the one about friendships
Do people write blogs anymore? Does anyone read them?
I felt like writing out my thoughts today in a shelter away from the rough seas of instagram. I had cause earlier this year to think about friendships (a cause I won’t elaborate on there, but nonetheless know that it happened).
When platonic friendships run into difficult territory, we can be left feeling like there is little place to turn to make sense of our wounded heart. Sexual romantic relationships feel different - which is not to say they’re easier - but I think we enter into them on a different kind of contract. We hope they will endure. But we know the stats.
With close friends, the contract feels a little different. For a myriad of reasons, we can be lulled into a sense of foreverness. Best friends, friends for ever, for life, bae (after my time, that one). When these relationships fracture, wound or dissolve, it is a particular, visceral kind of pain.
And whilst film and TV characters ‘have it out’ with each other, I suspect there are far more friendship hurts that get politely pushed under the carpet, danced around or worst of all, cloaked in ghostly silence - the splintering ‘left on read’ two blue ticks of absence.
Conflict with our partners is fairly difficult to avoid if we live together. Conflict with our friends, well we can hide from that with ninja precision.
In my psychology degree, we studied relationship theory and one of the key factor in friendships formation was physical locality. I felt so cheated by this blandness - I wanted there to be something more mystical at play, which of course there is. We choose our friends for so many reasons, some of them good, some of them perhaps (subconsciously) not so good. The intrigue.
A very good friend of mine frames friends as being for a reason, a season or a lifetime. I remember wanting to be the lifetime friend when she said that - who wants to be the friend for a reason or season? But how realistic is it that we can expect a lifetime together if rupture and repair in friendships can feel so delicate?
Life certainly has seasons. The friends we make at college are very different people at 18 to the people they are at 40. Through life circumstance yes, but more probably because they have evolved, as we all do, through the weathering of life.
I wasn’t trying to conceive when the seismic transformation of contact ripped through 2020. But I know it was a strange reckoning of who now got my time, what I valued and who I wanted to see on Zoom. My social circle looks a little different now in terms of who, where and when. Maybe yours does too.
In the years I was trying to conceive, nearly every solid friendship that I had was put to test. They all had their babies (and sometimes two, or three) as I went through an obstacle course of trauma and tears. Some friendships withered away as I withdrew and they recoiled and some said the right things, always. Actually, only one friend said the right thing always if this is to be an honest piece of writing.
I am older now. More orbits, more learning - more therapy - have left me on steadier ground. I feel more at home with myself to be able to say ‘that hurt my feelings’ - words that Brene Brown reminds us are incredibly vulnerable making. If I lived through that season again I would be more confident to voice when words and actions didn’t land well and to ask for what I needed.
I wouldn’t have gone to the one year old birthday parties or to that baby shower. I’d have my stock responses for intrusive questions. I’d feel far less embarrassed to express that pregnancy announcements were easier by text, without a scan photo and preferably not on a Friday night. At least I think I so - it’s easy to speculate.
What I do feel fully assured of is my capacity to hold space for the knowing that friendships are relationships that don’t come with a lifelong guarantee. Good friendships should be robust enough to be vulnerable within and safe enough spaces to be able to say ‘I’m sorry, I got that wrong’. We deserve that from the people we love. And I do love my friends.
And painful as it might be, some friendships are just for a reason or a season. The beautifully challenging part is knowing that we don’t carry the full responsibility for that. It is never our sole fault when things go off key, when a reply never comes, when the pieces don’t fit together anymore. It is two people, where synchronicity changed. Ordinary human matters of the heart, razor sharp but full of potential learning.
If you would like to be a part of a free workshop I’m running on Wednesday October 5th 7.30 ‘redefining friendship boundaries and dynamics whilst trying to conceive’ I would love to see you there. A replay will be available for anyone who signs up.