Growing Out of Stale Friendships
You're avoiding the inevitable. It's time to redefine friendship.
Before I answer this, I just want to be completely honest and say all of my formative ideas about friendship came from Rose, Dorothy, Blanche, and Sophia.
Even in the winter of their lives, they were petty and dramatic, and fell victim to the ego, but they always came back to cheesecake - mutual interest, love and trust. There is no perfect relationship of any kind, but we can expect to have people who want what is best for us and want to play an active part in getting us there until the end. This requires placing a rightful importance on friendship as a driving force in our lives.
It sounds like it may be time to redefine what friendship means to you. When we meet friends in childhood, they are founded on little but comfort unless both people grow into and choose the same values. Friendships we establish in college may never eclipse convenience or the lightly veiled alcoholism the environment breeds, while we develop into grown folks who need to be emotionally and spiritually engaged. Jobs, relationships, parenthood, and geography drive a wedge between once inviolable bonds, and then you’re left grasping at dynamics that will never be again. No matter the circumstance, these friends are probably no longer what you consider an actual friend, so what’s the benefit?
As someone who has always been afraid of “not having,” understanding how much good I prevent from entering my life by hoarding harmful or even innocuous shit in goodness’s place reshaped the way I view everything. Sometimes, I realized, I keep just to have. A lot of people do this with friendships in particular, thinking “the more the merrier.” Respectfully, no. The lesson of release is one of the hardest I’ve had to learn in this lifetime, but in true corniness I will say - the only way you learn you can fly is by letting go. My mom used to say something so ridiculous it almost comes full circle to making some damn sense, and I can’t help but repeat:
“You can’t fly with the eagles if you’re walking with the turkeys.”
It really hit different as a kid, and it was a sage (enough) reminder that stunting my capacity for growth in order to walk in everyone’s experience would only prevent me from reaching my fullest potential. Many friends will remain right where you met them as you continue to actualize, and others will actualize as someone who simply isn’t compatible. To hold on to them is to throw a sizable boulder in the middle of the fresh, wild stream that is your life. Flow is quick to disrupt and quick to restore. Even in small ways, stale energy can split you into several streams, perhaps who you have to be around them and who you could be in highest potential, moving in a scattered, less direct trajectory. Though you are still getting where you’re going, you have to ask yourself if the friction of dismissive comments at brunch, phone calls that seem like they never happened because you had to disassociate to get through them, and walking away from each interaction just a little disappointed is worth it.
I Do(n’t) :/
A while back, my best friend of nearly a decade asked me to be her bridesmaid, which was full circle vibes since we spent a sizable portion of our high school years quoting Bridesmaids. The moment we dreamed of when we got matching anchor tattoos on our 18th birthdays - to remain grounded in this friendship and usher each other into the most important junctures in our lives - had finally arrived. The problem was, I wanted to be her bridesmaid like I wanted to chew glass.
You know those proposal videos that go south and the person being proposed to says no? I never understood those - how two people who love each other could be several chapters from the same page on such a huge decision. Until now.
Her “popping the question” in girlfriend terms invoked an immediate response of frustration and repressed score keeping. Until a year prior when I moved to Brooklyn, we hadn’t lived less than 1,500 miles from each other since high school. At the same time, she became an elementary school teacher and was engaged shortly after. Her definition of a life - to be teacher and wife - was arriving all at once and I was overjoyed for her, but so was mine and it felt like she was absent. Though I moved to a city where I knew roughly two and a half people, had no idea what the fuck I was doing in pursuing a career in media, and had no money; what I was building for myself mattered to me just as much as more domestic milestones. My friend never asked how I was, what I literally did with my day, who and what I loved (music, tv, people) beyond her. I had a hunch she kind of imagined me having a crisis like Annie from Bridesmaids but couldn’t stand to watch in case I didn’t recover.
As time passed, we barely spoke; maybe once a month to drudge through small talk, and in the silence between us grew a need to have more in common than kindness and loyalty. Contemplating the two years prior, having gone through several depressive episodes, heartbreak, an abortion, a cross country move, and a career shift without my best friend by my side - it occurred to me that this relationship would not work. I wouldn’t become a wife or mother for years, and I wondered would warrant support from her if none of the aforementioned.
I felt like such an asshole and I probably was one, but the second she asked me to step through this specific threshold of adulting with her, I knew she was not a life partner of mine. She knew how to love a Kendra who never asked for emotional support, who took pride in people assuming I was doing fine because of course, and who was loyal to a fault. She didn’t see me, and couldn’t provide the kind of support I needed because she did not take interest in the kind of person I was becoming.
Once I divorced from those truths about myself, and started finding people who would love me as I needed, it was hard to tolerate anything else - even if from someone I’d loved for a decade. Frankly, I couldn’t provide the support she needed as a friend either, whether she would ever admit it or not. When my day came to wed, she would not be beside me, and it would have been disingenuous to stand in her wedding pictures knowing I would close out our relationship shortly after. For all of these reasons, I declined the opportunity to be her bridesmaid, and our friendship ended.
Naturally, she was mad at me and she deserved to be. While I wish I would’ve come to the conclusion that we were not in fact friends by definition much sooner, the choice itself was simple. I couldn’t imagine a time or place where our paths would converge again, and I wasn’t willing to have a split stream to make it happen. I actually wasn’t willing to be a good friend to her either, and that was the ultimate cue.
I’ve been reacquainting myself with friendship, too. There was once a time I took pride in being loved by as many people as possible, because I wanted the world to think I was important and nice. I was the bodega of friends - open all day and night, take what you need for cheap, no offerings of high value, and we seldom restocked inventory. Basically, being such an available friend to so many people who weren’t offering much in return kind of made me a shitty friend. Over time, I was out of flow with the natural state of reciprocity - of give and take - because I put a higher price on accessibility than my own time, energy, and personal nourishment. Anyone and everyone was allowed to traipse through my home - mind, body, spirit - because above all else, I feared rejection and I would not dare inflict what I feared most on someone else.
The tendency to people please and the fear of rejection were keeping me in unfulfilling friendships.
A lot of these people were perfectly fine, but I was not aware of what I was getting out of being friends with them, if anything at all. I hadn’t considered what I really needed out of friendship, or any relationship for that matter, and just let needs remain unmet because I couldn’t bare the idea of disappointing someone until it was too out of hand (see: story above). But I was disappointing many someones - mostly myself - as this pattern corroded my idea of friendship beyond the point of recognition. In the last few years, I called back my energy by letting friendships fade away before I did. A slightly more reclusive me has been scary to adjust to as I redefined myself to accommodate the lifestyle and energy expenditure required for me to have and be a good friend.
Through the loss of many friendships over time, I’ve found what I seek is true community care. I want equitable space to share in despair, joy, and growth. I want accountability for harm of myself and others. Instead of being held to who I was when we met, I want room to become over and over and over again. I want to be witness to the becoming of people who I feel grateful to be loved by. I have that now, because I defined it. I think it’s important to be super clear about what exactly a friend means to you, now that you know what’s not working. In some ways, you’re not really being a good friend either. Good friends don’t secretly not want to be friends with you. Good friends see their best in you and the other way around. Even if there are shared memories and you love them, it’s hard to be a good friend when you don’t have the kind of friendship you desire being returned, and that’s reason enough to squash it.
While the idea of family has always been fraught with emotional distress and shame, and partnerships have always been a reflection of my greatest fears, and an extension of my family “stuff" - friendships have been my consistent reminder that soul mates exist. Friendships have helped me expand the definitions of what the terms family and partner mean. I would say I’ve experienced just as much loss, if not more, in friendships but far less hurt, and your submission has made me consider why.
Friendships have been my opportunity to return back to the playground. Kids are amazing at approaching each other without pretense, just to see if the other wants to have some fun. They will choose a slide, a toy, a part of the jungle gym to roam alone until they find a few other kids who feel familiar and safe, and if everyone can’t play fair and share - they move on. While friend breakups within chosen family can be just as painful as losing a bit of us, breakups with people who you know deep down are only here for a season can be a great lesson in the mastery of release. Don’t hold on to friendships (or anything) out of convenience and habit. Keeping people around who you don’t even really like just to pop off some obligatory texts, blow hot air once a week over dinner, and maybe have a few extra guests at your birthday feels like keeping a cavity in your mouth to eventually end up needing a root canal. Like you won’t die, but it’s a longterm burden on your wellbeing, kinda icky, and may cause a lot more pain for everyone involved later.
Action items:
Define the kind of friend you are
Define the kind of friend you want (1 and 2 should match)
Build your community based on 1 and 2
Start saying no to old friends
Watch this video