Last week, we talked about change. There are obvious times when friendships experience strain, starting from a very young age, and with no age limit, unfortunately. Which means no matter how old you are, nor how old your friendship is, you are never immune to this experience. And it never gets any easier from what I am told.
It starts right from early childhood, when your best friend moves away or goes to a different school, or even just gets put into a different classroom than you, and starts making friends with their other classmates. One or both of you might join a sports team or take up some other hobby that sees you forming fresh and competitive bonds. Not to mention all the drama that comes with adolescence that adds to the push and pull of friendships and relational aggression.
After school ends, people take jobs, get partners and go on different pathways. Some move states or cities or countries, some move out of the family home and embark on independence, while some stay closer to home and struggle to find their feet.
Some young people take up their first romantic and sexual relationships in school, but more serious connections tend to form after that. These connections tend to be intense, and draw much of a person’s time and attention away from friends and even family in a bid to start making memories, and families, of their own.
This can also be considered a competitive period of time, everyone wanting to prove themselves and get that validation, even if goals weren’t the same. Maybe some wanted to be famous on the stage while others wanted to be a famous athlete. Others wanted to be the CEO of a company and some wanted to build their company from the ground up. And at the back of their minds, most wanted to reach the happily ever after finish line in an acceptable and competitive time period. Competition is counterintuitive to friendships really, because somebody wins and somebody loses. This comparison alone easily leads to friendship rifts as people tell themselves they outgrew each other or that their values and goals were just too different in the real world.
Friendships are further impacted by the following stage of life, where people marry and have children. Parenthood tends to steer parents together as they navigate the task of raising children. However close you may have been before, if one of you has children and the other does not, typically the friendships will dance further apart, at least for a time, as each person seeks the company of others on a similar path. And even if you do have children at the same time, if they do not get along, or your parenting ideals and values turn out to be quite opposite, that is another factor that is likely to get in the way of even long term friendships.
If you work full time, parent or not, it’s likely the people you work with everyday are likely to become your friends. Even if you don’t have tonnes in common, you are thrown together each day and you become familiar if you want to or not. These friendships feel easy, as you are paid to have them and what you do have in common is time and place. You are the people who know the politics of your workplace, and the people most likely to know the nuances of your home life as you engage in general chit chat as the years go by.
But then comes a stage in life where you leave the workforce, and many people struggle to maintain these former connections once that frequent time is removed, and once the common ground of the politics, the familiar faces are gone. At this stage of life, you may be segregated into categories of those of you with grandchildren and caring responsibility, to those of you without who want to travel and regain some of the freedoms you anticipated for much of your life. Or there may be those of you who are better financially set for retirement and those of you who need or want to continue some type of part time work or paid hobby. Again, these things may separate you, or place strain among even the strongest and longest of friendships.
Health then starts to come into play, if you were fortunate enough that it didn’t before. Some may be more limited, or struggle with mental health. Divorce and second marriages etc… are other evets during a person’s life that can unexpectedly draw them apart from friends.
Most of these things have nothing at all to do with friendships, and yet we tend to take these separations quite personally and hurt ourselves unnecessarily in the process. It isn’t usually true to say your friend didn’t care for you, only that their life took them on a path different to yours, and that made maintaining your friendship more difficult. The positive regard may indeed still stand, even if the time, attention and closeness felt as a result lessen.
These things are not things you can predict and not things you can really prepare for. At times these changes actually happen quite suddenly, as people may unexpectedly experience grief, changes, relationships and any number of opportunities that may alter their course in life. You can’t even always control your own path, let alone those of your friends.
But what you can control is how you respond to these changes. The most important thing is probably allowing flexibility, and tolerating periods of change with grace and maintaining positive feelings, trusting that your friend has not set out to hurt you and does care for you. The next thing to be mindful of is your expectations. To expect things not to change or to return to how they were before, after periods of change, is not fair or realistic. Even expecting that the friendship will continue forever, just because it has continued for 10, 20, 30 or more years, is unwise. It is important to acknowledge you would like something to continue, but that you cannot control this, as the other person is free to live, love, and learn on their own path in their own time.
Things change, and essentially it is difficult, but important to try and change along with them. You are not the same person you were at 10, 20, 30, or 60 etc…. and that is ok. It is natural for us to grow and change, but as a result we must accept that changes in our friendships are normal too. Only with much grace and flexibility and trust, will you be able to focus on the positives, appreciate what still exists, however small, and not feel a sense of loss, but instead embrace change.
❤ Love,
Your Best Friend ForNever
xx
