I have written a few posts here in the past about outgrowing friends. It starts when your best friend is still playing with dolls at 10 when you are more into music and makeup. Then maybe your next best friend replaces music with men and they outgrow you. It happens all the time, and is just a normal part of friendship. It doesn’t stop there either, one of you may be into makeup, men and margheritas for a long while after the other is into marriage and making babies. Someone might be ready for retirement before the other. No age range is immune to growth, nor growing apart from their friends. Even really close ones.
But sometimes it isn’t so much that you have outgrown your friends as much as it is that maybe you have outgrown yourself and the person these friends know, love, and expect you to be. I was chatting to a good friend the other day about her long stints working in government offices and the different friendships that she built over the years. She also talked about the image she created of herself at each office and how subsequently freeing it was to start again when changing jobs or departments. A fresh slate to write yourself anew!
And it struck me that this could be applicable to some friendships too. It isn’t that people can’t grow with you and love each version of yourself that you grow into. It’s more just that most people don’t. They liked you the way you were when they met you and they have become attached to that person and the way that person acts, thinks and feels.
In her first office job, my friend started in a long term defacto relationship. They had the mortgage, the caravan and the kids to boot. They had exciting adventures and the general relationship drama’s. The people in that office came to know and accept this version of her; happy, contented and low drama. So when the relationship came to a particularly dramatic and traumatic and confusing ending, they were in a rush for her to go back to being her happy low drama self. She felt stifled, nobody was really listening and people she thought were friends said dismissive things like “Just forget about it. You’ll get over it. Stay positive.” When what she really needed was a place to express her drama and let her crazy out.
So it was a sweet relief when she moved on to the next department during the drama, and people there were enthralled with every detail. She loved feeling listened to and validated, and people asking for the latest gossip made her feel cared for and seen. Her friends from the first office were right; in time, she did get over it, but there was soon an equally destructive partner, or should that be player on the scene to keep the office gossip fountain flowing for at least another 4 or 5 years.
When that ended, my friend decided it was time for some serious self reflection and work on herself. She threw herself into counselling, a 12 step program, a fitness and health routine and got back into her creative hobbies. Eager to share this new self with her workmates, she once again found herself disappointed. When the dramatic gossip dried up, so did their seeming interest in her life. So when she settled into a new steady serious relationship, and they moved in together, she again found herself craving that change to reinvent herself again.
This may be more prominent in work settings or group friendships, but the reality was that my friend had outgrown herself. She was tired of being the person she had been for them, and they were disinterested in the new version of herself that she had become. They wanted her to stay the same and she couldn’t – she wasn’t the same anymore, and she was also tired of being that old person anyway.
So sometimes a friendship might end for that same reason, because your friend has maybe outgrown themselves and the version of them that you needed them to be. Or you have grown tired of doing the same things, with the same people. Of having the same conversations and laughing at the same things and having the same arguments and responding the same ways.
I definitely do think it is worth trying to change within friendships, and seeing if your friends can love and embrace the new you. Change and grow with you. But it takes time and you need to be patient while they relearn you. You need to accept that they may also start changing and you might not love their changes either. You might find you want them to let you change but you aren’t so comfortable when they do.
Which is why most of us find it easier to move on to new people who didn’t know who we were before, and aren’t too invested in who we become. People who fully invest in the version of ourselves that we are in this moment, before we get tired of ourselves! Before we get tired of them or they get tired of us.
I am one of the lucky last generations who grew up without the internet. My past is not recorded and available to anyone who wants to look at the click of a button. Doesn’t mean mistakes are easily forgotten by me, but it means reminders to or from others are seldom unless they happened to be there to see it. Maybe old friends sometimes serve the same way, as reminders of a past life you don’t want to remember.
I know my first group unfriending was seemingly unrelated to my new adventure into motherhood… but yet, there were expectations that weighed heavily on me from a past chapter that I could no longer carry. No I couldn’t, and didn’t want to sleep over for a 30th party, because I had a 2 year old and a 6 month old to go home to the next morning. No I wasn’t interested in getting drunk or staying up late. No, I couldn’t really still relate to workplace drama and dating. Nor could they relate to early mornings, poop stories or tolerate the constant interruptions to my attention; my mind always elsewhere. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, and it wasn’t directly the cause of the fallout. But yet it was. I couldn’t be who I’d always been, and they couldn’t relate to who I’d become.
So they started spending time without me and I started spending time with other young mums who were struggling in similar ways until it came to a head. And as painful as it was, it was also freeing to get to know people who accepted and embraced me for what I could give and weren’t resentful of what I couldn’t. Who didn’t expect more of me than they themselves could offer, which was as little as I could at that time of my life. But what little we could offer was everything.
Sometimes we outgrow our friends. Sometimes they outgrow us. Sometimes we outgrow each other or the activities we used to enjoy. But more often than not, I think we really outgrow ourselves and the expectations people have of us to be, do, respond, discuss, and enjoy the same things, when the truth is, it no longer feels authentic to us. New people see us the way we want to be seen, or maybe the way we want them to see us. They see us how we see ourselves.
I am lucky enough to say I have a few friends who have come along and loved every version of myself. And friends I have managed to love every version of…. Eventually. And that is what makes these relationships extra special, because it is actually really hard to endure the changes and embrace them. It can be painful for everyone and it can be easier to let go than hold on.
This goes out to those long time friends; I will forever try to grow with you and let you be whatever version of yourself that you are with love, just as you have for me. Thank you for your patience, both with me as I change, and as I struggle to keep up with your own. If I grumble it’s only because I love you and I don’t want to lose any version of you, ever. I only want to outgrow ourselves; together.
❤ Love,
Your Best Friend ForNever
xx
