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
