Friendship is different for everyone

• Picture this, you're about to meet your best friend from high school for a coffee. Back in the day, you guys were inseparable. You did everything together and were always around each other. You've been through a lot together and you've been meeting up on the regular ever since. But as the years went by, it feels like you've gone in different directions.

• Sure, the remnants of your intimacy still remain and you're still cool with each other but all the things that seemed to be unimportant back then when the world revolved around crushes and video games have turned out to be very important later in life. Now you understand some of these things as being part of your core values. So it feels a bit strange when you meet up with your friend because it feels like the friendship hasn't grown with you. But you still meet up because they meant so much to you back then, surely you can't let it fizzle to nothing.

• Not all friendships are forever, because we age and as we age we become more of who we really are. Often this means that we need to led go of our old selves, including some of our old friendships, especially those that depend on us being that older version of ourselves.

• What is Friendship? Why do we sometimes get caught up in unhealthy friendships? What can we do to break free from this pattern and have better, more genuine connections with our friends?

• What does being a friend mean?

  • A friend is someone who is attached to another by affection or esteem. Friends are individuals with whom you experience mutual affection, share common interests, and enjoy spending time. Good friends listen to you, make you feel good when you're around them, and are empathetic toward you. They also share common interests, care for you, provide support, demonstrate mutual understanding, and exhibit commitment, loyalty, honesty, trust, equality, and the ability to self-disclose. Additionally, friendship is a voluntary relationship between two or more people that is relatively long-lasting and in which those involved have mutual affection. It is a source of joy, laughter, and wonderful memories. Friendship can have a significant impact on emotional and physical well-being, affecting everything from blood pressure to immune function.
  • According to the American Psychological Association, friendship is "a voluntary relationship between two or more people that is relatively long-lasting and in which those involved have mutual affection"
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• There are no hard and fast rules about how a friendship expresses itself but there are some common characteristics, like mutual like/love, care trust and respect. Shared likes and experiences. You can't really be a friend with someone if you're not included in their life. It doesn't mean you need to be included all the time. But at least in all the times that matter. If we don't make an effort to include our friends to some degree then at some point the friendship will likely fall down.

• When we're friends we want each other to do well and when they struggle you want to support them however you can. You can depend on them to be your friend. They're committed to being there. When we need to be in touch with each other a lot, we're in touch with each other a lot. When we're not, you're not sitting in a corner thinking, "Oh, what did I do wrong?" We both know we're cool.

• We also don't have to be the same, it's okay to be different, it's okay to be upset or disagree but when tension defines the fundamental nature of the relationship then maybe it's probably a code red alert that something is really wrong.

Why do some of us struggle with friendship?

• Friendship means different things to different people.
• Some people are fast and loose with the term friendship, sometimes we're too quick to call someone a friend.
• You can have two people who are suppose to be friends who have totally different ideas of what it means to be a friend.
• Just like all other friendships, if we don't share certain core values, our friendship be fine in it's initial stages but as it grows, that imbalance will start to cause cracks. You'll experience the imbalance of unmet expectations.
• When we find that we are repeatedly in situations where our expectations are not being met by the friendship we do need to question ourselves as to whether our idea of that friendship is in line with other person's.
• We tend to be very attached to the picture we have in our minds about what a friendship is suppose to look like and when reality fails to meet that expectation we become disappointed, hurt, frustrated, betrayed, etc.
• The reason friendships aren't mutual is because sometimes we get into them for the wrong reasons. We want to prove that we're fun or intelligent or daring. We might sometimes base our friendships on our people pleasing ways
• What ever our wrong reason is for getting into the friendship we end up over giving because we think it's going to reach a tipping point. So we give until we wear ourselves out. We're sort of trying to activate their conscience so that they feel obliged to step up and meet us at our level of commitment and contribution. We're people pleasing by showing other people how they ought to behave.
• Our early experiences of friendship do have a bearing on what we believe friendship is today. You may have been rejected by a group of friends as a kid. That experience might lead to you thinking friendship is about doing what ever the other person wants you to do.
• Sometimes we’re scared of being who we really are because we’re scared that people accepted us because they thought we were perfect. So if we break that facade and they see who we really are, they might reject us. So we carry on the facade and become only partially who we really are and never get fulfilled by the friendship.
• We can be very attached about our friendships and think our friendships will go on forever and ever. Yes, some of our friendships will go the distance but not all will. And that will be part of us having to go through a grieving process of sorts. All our relationships have the purpose of helping us to heal, grow and learn.
• If we have made friendships in a different time that represents a person we have grown out of. Our confidence has grown in some ways and those people don't respect and appreciate us for who we are now, those friendships will have to go.
• If we're pretending to be someone we are not, we're not being ourselves. We're blocking intimacy. When we don't have honesty, the relationship becomes a source of something that makes us feel crappy about ourselves. something that makes us feel inferior. Because there's missing affection.
• We're like a bad marriage where we feel like we have to tolerate the status quo of this tension. This felling annoyance, resentment, frustration. And being like that's just how it is.
• Friendships that are healthy raise you up. They are energising. You are more of who you are. You strive to be honest in that friendship. Unhealthy ones cause you to behave in an uncharacteristic manner. If you don't like who you are within a friendship, the relationship is destabilising you. You are sapping you of your energies for here and you're sapping yourself of your energy for other relationships.
• A lot of people go around looking for the problems in the other person but what we also need to do is look for the problems in ourselves. We need to recognise the way in which we are behaving in a friendship. What are we doing? What are we thinking? Why are we still in friendships where we. are not having our needs met. When we recognise this, that's when we can make an adjustment.
• So when you are unhappy with some or all of your friendships. What you can do is to sit down and do a quick list of your friendship and read each person off one by one. Do you feel raised up by that person or do you feel drained? Ask yourself, do I like who I am in this friendship? Are there any friendships where you feel like you are the "better friend?" Why do you think that you are the better friend?
• Notice whether you think you have a particular role or job within your friendships or whether there's any particular dynamic or consistent issue that keeps playing out. That might reveal that maybe the friendship is imbalanced but it might be that at some point you lost perspective and you're no longer recognising and appreciating what's good about that particular friendship.
• Write down, "A good friend ..." and answer the rest. Or, "friends should ..." Whatever you write about there gives you some insight into the rules you have about friendship. A friend should do this or a friend should do that, but why? Some of those things will be very valid and real but some of them might be too rigid.
• Friendships need to be organic. They need to have the natural elements of love, care, trust and respect so when there's this rigidity you end up frustrated with your friends for not following the dots of what that friendship should be.
• These questions can help you to begin having a compassionate investigation of the nature of your investigations.