win. Merry Christmas” Hide the key (or relevant code clue) for the suitcase and the “you win, Merry Christmas” note from the grinch in your advent calendar in the last box or pocket. Bonus points if you fill the other pockets with other chocolates or treats they can keep. If you are using jelly beans, hide your green ones here.

Write a clue in a key lockable diary that says “You’re so close, you’re nearly at the END of your ADVENTure. (clue for last pocket or box in advent calendar.)

Close and lock the diary.

Put the diary next to a dictionary and a safe lock book among some other books.

Hide the key for the diary and the clue about the diary inside the lockable book safe. If you are using playing cards, hide the spade card here also. If you are using jellybeans, hide your white ones here.

Open the dictionary to the word Christmas and highlight the date (25 December) Add a sticky note that says can you cut the code? If you are using playing cards use the club card here.

Set a 4 digit code lock to 2512 or 1225 depending on how the date would appear in your hemisphere.

Use the lock to lock a pair of scissors in the handles so they don’t open.

Write a clue that says “what is the meaning of Christmas? Can you find it?” (Clue for the dictionary.)

Put the scissors and the meaning of Christmas clue in the board game placed on the table or somewhere around the room. If you are using playing cards, hide your diamond card here too.

Write a clue that says “You are smart, you must read a lot. Have you read “name of book safe title.” Example my own safe book is called “etiquette essentials by I. M. Aladee so my clue would read “You are smart! You must read a lot. Have you read Etiquette Essentials by I.M. Aladee?”

Put book safe clue and key for booksafe inside a cupboard or drawer and zip tie it closed. If you are using playing cards, put your heart card here. If you are using jellybeans place your red ones here.

Write this clue “They never let poor Rudolf, join in any reindeer……” (The answer is games) and make it into a Christmas ornament to hang off the tree or stick it to an existing ornament.

Write a Christmas card saying that their gift was locked away by the grinch inside the suitcase (or bag or whatever you have that can be padlocked shut) and they will need solve a series of clues and riddles to prove their Christmas spirit and unlock their treasure chest. Add not to worry too much because the grinches has lots of bark but no bite like something else in this room. (This is a clue to the christmas tree.)  

Put the card on top of the suitcase or bag.

https://www.kontentkiddos.com/christmas-treasure-hunt/

RESULTS

The card on the case will lead them to the tree, the tree will lead them to the board game, the game will reveal the scissors, the scissors will lead them to the dictionary which will reveal the code to the scissors and a clue to cut the zip tied drawer or cupboard. Inside the cupboard you will find clue for book safe and key for book safe. Inside the book safe you will find the key and clue for the diary. The diary will lead to the advent calendar, which has the key and a note from the grinch saying “You win” (Or the relevant code clue) They may now use the key or code to unlock the treasure chest (suitcase or bag) to reveal their gift.

It should be fun and simple, and probably won’t take too long. Let me know how you go?!

❤ Love,
Your Best Friend ForNever
xx

Friendships are not fairytales.

One of my better blogs was about friendships in the media and all the ways that the messaging we receive from media damages our expectations of friendships. It starts with fairytales as children and then the magic is diluted somewhat into less obvious but equally unattainable expectations of friendships. Think of any classic tv series featuring friendships, for example the 90’s classics “friends” and it will paint a picture of an idyllic group of friends who base their lives around each other, and seem to have no real other relationships or responsibilities outside the group.

Although on some level, we know this is a fantasy, somehow it still sticks as some unattainable goalpost for our friendships that always leaves our real life friendships falling short. Not only this, but both media and fairytales lead us to believe that friendships are forever, always have a happy ending and never face any real hardships that can’t be resolved in an episode. Reality is very different.

This means that we are ill equipped to deal with the harsh realities of friendship fall outs, and have no real examples of what it takes to maintain or repair relationships of a platonic nature that have soured. For example, a whole series may be dedicated to one married or romantic couple and the trials and tribulations they face over the course of their relationship. We see real and relatable examples of all the things that could threaten the couple’s relationship and all the ways in which we might try to navigate these things in order to reconcile. Without such strong examples for friendships, and without monogamy, the solution to fractured friendships is all too often just to remove and replace the relationship in question.

Friendships sit in the grey areas of society, being basically the only relationship that is completely free of legal ties, responsibilities or formalities, and so the only one really based and dependent fully on love and commitment. Isn’t that ironic. The lack of formal structure can make it hard to mark milestones or celebrate friendships, which can, I feel, dampen their importance. Without that first date, despite the fact that you definitely had one, dressed up for it and were nervous about it, the significance of the anniversary often passes unmarked. Similarly there is a lack of progression milestones, like getting engaged, married, buying a property or having kids. Friendships do grow, but in less culturally shared and significant ways which makes them appear stagnant.

I posted just recently about the newer concept of friendship counselling and even found myself reluctant to be open to the idea, despite the fact that I agree friendships are relationships and do go through rough patches. I believe people often struggle to save marriages they should leave and walk away too easily from friendships they should save. Yet, societally this seems to make sense.

All of it adds up to the reasons why friendships are the last tier of relationships and the first ones to fall from the priority list the minute people get too busy. Is it any wonder so many friendships fail without the time and attention they deserve? Would anyone expect a marriage to last if you only spent an hour with your spouse 2 times a year and spoke to them once a month in a short string of messages? Would it be acceptable to just call your spouse toxic because they asked more of you than you felt you had to offer? Would people encourage you to just walk away without even trying to repair and reconcile? I doubt it. The idea is almost as laughable as friendship counselling.

Fairytales and fables have their place as fiction of course, but what we really need is true demonstrations of imperfect friendships. Of the ways in which friendships can ebb and flow over time. The ways in which friendships grow together, grow apart, grow stronger, weaken and fracture. Of friendships that are rocky, as a normal, not just as a once off fight over something petty, but that depict 2 people who are committed to being there for one another, and staying there for one another even when it’s hard.

These depictions don’t need to be life partnerships, although these are valid relationships and do deserve representation. What I would like to see if the depiction of 2 friends, supporting each other through their everyday lives that include other important relationships, young children, elderly family members, illnesses, deaths, promotions, financial inequality, careers and how all these stressors can and do impact friendships. How lack of time and resources can push people apart. About how easily busyness can be misconstrued and miscommunications easily result. How not prioritizing the bonds impacts them, and yet how they work through these issues constantly and consistently, because they love and value each other despite it all.

Just as relationships do, friendships face jealousies, insecurities, lack of presence even when technically present, neglect, hurts, anger, disappointments, sadness, thin ice and all the other negatives that are experienced in romantic relationships. And they are often more difficult to navigate as we don’t have the language, or the references of how to deal with these. We aren’t even taught to expect difficulties. The general consensus, particularly when it comes to female friendships, is that it’s all romance and roses. Or more so giggles and gossip. Wine and whining. Drinks and dancing. Love and Laughter.

A healthy friendship should have all of these positives, but just as with any real relationships, you can’t have the good without the bad. The last ways in which friendships are not fairytales, is that they do end. They do not always live happily ever after any more than most marriages. And not only do they end, they can end just as messily and painfully and nastily at times. They can be toxic. And sometimes the right thing is to end them. And yes, your heart will still break, because if your friendship was true, then you loved each other and you lose that love. You lose a part of yourself. It hurts.

So just because I want to see depictions of friendships in their raw imperfection, and I want to see people fighting against each other and then for each other, doesn’t mean I think we should stay in friendships that just are bad for us, or abusive, any more than I would want to see that in any other form of relationship. I just want these 3 myths busted. Friendships are always happy and easy. Myth. Friendships are disposable and easily replaced. Myth. Friendships are fairytales. Myth.

Friendships are not fairytales. But they are love stories all the same.

❤ Love,
Your Best Friend ForNever
xx

Intimacy Imbalance

A few weeks ago, I was sitting around the dinner table with some friends discussing our male partners, as female friends so often do. Most of my friends seemed dissatisfied with the quality of their relationships with their husbands, fiances or boyfriends, due to the lack of intimacy. Some women were craving acts of physical intimacy, from affection, to flirtatious touch or sexual connection. However when we delved deeper into their motivations, they were typically craving some sort of validation or reassurance of love from him.

Many men relate to women intimately through sex alone. It is known to be one of their main love languages, so therefore it stands to reason that when a woman is feeling distance emotionally in her relationship with her male partner, she will seek for him to demonstrate his love for her in this manner. That said, the typical reason she is feeling distance in the first place is a lack of intimacy, and this seems to be at the root of the disconnect. Women provide their male partner the sexual intimacy at times as a bandaid or perhaps as a bid for emotional intimacy and connection. However they are often left disappointed when as a result he feels loved and secure and continues to ignore her need for emotional togetherness. Classically this often ends in the woman refusing to meet his need for sexual connection in frustration to his seeming lack of interest in meeting her emotional needs.

I am sure this is not shocking news to anybody, as it is a tale as old as time. I noticed that the lack of emotional intimacy with their partners really unsettled them and made them unhappy, and I began to ponder if my own expectations of my own husband are too low? Perhaps because I have experienced and am capable of romantic love with female partners, I always accepted a man could not and would not meet this need. This need for emotional closeness is something I have seen time and time again in female friendships. Even the simple act of getting together around the dinner table and expressing what we are really thinking and feeling, what is really happening behind the scenes of our lives is an act of closeness. Were my friends unhappy because they were expecting more of their partners than was possible?

Typically, I used the opportunity to reiterate my point, that partnered or single, straight or gay (or anywhere in-between) monogamous or polyamorous, friendship was the answer. That we could meet each other’s needs in this regard, if we would only make friendships as high a priority as we do all the other relationships in our lives. One friend in particular, who is enduring a relationship breakdown, was completely onboard with the idea and swearing off men for life. As someone I have been trying to convince for years that her friends could meet her emotional needs and she didn’t need a man to do it, I admit I felt victorious.

So, when I caught up with another close friend and I relayed my victory, I was surprised to hear her question the validity of my point. “Your friends are disappointed with their partners not meeting their need for emotional intimacy” she continued, “and you are not upset with your partner because this is a need you expect your friends to meet?” she asked. “Yes!” I smiled enthusiastically. “But isn’t it also true that you are often disappointed with your friends when they fail to meet this need?” She was presenting a valid point.

Thinking on this for a moment, I concluded that yes, she was correct that I was often let down by a friend who was not meeting my emotional needs, but this was most often because I knew she could meet them. In most cases the friend in question was meeting a set of needs for a time, before she stopped meeting them, and that is what would cause me distress. Regardless, her point was still clear. The fact is that our needs for emotional intimacy are often exhausting for the person or people we expect to meet them and the flaw is perhaps more the expectation than the need.

So while I might be right in my assessment of my marriage, being that I am happier at home due to my lack of expectations of emotional closeness there, placing the burden of expectation on my friends was really also imbalanced. Perhaps I could be happier in my friendships if I also expected less of them too?

I don’t think expectations of intimacy are really conscious, it’s just that as humans we are wired for connection and we go about meeting those needs through our relationships with others. And so we walk around searching for intimacy, asking for it, giving it in hope of receiving it in return, and even demanding it when it is not forthcoming. What my dear friend was pointing out, was essentially that we should take it and enjoy it from wherever we find it, and however long it lasts, and then go searching for it elsewhere when it fades.

Just as men demanding sex from women to meet their needs is a turn off, me demanding intimacy from people who no longer felt able or willing or comfortable offering it was equally off putting. It was more than likely a self fulfilling prophecy whereby I chase away the one thing I desire. So while I thought this post was going to end up saying that we need to balance our intimacy expectations more equally between friends, family and partners, actually the answer seems to be to just go where the love flows.

To think of intimacy like a set of waterfalls. Some where the water trickles slowly but consistently. A very thirsty person could not satiate their thirst with just that one source, but screaming at it for more water will have little effect. Another waterfall may gush for a short time then dry up while another may drip inconsistently. And we all just have to walk along, drinking the water and enjoying its purity where we find it then move along to where there is more further up the track. Some that have run dry may replenish over time, given the time and space to do so, while others may dry up for good. But the answer is always to not rely on only one source and to always be open to more sources so as not to run any singular one dry….

❤ Love,
Your Best Friend ForNever
xx

The 5 T’s of Friendship; Time, Trust, Truth, Touch and Togetherness.

In the past I have written about the magic friendship five, which is the number of close friends I personally seem to need to meet my needs for social connection. Any less and I will feel unsatisfied and lonely and any more and I will start feeling overwhelmed and stressed and like a bad friend because I start dropping the ball on people. This week I wanted to talk about another Friendship 5.

After reading Rhaina Cohen’s book; Other significant others, I became interested in a concept she mentioned about the 3 T’s of connection. This pertains to Lisa Diamond’s attachment theory that all relationships require Time, Togetherness and Touch. Although I believe most people will interpret these to be basics of a romantic relationship, I felt, as did Rhaina Cohen, that the principles applied to platonic connections too. Building on that further, I thought I would also include Truth and Trust.

Truth and trust, obviously seem to go hand in hand, as it would seem unlikely that you would have trust without truth, and if you had truth there would seem to be no reason for trust to be lacking. But the human mind is much more complex than this. We can distrust someone honest. Just because their words are true, does not mean that their intentions are pure. Similarly, just because you know someone has a habit of lying, doesn’t mean you inherently distrust them or their affection for you.

Let’s start with Time. This one speaks to me so much because quality time is my biggest love language. However, time isn’t just time. Frequent time together where someone is distracted and not giving you their full attention is not as satisfying as an hour a month with a different friend who really spends that time connecting with you in equal parts sharing and listening. A friend you have known for a month might be closer to you than a friend you have known for a decade because of the amount of time and effort they put into your connection. However, as I was explaining to my son when one of his work friends recently left the job, it is easy to become friends with someone when the time together is mutually convenient such as at school or work, however it is much harder to maintain those connections when the convenience factor is removed and you actually have to make time for the friendship, which essentially means, for him, for example, giving up an afternoon of gaming to see his friend. Whereas when they worked together neither was giving up anything to foster the connection. Similarly, time does not have to be in person. I maintain a close friendship with my penpal in Texas who I have never met, and one of my closest friends I only see in person maybe 4 times a year, but speak to almost everyday in a constant conversation online. So there are many ways to give and receive quality time to a friend, but without time to build a connection, then time to maintain it, friendships fade and fizzle, or never flame to begin with.

Trust is next on the list because I feel it is the next most important thing in a friendship. You don’t have to entirely trust your friend, however you do have to trust that they like you in the same measure, and that you can depend on them, confide in them or count on them. It might not be deep. Perhaps you just know you can count on them for a good night out, and that if they say they will be there, then they will be. It might be with a different friend that you know you can trust them to keep your secrets and not judge you and another still who you know would be there for you if your car broke down at 2am and you needed help. The point is that all friendships do require a certain level of trust, and similarly to other connections, if the trust is broken, it can be challenging to repair. That can be true if you heard they said something mean about you behind your back, lied to your face, stole from you or worse. Any breaches of trust can break friendships and it takes time, and truth, to fix.

Which brings us nicely to our third factor; truth. We all need someone with whom we can be true. Our true authentic selves, unfiltered thoughts, and unedited photos. Someone who knows the truth behind the smiles on the insta reel and someone who knows we hate that person we just politely interacted with. We also need people we trust to be true with us. Often, the fastest connections I form are the ones with whom I am true straight away or the ones who are true with me. Many people find this oversharing, overwhelming…. But when you meet your true people, you speak the same language. You aren’t interested in small talk about the weather, you really want to share the details of your inner thoughts and feelings and hear all about theirs too. My last point about truth is that I know some friends that do habitually lie. I know both because I have seen them do it with my own eyes and ears, because they have told me they have done it or because they have lied to me. This doesn’t automatically make me distrustful. Because often I understand their motivations for the lies, which have usually got nothing to do with dishonest intentions and much more to do with protecting ego or telling white lies for an easier life. In a weird way, knowing someone is a bit of a liar is a truth in itself…

Next is touch. This is where I tend to lose people, and once upon a time I might have agreed with you, that there wasn’t a place for touch in friendship, but it is simply not true. To allow someone to touch you is a means of expressing comforting affection, which does indeed foster connection. I remember the first friend I had who liked to hug and kiss on the cheek hello and goodbye and how warm and friendly and welcoming that felt. I hadn’t been a hugger before, and instantly I knew I was going to steal this from her and start practicing it in my own life. I had always imagined touch in friendship would feel forced and awkward, but actually it felt very natural, as humans are wired for affectionate touch. It also allowed me the freedom to move to a friend who was in tears, to embrace them, rather than stiffly pass the tissues, or pull a friend into a warm embrace in celebration of happy news. It allowed me to reach across the table and hold the hand of a dear friend expressing her life troubles as a way to say I was physically there to provide comfort and support. It allowed me to lay my head on the shoulder of another friend as I shared my own woes. It allowed me to flirtatiously smack the behind of a friend who was bantering and being cheeky and hold the hand of another in a scary movie. It allowed me the freedom to experience touch that wasn’t sexual or associated with the pressures to then become sexual. It was just another way to connect and show care and affection. I would not like to lose touch in my friendships again, even in these small innocent ways. These moments are meaningful. These acts of touch aren’t just meaningful to me either. Recently at a lunch catch up with a dear friend I haven’t seen all year in person, we quickly got chatting and she stopped me and said “you normally hug and kiss me hello, and you didn’t today?” So I immediately stood from the table to do so. Just yesterday after I left my hair salon my hairdresser followed me to the car and said “how rude you didn’t hug me goodbye?” It matters. It is a love language in of itself and doing it says as much as not doing it, clearly.

Lastly we have togetherness. This, I feel, pertains to that 6th love language we hear about, regarding inclusivity and language. Saying “I thought we could do this” or “this made me think of us..” Referencing your friendship as a pairing, as something important worth mentioning, and worth spending time building. But togetherness is really the byproduct of all the other 4 elements of friendship. It really refers to the connection itself. It is something you work on, over time, with people you trust and can be true with, who share moments of touch. If a friendship is lacking in any one of these areas you might find there is not as much closeness or feelings of togetherness as other friendships encompassing all the other 4 things. It is about feeling like a solid unit, trusting that your friendship is true, wanting to spend time sharing and connecting and provide physical, emotional and mental support for each other.

So there you have it. My five T’s of friendship. Can you think of anymore? Head over to facebook and let me know. The only rule is that they have to start with T!

❤ Love,
Your Best Friend ForNever
xx

Frightening Friendship Foes! Halloween Horror stories! Part 1.

I don’t know if it has ever come up in this blog before, but I am actually a bit weirdly obsessed with serial killer documentaries and other true crimes. Netflix is always suggesting juicy new titles to the mix to keep me subscribing, and I am a satisfied customer. One of my more recent binge watches was the second season of “Worst Roommate Ever…” (Disappointed Netflix, a season should be more than 4 episodes long?!)  The first episode features Rachael and Janie, a pair of best friends who become entangled in a very strange and strained platonic defacto kind of arrangement. I don’t want to spoil the ending for any of you who hasn’t watched that one yet, but it did get me thinking about stories I have heard about people who didn’t know their best friend was actually their enemy…

And what a better time of year to share such terrifying tales than Halloween?!

Have you ever heard of the expression “keep your friends close and your enemies closer?” It can feel like sage advice…. But it could also be a costly mistake not to realise when your friend is your enemy.  As was the case with Cheyenne Rose Antoine, 21, who took a selfie with her best friend Brittney Gargol , 18 on a night out and posted it to social media, before an argument that resulted in her removing the belt she was wearing that night and using it to strangle Britney to death.  She tried to evade police by later posting on social media showing concern for her friend’s whereabouts and claimed to have gone home that evening with a random guy. However, another of her friends, took a big risk in admitting to police that she had made a drunken confession to them. Eventually caught and convicted via the strangulation marks on Britney’s lifeless body, identifying the murder weapon and cause of death, Cheyenne was sentenced to 7 years in prison for manslaughter 2018. Meaning she will be eligible for release in 2025 or 2026. I don’t know which is more frightening! Be careful who you befriend.

Dark as that is, it would appear that Cheyenne had acted out of anger, but hadn’t actively planned to murder her friend. Payton Leutner, 12, however, couldn’t say the same, in that her 2 friends Anissa Weier and Morgan Geyser, both 12 planned and plotted the death of their friend for 6 months before their attack. In 2014 , influenced by fictional supernatural character Slender Man, and experiencing feelings of jealousy common among friend groups of 3, Morgan and Anissa lured their friend Payton into woods and stabbed her 19 times. They believed Slender man would kill their families if they did not kill Payton. To become a proxy of Slender man they had to kill someone and Payton was easily available.

Initially they planned her death to take place at Morgan’s birthday sleepover, however, both chickened out. Wearing headphones so as not to wake Payton, Morgan set an alarm on her iPad to wake her at midnight. The plan was for Morgan to wake Anissa so the girls could duct tape Payton’s mouth and stab her in the neck before fleeing. But they were both too tired to go through with the plan that time.

In the morning they decided to try again at a local park public bathroom, so the blood would flow down a drain in the floor. Anissa weakly tried to knock poor Payton unconscious with a punch, having heard that it is easier to kill a person who is not conscious so you didn’t have to look them in the eyes. It didn’t work, and despite the punch in the bathroom, Payton agreed to go on a walk with the girls into thick woods to play hide and seek. Between the 2 perpetrators, it was agreed Morgan would stab Payton on Anissa’s command. After a few rounds of hide and seek, Anissa then said to go ballistic, go crazy. Morgan took this as her command, and ruthlessly stabbed Payton 19 times. Anissa told Payton to lay on the ground to lose blood slower, and lied about getting help for the girl. Not convinced, Payton managed to walk her way out of the woods before collapsing from lack of energy and blood loss. In a stroke of luck, a cyclist happened to take a chained off path that they had never taken before and came across Payton injured and bleeding. He called emergency services and she was rushed to hospital for emergency surgery. Reaching her just before surgery, Payton’s mother was able to speak to Payton where she was informed Morgan had stabbed her daughter. Thankfully, Payton survived the surgery and was told, Morgan had missed an artery in her heart by a width of a hair and had she gone that much deeper Payton would have bled out and died of a heart attack in 2 minutes.

Scarily, they were both found not guilty on the grounds of mental defect and sentenced to mental health institutions. Anissa was sentenced 25 years to life and Morgan was diagnosed with schizophrenia, a condition her dad also suffered, which altered her ability to tell reality from fiction, and sentenced to 40 years to life.  

Frightening as it is that your friendships might actually be foe, what is even scarier is the ages of the young ladies involved in these stories. So keep in mind, the next time you have a falling out with a friend, if they aren’t speaking to you or in your life anymore, it could be much much worse! What is even worse is that it doesn’t end there either. Tune back in next Halloween for part 2 of this spooky special!

Happy Halloween Homies! If you are looking for some best friend costumes ideas, don’t forget to check out my previous post on this!

❤ Love,
Your Best Friend ForNever
xx

Does a social butterfly have lots of friends?

I don’t know if you get your hair done in the salon, or if your hairdresser is as fabulous as mine, but my salon visits are something I look forward to, and often feel more like social visits than appointments. As my hair tends to take a while to do, that gives us lots of time to chat, and although I am well aware that I am both a paying customer and client, it does start to feel like the beginnings of a new friendship.

However, it is not lost on me that she is paid to have these chats, and I bet she chats like this to all the girls! Haha by which I mean all her other paying customers. So it stands to reason that she’s a social butterfly. She is so colourful with all her pretty ink, she may well actually be an actual beautiful butterfly!

Let me set the scene for you though. As soon as you lay eyes on her, you will immediately get “hot bad girl” vibes. Yet, she is charming and endearing and gentle and kind, which is a contradiction that I personally enjoy. I love it when people surprise me with their personality, like the sweet teacher who swears like a sailor or the quiet librarian who enjoys karaoke. These people intrigue me and it feels special to see this other side of them that might not typically be on display for all to see. It is like a behind the scenes tour, which is endlessly fascinating and surprising. Anyway, true to what you would expect from the bad girl, she has a busy social schedule and her stories of all-nighters make me feel old and tired just hearing about them! For reference, we’re the same age, and technically she is 4 months my senior, but you would never guess.

I’m the frumpy mum she thought would be good at accounting because I have a dull life, and, as a lovely ex friend described it, the personality of a dead fish! Lol I guess she thinks I am just too white and nerdy! I’m in bed by 9pm and can’t handle my drink well. Most weekends I spend alone, writing, because my husband works weekends and everyone else I know is busy with partners, friends, and family. I don’t mind too much, my quiet life. When hubby does come in from work it’s evening and the kids have had their dinner. So he and I eat together, watch a movie or a show cuddled up together and I’m usually asleep on his chest before the end of whatever we’re watching.  This is my little life, and my husband’s long work hours are why I would be lonely without the support of my friends.

Because I have good friends, and we stay connected, mostly I’m not lonely, even when I am alone for long stretches such as the weekends. That’s not to say I don’t love to live vicariously through the adventures of my hairdresser and her bad girl life though! I do! Oh to have her problems of too many people trying to kiss her on a night out. That has never happened to me in the history of me being on a night out! Not even once!! I enjoy her stories of nights out on the town that don’t end until 11am the next day and dating disasters with bad boys. Sure, I could’ve told her it would be a disaster – but where’s the fun in that? My bad boy days are behind me and I have discovered the necessity of Mr Nice for myself, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know their appeal!

Whether it is drinks at the bar with an old friend, a club with her bestie, a drag show with a few clients, or more interesting endeavours I better not write about publicly online, her life seems so full and busy and fun. I can’t imagine her ever sitting home alone all weekend with not a soul reaching out to her. Most of my visits she even has friends stopping by the salon. I can see why, with her vivacious and charming ways, everyone just wants to be a star in her orbit.

Personally, I need 5 close friends. I have written about this dozens of times, and if I try and take on too many more, I find myself dropping the ball on people because I value and pride myself on being a good friend. Caring and supportive and engaged. The type who remembers to wish you well for your awards ceremony, help you choose the best outfit for a date or ask how your appraisal went with your boss. I could not maintain so many friends. But it’s like magic in motion to watch this butterfly spread her wings, and she seems genuinely happy to see every friend she has ever introduced me to.

Her and I are connected on social media, and often use this platform to communicate about hair appointments or send pictures of styles and colours etc…. but we also then see and interact with each others posts on the platforms and so, conversations do often drift away from hair into more personal territory. Hard not to, when we know so much about each other from hours of salon visits comprising of talk topics from idle chit chat to juicy gossip. So I was surprised to hear her share a feeling of loneliness.

I did not make this meme. I know it should be "you're" - and yes, that might be why?! haha 

“You have a million friends!” I was quick to point out. After all she was never alone and in bed by 8pm like me on a Saturday evening with no plans. Her phone was so filled with messages from so many people she found it hard to keep up and often ended up not even reading them all let alone responding to them all. Her calendar was full of invites to exciting things and every holiday she took she came home with a collection of new contacts and friends. People were drawn to her. It made no sense that she would be lonely.

However, she made no hesitation in correcting my assumptions. “I don’t have a lot of friends,” she typed back. “I know a lot of people. There’s a difference.” Stopping to ponder this, I immediately saw the difference. That feeling where you speak to everyone but talk to no one. That’s the exact reason I hate parties and groups, I feel lonelier in groups, which is ironic. So I could definitely see why seeing someone different every weekend, but someone you only see once a year, was less satisfying than seeing someone who keeps up to date with your life and cares about you and not just going out and getting wasted.

My heart hurt for her, because we all deserve to feel loved and we all want to feel connected. She was quick to acknowledge that she has shortcomings as a friend, in that her life is chaotic to say the least, and as a result she’s so consumed with the goings on in her own world, she sometimes neglects to show care and check in regularly with people. This pattern will definitely hinder her desire for closeness. However, I also pointed out that it was her who reached out to me to check in, so that was progress and something to show she has the ability to correct the error of her ways and seek consistent connection.

I suggested that romance and sex were not the answers to loneliness, and neither was alcohol and partying. Those things were only avoiding the very closeness she craved. What she needed to understand was that closeness was based on consistency and vulnerability. So she needed to try opening up to someone consistently and routine would help her achieve this. For example, to choose a friend to call every day after work, or pick a person to kind of always be in constant communication with during the day. A person she could quickly message between clients, or send a funny video, or read about their bad day or hilarious embarrassing moment and share her own horror stories too.

Not to try and do this for every person, or she would inevitably fail and feel even further from her goal and incapable of success. I reasoned that we could probably really help each other in this regard, as she could teach me to be less intense and more casual, and to not take things so personally, while I could coach and encourage her to reach out, show interest and share of herself to others as she had with me.

Sometimes it’s easier to open up to an impartial party, and friendly as we are, (and as much as I like her, which is a lot,) her and I are so opposite I don’t really know if we could manage to maintain a friendship that was mutually satisfying. I think she would find me needy and I would find her elusive, leading her to feel smothered. We would both feel not good enough. That isn’t to say we couldn’t or won’t develop a friendship, because we already have vulnerability and relative consistency. We are able to acknowledge our differences from the start and discuss problems before they become problems. I would know to keep expectations low while she would know to make more effort. And who knows, maybe she could inject a little more excitement into my life in exchange for the connection I could bring to hers.

The point is that we shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover, because things are often not as they seem, and the people who you think may be full of life might be the loneliest of all.

❤ Love,
Your Best Friend ForNever
xx

Commitment To Your Cronies?

Last week we talked about friendship counselling and if it is or should be something friends engage in. Ultimately it comes down to the 2 people involved and their values, feelings, wants and needs, so there is no one size fits all answer or approach. While I might go with one friend only if they suggested it, I might be more willing to suggest it for a different friendship. And for another I might refuse to go at all. Because each friendship is as unique as the people within it.

That post also touched on the commitment factor. If someone is committed enough to your friendship to suggest counselling in the first place, is this a good thing? Again it depends on the person. I see friendships as valuable platonic relationships, and with that I do believe I give, and expect in return, a certain level of commitment. However, I can name at least one friend who feels extremely claustrophobic by the word, and by the sentiment…. Not to mention my full adherence to the concept. In her mind, this makes me needy, makes her feel trapped and as a result when I make bids for closeness, it is often rebuffed with humour. Ironically, humour has become our own brand of closeness, as there can be intimacy in sarcasm too, believe it or not.

That’s not to say this friend is not committed to me. She clearly is, to some degree, being that we have had our fair share of ups and downs. But acknowledging it in this way, makes her want to run away immediately. I can kind of understand because I have another friend who I would say is probably more committed to us than I am. Similarly, her commitment can at times feel suffocating, and this can make it difficult to cancel plans for example. It’s only because she cares, and values our time together, and you can hardly hold that against someone. She is a good friend, and it is nice to be valued!

It probably is good for me to be able to experience this imbalance from both sides of the coin. It makes me more grateful for one friend’s investment and makes me understanding of why and how my own investment might scare someone at the same time. Ideally the commitment levels should be the same… be that zero commitment or 100%!

This is tricky though, because commitment is really a set of actions fueled by a strong connection, and the ways people express it might range from inviting someone to couples counselling, to asking a friend to have a hard conversation about your relationship, to making a weekly schedule and sticking to it, no matter what. It isn’t something we can see and easily measure. And it isn’t always immediately obvious if your levels of commitment differ either.

You may both agree to a daily gym session and coffee before work, but come to find one of you is always trying to cancel while the other is always reluctant to accept this and pushing for continued attendance like you both agreed. While you did both agree, you didn’t actually realise that this was a proper commitment and you had essentially promised to be there. Nothing makes you want to do something less than feeling like you HAVE to do it regardless of if you want to or not.

In that sense it could be argued that commitment removes authenticity and sponetnaetity to a friendship, holding someone to something against their free will and removing their autonomy. And nobody in this world enjoys that feeling. It is then, that commitment starts feeling quite a lot like control. It’s not even always as full on as a daily thing. Sometimes it might be a fortnightly dinner and when one person says they can’t make it, their friend pushes for another night. Yet when that friend has to cancel another time, the first person might just allow it to slide until next fortnight.

And that can feel pretty lousy too. If it means enough to you that you would try to rearrange your schedule to fit your friend in, yet they don’t seem interested in making the same efforts in return, again that imbalance can feel pretty heavy. And it’s not exactly something you really sit down and discuss when you become friends with someone is it? This is more of a subtle thing that grows and develops over time and something we learn about each other slowly.

Does this mean that it is better not to involve commitment in friendships at all? Is that the factor that determines the difference between a friendship and a relationship? Society might prefer to believe this, and stick to the loose idea that friendships are more transient and fleeting. Because we can have many, they are watered down in intensity and if you no longer find yourself on the same page as a friend, the obvious conclusion is to go start a new story with someone else. The effort to save the friendship is where the commitment is really tested.

I really feel that this is ultimately what commitment is all about. That at the end of the day, if you disagree, a committed friend will not just cut and run. A committed friend will stay and try to work together to solve a problem.

I had issues with a very close friend of mine where it had started to feel like I was more invested and committed to our time together than she was. This started to cause us both some building resentment. She would cancel plans and I would say it was fine, while feeling hurt. Then eventually I had to tell her that her consistent cancelling felt horrible and like it was more important to me than it was to her. She then felt resentful that I didn’t understand all the other things on her plate and offended that I was making something that wasn’t personal all about me. (Yes, after 8 years of this blog, the whole point of which is “remember it’s not about you” I still struggle and sometimes take things way too personally. It’s a journey. I don’t think I will ever recover completely but I am able to pull myself out of this mindset more quickly these days. Which is progress, however slow!)

Anyway, eventually, as distance grew, I had to pull out the commitment card, and say “you are too important to me for us to end it here. I want to resolve this tension, blame is unhelpful, let’s work together and remember we are a team.” And it wasn’t hard after that. A while back we had committed to a schedule of meeting up, that worked at the time, and no longer worked now. So all we had to do, was change the commitment to something that did work for her. This way instead of cancelling, she was able to show up, and instead of expecting more than she could give and being disappointed, I readjusted what I could expect and am able to still find meaning in the time we do get together.

The commitment to fix us was way more important than our mismatched levels of commitment about our social schedule. And ultimately our commitment to stay connected was equal. I suppose commitment can be both a blessing and a curse. Some friendships don’t really require much at all, the only commitment being that you maintain positive regard for one another despite any distance. But if all our friendships were this casual I think we would be lonely and we do need another layer of friends who provide more closeness and consistency. With that comes commitment no matter what side of the coin you fall on in any given friendship.

❤ Love,
Your Best Friend ForNever
xx

Friendship Therapy or Companion Counselling?

A few posts back, I mentioned Rhaina Cohen and an article she wrote about falling in love with a friend, and the resulting confusion arising from this platonic relationship that was much deeper than a friendship and yet less significant or more asexual than a typical relationship. Not quite an affair or a polyamorous pairing, given that the author was engaged and subsequently married her fiancé throughout this friendship, and he was well aware of it and the significance it played. He wasn’t threatened by it, perhaps, although I am speculating here, because the connection was affectionate but devoid of sex or that kind of attraction.

It does beg the question then, though, about emotional affairs, if they can actually exist and what constitutes them. A close emotional bond with someone your partner does not know about? Is that somehow worse than the same bond with a friend they know?  Is it the act of hiding the intimacy you share with another that would cross the line rather than the intimacy itself? Is it polyamorous if it meets the description of an emotional affair, yet your primary partner is ok with this? Or is it only polyamorous if it is a sexual connection? So many questions when we start exploring the grey space between friendships and relationships and the ways in which they often overlap.

All these questions piqued my curiosity, as I do have some very close friendships that run adjacent to my marriage, so I went looking for similar content describing these complicated relationships that fall in neither space completely. Which brought me to the book “Big Friendship” by Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman. An interesting read about another 2 women who found themselves inexplicably attached to one another in ways that defied the labels we currently use for friendships and blurred the lines between friendships and relationships. While I have often referred to these as “Frelationships” these women have chosen the term big friendship. Perhaps because they wanted to emphasise the platonic nature of their pairing, but using the term big to symbolize the amount of space it took up in their emotional realms? Whereas my terminology focusses more on the relationship aspect of the platonic pairings, with only a hint at the friendship. Maybe this is because it is less important to me to shy away from the implications of homosexual relationships, or maybe it is just because it often feels more like a relationship than a friendship, platonic or otherwise.

Anyway, I digress. Big Friendship is about 2 women who find themselves in the grey space, and spend many years growing this partnership in harmony. Spoiler alert…. They go on to become semi famous with their friendship podcast, and hence known as some sort of ideal role model for women to look up to and strive towards in regards to their own best friendship goals. People envied their closeness, and yet, slowly, over the course of time, distance started creeping in between the women. So while they were publicly projecting the image of the perfect happy friendship, behind the scenes their closeness was actually crumbling.

This gives way to the notion that friendships, particularly these intense friendships that feel bigger than the role they typically got assigned to in life, struggle with ups and downs just the same as any relationship does. There is this pervasive idea in society that friendships are easy, lifelong and harmonious. Not only is this harmful, it is also wildly untrue. What feels truer to me, is that when people start feeling resentments or difficulties in friendships, they just commonly withdraw from the connection and say nothing, or confront one another and go their separate ways. It is considered perfectly acceptable to leave the life of a friend with little to no explanation under the guise of being “busy” and any friend who dares speak on this is automatically wrong and considered high drama.

Why is it, for example, if one person seeks space, and the other seeks connection, that the need for space automatically becomes seen as more important than the need for connection? The needs are opposing, and I can see where the incompatibility is showing, however I struggle to understand why seeking connection is a less important need? In a time where we are experiencing a loneliness epidemic no less? Regardless, the point stands that when a friendship experiences drama, the generally accepted result is to withdraw for a time or forever. Yet, when a romantic relationship experiences drama, it is considered cold to walk away or withdraw and the expectation is wildly different. Romantic relationships are given a higher priority and couples of this nature are expected to do the hard work, have the hard conversations and repair the relationship. So much so, that there are entire clinics that specialize in couples therapy alone.

Why is it that a friendship is not offered the same support? Is it because a person is expected to have many friends, so the pairing should be easily replaced? Is it because we don’t believe in platonic love? Or just don’t value it? I have more questions than answers, so I was delighted to read a book where 2 friends attended couples counselling together and eager to read for myself the outcome of this endeavour. Would they heal the rift? Would counselling just tear more old wounds open? Would it allow them to decide to part ways in more amicable and respectable but finalized terms? You will have to read the book for yourself to find out.

My issue with the concept, was that when I thought of the mere idea of suggesting my friend attend therapy with me, I felt overwhelmingly embarrassed and giggly. Do I find the notion laughable? If so, why? My friend and I could definitely benefit from professional therapeutic intervention. So why does the idea of asking her to do this make me think we would be rolling on the floor in fits of hysterics at the mere suggestion? I think it might be social conditioning at play, or an unwillingness to accept in all seriousness that we are a relationship and we are in trouble.

In theory, I support the concept, however I think deep down the idea of therapy to help us communicate makes me nervous because if we are such close friends, shouldn’t we be able to communicate without help? If we need therapy, does that mean it’s over and we don’t want to accept this? Then again, can’t the same be said for couples? I don’t know the exact specific statistics on the success of couples counselling, but I would be willing to bet more end than survive. Which leads you to wonder if it boils down to a matter of commitment? Those committed to staying together, do. They have the hard conversations, or they don’t, and things change, or they don’t, but in the end, if they both want to stay together, then that is the end result.

Maybe the idea of raising the issue makes me laugh because my friend has an avoidant attachment style, and laughing at inappropriately serious moments is what we do to combat awkwardness. Cue laughing during her appointment at the bank to finalise her home loan approval documents, laughing at traumatic or deeply emotional scenes in movies and plays, and even during our own strained conversations about us and our frelationship. She is the kind of person who would have made me laugh in an exam at school or laugh at a funeral although there is nothing funny about death.

Ultimately, I can’t foresee me realistically suggesting this to a friend, although I support the concept and am a big believer in the power of a psychologist. But if a friend suggested this to me, in all seriousness, I definitely think I would say yes, maybe out of sheer curiosity… But also out of gratitude that our friendship was important enough to them to want to make this sort of investment to save it. That appears to be a friend worth keeping if you ask me. As I wont ask, maybe I am not one after all? Hmmm that’s an uncomfortable thought…. Maybe I should be asking…

Would you ask a friend to attend couples counselling with you? Would you go if a friend asked you? Have you been? Did it work? Leave a comment and let me know!!

❤ Love,
Your Best Friend ForNever
xx

Communication in Conflict

A few months back, I posted about a falling out I had with a close friend, and the apology and reconciliation that followed. Our friendship did not fracture in that conflict, but it is safe to say it sustained some damage, and despite the fact that conflict, when handled correctly, can actually bring 2 people closer, without the required communication, it can also leave the friendship in a state of disrepair. This is where my friend and I have found ourselves. Unwilling to let go and unable to really move forward.

This is not the first time our friendship has taken a hard hit where it hurts, and the last time actually did fracture the friendship. We took over a year apart, to cool off and lick our respective wounds before finding ourselves drawn back together for round 2. Well, round 2, wasn’t necessarily what we considered it to be, at the time, but given our current circumstances, it is fair to say that is how it ended up. The thing is, that we never really discussed that first fracture. It was water under the bridge and bringing it up would only throw us back in to drown a second time.

Onwards and upwards. We had each learned a fair bit about each other, both during our friendship, and our time apart. We had both reflected on some things, and decided to approach each other this time, in a less intense way. There was never any doubt that we loved each other, in fact, we loved each other enough to be mindful of the weak spots, and keep the jabs light. A playful game of sparring with the understanding that if this was a boxing match, for one to win, the other had to lose, which made us both losers. So we kept it much less complicated by using jokes and junk food at the forefront and pesky emotions tucked away.

This did work, except for the fact that it felt more like a façade than a friendship at times, and it lacked authenticity. While we wanted to be as close as we once were, and we acted as if we were just as close, beneath the surface, emotions were building that were not being expressed. It was only a matter of time before one, or both of us broke. As you’d expect, what could have been a vent of steam slowly over time, instead built into a massive explosion, which is probably exactly where the expression ‘mountains out of molehills’ originated. One small crack, the straw that broke the camels back.

And although we continue flying forward together, since then, both pilots appear to be in the brace position, neither taking the controls and flying the plane. Autopilot has got us this far, however, sooner or later it starts inevitably running low on fuel and we can’t land and refuel with neither of us at the controls. As a matter of fact, both of us need to be at the controls for this, working effectively as a team. So we need to get ourselves out of the brace position and try to save the aircraft or it will certainly crash just as we both fear it will.

Unfortunately for us, this means communicating about the conflict between us. Or, more specifically, the damage each of us has sustained in the last crash landing and the resulting damage to the friendship. We are both frightened, because the trust has been the part hardest hit. As a result, neither is wanting or willing to say “I am hurting.” But the truth is exactly that. We have hurt each other and being vulnerable again feels terrifying.

Luckily for us, my friend has travelled a fair bit this year, and for some strange reason, we are able to talk a little more openly when we are not face to face. So, when my friend kept asking me for favours in her absence, I was able to express that it felt like she was only keeping in touch when she wanted something, and she was able to address that, apologise, explain that she asks me because she knows I am reliable and she can depend on me, and that she doesn’t like the idea that I think she asks too much of me. She then sent me a beautiful little thing about best friends and I felt inspired to tell her that I felt the same ways, but that it felt things were not good between us at the moment. She agreed, and we sent a few thoughts about this. She said she felt I was no longer vulnerable with her anymore, and hadn’t been in a long while. I agreed with her, and reflected that currently we don’t feel safe with each other, and we need to address this, in order to fix us. We shared a joke about how awkward this conversation was going to be, but equally important, because if I no longer felt safe telling her when I was hurt or upset, she wouldn’t know and it would only get worse.

This was my friend’s way of asking me to explain why we had fallen out earlier in the year. Something I did not want to directly discuss, and something I knew would be hard for her to hear. But she is right, if I don’t disclose which behaviours are triggering me, then she cannot address or change them. If I don’t trust her enough to let her in, then I only shut her out, and if I shut her out emotionally, she may as well still be shut out of my life. This is why we are struggling. I have not been able to let her back in.

I don’t want to lose this person, and I had been afraid that telling her the things bothering me would only cause more problems, because really, they can’t be solved. Our lives have both changed and as a result, so has our friendship. This is a perfectly normal progression. But what was really holding us back is not that she cannot solve the problems, it is that she is not sharing the emotional load with me. I have to tell her what I am carrying so she can help me hold it up and hold it together!

And so, we had the awkward conversation. It wasn’t about who was wrong and who was right. It was about opening up to each other again, opening our hearts and the channels of communication. It is one thing to be open and honest about your positive feelings, however if you cannot communicate your more difficult emotions and issues, you actually can’t really connect, or in our case, reconnect.

My friend was patient with me. She understood we needed some distance from the fall out to discuss it more freely, and she trusted me to open up to her again in time. It feels so much better now I have and we can be real with one another. My next challenge is to raise things in real time rather than repressing until I explode again. Being authentic and vulnerable is hard during times of conflict, but you’ve got to do it, if you want to get through it….

❤ Love,
Your Best Friend ForNever
xx

Blindsided By Boundaries

Last week we talked about listening and sharing, and how to show interest in a new friend, or even an old one, without making them feel interviewed or interrogated. At the end of that post, I touched on the issue of a friend asking you something you don’t feel comfortable sharing, and I wanted to explore that further this week.

I completely admit to being a bit guilty of interviewing new people. It isn’t intentional, I just love getting to know new people and learning all about them, their lives, and what has brought them to this point in their journey and made them who they are today. Human nature and armchair psychology fascinates me, and I really want to understand the people in my circle and how they tick. So it’s ironic that sometimes the very thing I am trying to achieve to bring us closer, is the very same thing that ends up pushing them away.

One person in my circle, for example, often complains that her adult son only communicates with her sporadically, only tells her what he wants her to know, and frequently does not answer her calls, texts or emails. She adds that on the occasions he does respond, he only shares parts of his life, ignores many of her questions and leaves her feeling unwanted in his life. This rejection is painful, and as my own son is on the cusp of adulthood now, I am sure I will be able to relate much more in the years to come.

However, I am not quite there yet, and so I find myself reminding this person that her son is an adult, he is entitled to his privacy. She argues of course that the things she wants to know about are not overtly personal, that she is just interested in the comings and goings of his day to day life, as she shares the day to day of hers. It is lost on her that he is disinterested in what she had for dinner on Saturday night, or what her next door neighbour’s daughter’s best friend’s uncle said about her neighbour and the ensuing feud. She feels rejected both by his lack of interest in her own life, and his lack of interest in sharing his own life.

I find myself defending her son, assuring her that he is busy, that he does not have time at this stage of his life, while he is married and raising young kids of his own, to include her in every detail of his existence, and so when he does take the time to reply to her email, he only has 5 or 10 minutes to do so, he might not be inclined to answer every little question about every little thing – he needs to stick to the point. As nice as long lingering conversations may be, his life is not in a place right now to allow that relaxed free flow of conversation.

When he doesn’t answer questions she wants answers to, I have no doubt in my mind that she simply asks again. She doesn’t mean to be intrusive, and doesn’t consider herself to be such, and when the questions are benign, such as “how did grandchild go at team sports this weekend?” or caring such as “what did the doctor say at your appointment last week?” she feels excluded from his life when he still doesn’t answer. While the truth may be that he really doesn’t know how his kid went at sports or that the doctor’s appointment was general and benign and not worth mentioning, the only possibility she can see is that he doesn’t want her to know!

And is it so bad if he doesn’t? Does she NEED to know the answers to these questions? No. She wants to know, is interested to know and is attempting to show interest and care… the same interest and care she wishes he would reciprocate by asking and showing interest in her own life. However, just because she asked, more than once, does not mean that he is obligated to tell her. And if he feels a boundary is being crossed, because she is disrespecting his right to privacy with intrusive questions, he will only pull away further.

And actually, I can relate to this in both senses. I definitely have at least one person in my life who demands more information with than I am always interested in sharing. I am a fairly open book with most people, and I do like it when people ask questions because it feels like they care. So, while it is uncommon, I may skip over a question I don’t want to answer, because I feel the answer wont be the one she wants to hear, and I am not interested in her thoughts and feelings on what she thinks I should have said or done. That said, if pressed, in the spirit of keeping communication open, I will usually offer a vague answer that is not untrue, but not entirely true either and move the conversation along nicely.

I also remember a situation where a friend and I would exchange long emails. In these emails we would share and ask questions and cover a range of topics about life and love, and it was easy to skip over a question or not answer, undeliberately (how is that not a word?!) and so I may ask again, if the question was missed. To be honest, I am not sure how many times this happened, or how many times I may have re-asked the same question that my friend was clearly intentionally avoiding, however she soon became exasperated with my unintended intrusiveness and retorted that when she did not answer my questions, it was not an invitation to ask them again. I felt hurt and blindsided by this assertion of her boundaries, as I genuinely had no idea I was doing this and we had shared very openly before, so I wasn’t aware that I was crossing any boundary. I felt this person must think poorly of me to be so insistent and nosey, and after that I felt unsafe to ask questions about her or her life, because I was unsure what would be considered off limits, and was not interested in a second scolding.

It isn’t that I didn’t want to respect her boundaries, the truth was simply that I didn’t understand what they were. I can’t recall if I apologized, although I suspect I didn’t, nor did I communicate that I had not understood where the boundary was crossed so I could be mindful not to cross it again. Similarly, the friend in question also did not take the time to communicate with me which topics felt safe for her, and which did not. Essentially it was a miscommunication, when really all the above scenarios could easily have been solved by saying directly “I know you only ask because you care and you are genuinely interested, which I appreciate, however this is a topic I don’t feel comfortable discussing, and I would prefer not to answer your questions about it. I hope you understand.” Or “I’m sorry I crossed a boundary there. Of course you don’t have to answer my questions just because I ask, however, it would help me if you replied with “I’d rather not discuss that” so I understand where the boundary lies next time.”

It is ok to have boundaries, and it is ok to ask friends to respect them. But both sides have to be mature enough to communicate what the boundaries are and where the line is, without losing positive regard and believing the best intentions of one another to continue the connection. Without clear communication, boundaries can seem counterintuitive to connection, so this needs to be addressed delicately.

❤ Love,
Your Best Friend ForNever
xx

Interest, Interview, or Interrogation.

My son made a new friend at work recently, and I was so proud of him, because when he started the job and I mentioned that perhaps he would make some new friends, he scoffed at the idea and exclaimed that he already had friends, and did not need any more! Haha I tried to tell him that we continue making friends our whole lives, sometimes intentionally, but often circumstantially – like working together, but  at the time he was having none of that nonsense! In case it wasn’t obvious, my son is on the ASD spectrum, so sometimes he requires a bit of a social story or script to help him navigate changes.

As my son was telling me about the new lad he had befriended, I asked how old this boy was. My son couldn’t tell me, nor could he tell me if this guy could drive, where he went to school or much else at all. At least he did know his name! That’s a start. So, I took the opportunity to explain to my son that when someone becomes a friend, it is customary to get to know them, by showing interest and asking questions about themselves.

Next thing you know, this young lad is being bombarded with questions about his age and driving status, and all matter of other things. I am always pleased when my son takes my advice and is willing to grow and learn, because change is so difficult for him, but he really does want to get it right in life. So situations like these need to be handled carefully, because while he took my advice, and was indeed showing interest, his questions were coming across in such a way that it seemed more like an interview, or even an interrogation rather than a conversation or an exchange of information, sharing interesting things about themselves to one another.

My son, disheartened, insisted he was only doing what I had told him to do, and, to be fair, he was right. I should know by now just how literally my son takes things, and I had not done a good job of explaining the nuances and that it should be a casual conversation, whereby you slowly get to know someone and you both share things with each other, as they become relevant, and that you couldn’t learn everything there was to know about someone in one text exchange. Not only that, but done all at once like this, was too rigid, formal and impersonal, despite that being the opposite of his intention.

But the truth is, maybe I wasn’t the best person to be trying to teach him this lesson, because in all honesty, this is probably an area in which I have struggled somewhat too. Maybe we all have? I am guilty of asking too many questions, and not always knowing or toeing the line of how much a person, particularly a new person to my life, is comfortable sharing. I am also a listener more than a talker generally speaking, which means I might not actually leave room for myself in the conversation, while I am so busy learning all about them! I really should learn to say, for example, “I am a big fan of 90’s music, what music are you interested in?” Then allow the conversation to permeate there for a time before a more natural transition comes up, rather than jumping straight to “we would have been in high school then, what school did you attend? B

I do sometimes find I have been friends with someone for quite some time before I realise that while I know their whole life story, they know virtually nothing about me and mine. It can feel hurtful that they haven’t been interested enough to ask, but it may also be true that I have been more comfortable redirecting the conversation back in their direction when they have tried. It could be the pervasive idea that there is nothing interesting about me, or low self esteem in questioning why anyone would be interested. It could be a defense mechanism that works on the belief that if I open up to new people, I will start investing and stand to get hurt when they don’t like what they hear, or even an insecurity that if I reveal myself, my true self, that they really wont like me. Regardless, it is something I do need to work on myself.

I know others, who suffer the opposite affliction too. These people are the talkers, and yes, we are often drawn to each other. These people may have some narcissistic traits and qualities, although by no means am I calling them full blown narcs. It’s just that they seem to find themselves endlessly interesting, funny, and intelligent and they seem to feel that they are enlightening you by gracing you with their company in the first place. And they warmed to me, a listener instantly, because not many people have had the patience and tolerance to listen to them go on about themselves endlessly. They are probably unaware that they even do this, or that they ask questions only because they are waiting for their turn to speak. For example, they ask how your weekend was, but before you have even started answering they have launched into a story about their own…. And that was the real reason they raised the topic in the first place.

This leads me to conclude that as a listener, I need to share more actively, and ask questions in such a way that I first share something about myself before asking the other person about themselves. While some of my talker friends, need to be the ones who sometimes ask, and then actively listen to my answer, because being asked about does feel good. It does show interest and care, as long as it is done in the right manner. Added to which, I need to be mindful that there is no rush to know everything about someone all at once. Nor any need for them to know or care about every aspect of myself either.

Actually, because actions speak louder than words at the end of the day, there are things you cannot and will not know about people by listening to them anyway. Over time, people reveal themselves slowly. When they tell you about themselves, by all means listen, and take their word for that, however we must be open to the possibility that none of us are as great, nor as terrible as we may believe ourselves to be. I mean, I call myself a listener, not a talker… yet it is not lost on me that the only real voice in this blog is my own, nor that I definitely have at least one friend who would classify me as a talker not a listener. Different people bring out different sides of us, after all.

Essentially, I am saying show interest, interview someone slowly over the course of time, and make sure you are sharing in equal measure, to keep the balance and keep it reciprocal. And be mindful of when you enter interrogation mode, as this is where boundaries are crossed. Just because someone asked you something, does not mean you are obliged to answer or disclose more than you are comfortable with.

More on that next week!

❤ Love,
Your Best Friend ForNever
xx

Push and Pull Potential Pals

Because I write about friendships, read about friendships and care a great deal about the subject and how friendships affect our mental health, it shouldn’t come as any surprise to you that when people I know have friendship issues, they turn to me for guidance and support.

One of the most common friendship complaints I get, tends to be about push and pull pals. Hot and cold, cat and mouse type of situations. These typically occur during the initial courting period, although not always. (I say courting in reference to the beginnings of a friendship sprouting and attempting to grow, I feel there isn’t really a word for that in our language, similar to the ending of a friendship which is also often referred to as a break up for lack of better terms.)

In general, it involves 2 people that meet regularly under a certain context, be it in a church or a gym class or at the dog park. It begins as someone you chat to politely about surface level topics once a twice a week. Initially, it’s probably of little consequence to either of you. But after a longer stretch you find you start looking forward to your little chats and are disappointed if they aren’t there. When they return, you ask if everything is ok, because you are growing concern for them. Next thing you know, they are asking how your doctors appointment went, and shortly after that you exchange numbers.

It’s nice and exciting to make a new friend, at any age. But there seems to be a concerning pattern of the new friend being super keen, and then disinterested, or giving what feels like mixed signals. This too, is not unique to a specific age range. And it can be an awkward thing to talk about, not least because you actually don’t know how to describe this person or your relationship. Is it an acquaintance or a friend? Is it a new friend or just a potential friend? Is it a casual friend or just a neighbour? And, if you aren’t even sure how to describe your relationship, why are you worried about it? Why should someone you hardly know be on your mind? Does it even matter?

The reason this person is on your mind, is because you like them, and you would like them to become a friend. The reason you are worried about it and analysing the signs, is because you aren’t sure if the sentiment is actually reciprocated. Sometimes you think it is, then the next you aren’t so sure.

Let’s say, for examples sake, that this new person invites you out to see a local theatre production, and you have a lovely time together. You stop for coffee after the matinee and your conversation flows easily, and although isn’t deeply personal, gets below the surface of the weather and the news and the context of your meeting. You leave the evening feeling really happy and pleased that you feel you have made a new friend. You tell your partner when you get home how much you appreciate this new person and share your hopes that the 2 of you might become closer. Then you message them to say you had a lovely time with them and suggest a different activity to try in a few weeks time.

They read your message, but do not respond. I don’t know many people who wouldn’t start to wonder, after a few days, if they didn’t share the sentiment, and perhaps feel a little embarrassed about your enthusiasm if they actually did not have an enjoyable afternoon. You can’t fathom why, when you thought it went so well, and ruminate on the happenings to see if you can identify signs or something you did or said that might have put them off.

The next time you see them, in the original context, they smile and say hello, tell you that they are sorry they can’t make it to the event you suggested as they are throwing a dinner party that night. At the conclusion of the meeting, you hear someone else thanking your new friend for the invitation to the dinner party, and wonder why you weren’t invited, when you believed you were closer to them than the person they did invite. You remind yourself to be mature and understand that invitations to such events have to stop somewhere and your new friend is trying to make new connections which is admirable. You decide to accept that the friendship didn’t spark for them, no matter the reason and put it out of your mind.

Then, a few days later, this person calls you and you have quite a personal conversation about their relationship troubles, and again, you are wondering where you stand. If they didn’t consider you a friend, why confide in you, and if they do consider you a friend, why did they reject your invitation, not extend an invite to their party and not respond to your message at least with a counter offer… or at all? Should you just move on, or keep trying?

The answer to this, is kind of both and kind of neither. The confusion around this is uncomfortable and you would like to be out of the limbo stage, and know where you stand. Are you friends, or not? The answer is not yet. You may have a desire to grow this friendship at a faster pace than the other person. An all or nothing attitude here will only ensure that you are not friends. And I can tell you from experience that I have friendships that planted seeds a few years before they sprouted and another few years before they blossomed. I wouldn’t have had these wonderful connections if I stopped watering them all together.

You cannot control the outcome, nor the pace, however, it hurts not to keep an open mind, be friendly, but keep your expectations low. Offer them the opportunity to be a friend in return by sharing something vulnerable of your own and see if they are able to and interested in providing you with support. Encourage them to invest in your friendship by being warm and accommodating, listening when they feel like talking, accepting invitations they do extend and being patient when they do not. Extend your own invitations even if they never take you up on it, without  any pressure. Do not make the mistake of taking any refusals personally. If they are still reaching out to you in any context, the friendship is still sprouting, the potential is there, you can feel that, it’s just that the conditions just aren’t right yet.

They may never be right. This might just be how they are as a person, preferring to have many friends they see once a year than a few they see more often. They may really like you, but already have a full social calendar and aren’t really looking for the same level of friendship as you are right now. Maybe they are someone who has a flavour of the month friend, that they rotate between on some sort of unspoken roster, that only they understand. If so, it’ll be your turn again, and when it isn’t, perhaps it is just because someone else needs them now more than you do? Or maybe they are just a restless social butterfly with a limited attention span, who sometimes feels like connecting then suddenly needs to retreat? You wont know straight away, because you can’t know someone quickly – but over time they will reveal themselves. Which is why it isn’t wise to jump too quickly into friendships anyway in the first place before you really know them. But once you do, all you can do is accept them as they are and what they have to offer, when they offer it.

If it is too hurtful or confusing for you to tolerate, then all you have to do is pull back a little yourself. Offer less support or show less interest. Answer messages and calls less frequently and return to being cordial. Basically, mirror back to them the same energy and effort they are showing you, which isn’t unfriendly, but also isn’t much. It definitely is more friendly than friends.

Not everything is black and white… not everything has a clear or immediate answer. And it doesn’t need definitive action. Let it unfold naturally. It might be beautiful and well worth the wait. You never know. If not, what did you lose?

❤ Love,
Your Best Friend ForNever
xx