At my current point in time and in life I have very mixed feelings about my friendships. I have always surrounded myself with a lot of friends and made a point to plan things with them and keep in touch. Lately, more and more I am finding that I have fewer and fewer reasons to keep in touch with any of them. I am finding things about these people that add stress and complications to my life. Then, slowly, but surely I find myself no longer keeping in contact with those people.
I made a decision to myself a while ago that if there was a person in my life that was adding more stress and trouble to my life than happiness and excitement that I shouldn't go out of my way for that person. I still strongly believe that to be true. I only want to surround myself with happy people whom I feel comfortable and confident with.
Some of my best friends and I have grown apart for different reasons.
Friend A and I took a big step forward in our friendship by moving to nearby areas. We ended up growing apart without any fault of either of us, but I felt abandoned by that person. I felt that if she did not want to hang out with me, that I wasn't going to go out of my way to hang out with her. I felt no effort on her part to continue the friendship. I was aware of events that I was not invited to and just felt down and forgotten with every passing day. With a few last efforts I tried to re-ignite the friendship, I realized I wanted no part in this relationship anymore. She ended up blaming me and arguing with me over a very minute detail. I was so upset that she would blame me and get so mad at me for such a small thing that I just knew she must no longer wanted anything to do with me. There is no point in me tying o hard to continue this friendship when this is what i get in return. So contact ceased for a good 2 years. Currently we have settled a few issues and are sociable and friendly, but by no means "friends." We both keep a respectable difference.
Friend B was there through most of my difficulties with friend A. I always thought I had a really great relationship with friend B. I thought we were best friends for all of those years and could tell each other everything, and I thought we did. Not too long ago I found out otherwise. It turned out that friend B did not trust me to tell me anything. I found out through a mutual friend several important aspects of Friend B's life that I had not known before. Things friends would tell other friends. It was like my friend was leading a double life and I just found out about the other life she was leading. Except most of her other friends knew about her double life. It was a wake up call for me. If anyone knew everything about me, it was her, and yet she didn't trust me to tell me about her life? I was really hurt by this news. When confronted with the story she blamed the mutual friend of ours for telling me saying "why would you tell her?" and refused to fill in the blanks for me. I attempted to give her a chance to trust me something, anything and to continue our friendship, but I kept finding other instances of secrecy and her distrust of me. I do not want a one sided friendship. I would worry and stress out over these secrets and always ask myself why wouldn't she tell me that, when we talk about everything? Eventually, we stopped talking. If I am not a person you can trust to tell you the simple things of your life, then why bother being friends? I felt as if she was just being friends with me to be nice and would rather lie to me than tell me she doesn't think of me as a good friend.
I now find myself without any really close relationships like I had before and I really miss the feeling of having those relationships. I don't miss my friends though, because I fell like they have changed and are no longer that person I was friends with. I think the next step for me is to find new friends and build new relationships but easier said than done.
any feedback would be greatly appreciated :)
Believe me, I have very few of my friends from high school and college days left...we all grew old and grew apart... sometimes that can be a good thing, though...
ReplyDelete