Friendship can be fluid if we just let it flow
“I hate everyone,” someone close to me said. She is 27 and doesn’t feel connected to her friends anymore. A little dinner might leave her in tears. Talks about vacationing together seem like a long-lost fantasy. Years of spite and subtext bubble over in tiny insults. She knows she’s reaching a tipping point and is close to concluding she might be better off without them.
I’ve been there before. This is a movie most of us have starred in.
In our early Twenties, we were all in this together, which sounds lame coming from the cast of a Disney musical or a corporate CEO trying to push us back to the office, but in the context of young people navigating the effervescent challenges of early adulthood, it was true. We studied together. We #struggled together. We celebrated together. Many of us experienced that stage of life with enough privilege to be defined by our age and not much more.
But then come the Years When Big Things Happen. Out of nowhere, people begin stacking their personal and professional milestones in rapid succession: graduations, jobs, engagements, homes, babies. Friends who did everything together are no longer in sync. The difficulty begins when people’s circumstances warrant a change in their priorities. It’s almost never personal, but it often feels that way. Our behavior begins to reflect these negative feelings instead of the reality that we just are not in the same place. We don’t know how to reconcile who we were with who we are when we aren’t co-starring in the same coming-of-age tale anymore.
I experienced painful pressure points in my friendships twice. The first time was during law school, and in hindsight, I made it a much bigger deal than it was. I put too much pressure on myself to succeed, which eclipsed my personality and made me miserable to be around. I was jealous of my non-lawyer friends who already had paying jobs while my mid-recession career prospects looked grim. And they, in turn, were probably a bit envious of my schedule, thinking I had more freedom as a grad student to roam and do as I pleased. We weren’t living the same lives anymore, and it put a strain on things. Thankfully, only a couple people on this earth hold it against me.
Becoming a mom was much harder to overcome from a relationship standpoint. We had Hazel at the right time for us, but we were ahead of most of our friends. The early months of motherhood can be incredibly isolating, made worse by postpartum depression that alienates you from almost anyone continuing on with their normal lives while yours seemingly implodes. I remember worrying that our friends didn’t want to be around me anymore. One minute, I was desperate to demonstrate how little I cared about becoming a mom—that I was the same exact person as before—and the next minute, I was crying to a handful of women in a Facebook group over milk bottles. Without enough friends to share my new life with, I mourned the old version of me but resented anyone who didn’t still see me as her.
The village we have isn’t always the village we need.
We need to have people to call upon who can relate to what we are going through—right there, right then—because it’s not necessarily fair to pull an old friend through the daily throes of your changing life and expect them to abruptly change the supporting role they play without a hitch. Placing that much pressure on a relationship is how it breaks, despite the truth that only circumstances have changed, not your love and admiration for one another.
During the most trying times in my friendships, I was probably too focused on why people weren’t giving me what I needed instead of thinking, maybe they couldn’t. Maybe I needed to seek out and lean more on people who could.
I’m far from 27 now. Some of those people are gone forever, and that’s okay. I have made friends through my legal career who are wonderful sounding boards, and in the suburbs, I have befriended special, amazing, loyal moms with young children the same age as mine. When the Venn diagram overlaps, it’s cool, but it doesn’t have to—no one can be everything to everyone. A beautiful byproduct of having friendships that meet your moment is that they don’t all need to. I can now spend time with women I just enjoy being around, without any specific purpose other than enjoying each other’s company.
Friendship is fluid if we have the faith and desire to let it be. Because I am receiving the support I need, old relationships have the space to flourish again. They can exist as what they were. As what they are. I’ve even rekindled friendships through Our Tiny Rebellions, further proving that just because we couldn’t see eye-to-eye during the Years When Big Things Happen doesn’t mean we can’t come full circle now.
Did someone’s Main Character Energy impact your relationships? LMK: averagejoelle3@gmail.com
The little things
Summer is the perfect time to craft outdoors, and I’ve been back on my old BS with a Sancerre in hand. These matching gummy bear AF1’s for Ruby and her bestie scream chaotic kid energy.
Also
If you’re not adopting the Webb telescope images as your permanent vibe, then what are you doing?
