When should I let go of a friendship? This question is a hard one that I’ve asked myself so many times in my life that I truly don’t remember the first time I thought “this isn’t working, I’m not happy and this has to stop.” What I do remember is that I generally have allowed my friendships to get to that point where I have begun to feel trapped in that friendship and I have realized that I no longer want to be in any kind of relationship with that person, including as an acquaintance. All of this could have been fixed with some simple communication on my part, on their part, on both of our parts, but it hasn’t happened, or it happened with little results or no long lasting results. Ultimately, my stomach turns, my anxiety increases and it is in my head that…
…it’s time to break-up.
Is that a little dramatic? It sounds like a romantic relationship, right? A new friendship can be as exciting and as intoxicating as a new romantic relationship. It doesn’t mean you are in love with that person, but it activates similar levels of dopamine and you feel that same dopey feeling of, “Gosh, aren’t they just wonderful? I want to spend more time with them. I wonder what they think about…” When you’ve found someone that shares common traits and activities, it can lend something fresh to a life that may feel stale. However, just like every other relationship, it will age and it will either age like a fine wine or it’s going to age like last week’s tacos. I have some amazing friendships that are like wine bottles I have yet to open. They just keep going and I sometimes wonder if the shoe is ever going to drop…and it never does and it just keeps being wonderful. These aren’t the relationships I’m talking about today.
Today, we’re going to talk about tacos and when it’s time to toss ‘em.
First, it’s important to examine what you’re giving to your relationships. Are you giving it everything you’ve got? Most of us aren’t. Who has time to give a friendship 100% of their life? Most friends aren’t asking for 100% and that isn’t something that should be expected. However, if you are the one who is always going over to their house, who is always the one listening to their problems, who is always being the one to put forth the effort…you’re having last week’s tacos and it’s time to re-evaluate the purpose of this friendship.
People are not solitary. I’m an introvert, by nature, and generally I can spend quite a bit of time on my own and do so happily. Yet, there will always be a pack mentality within me that propels me to get out there and make friends. Call it evolution, call it “getting out my talkies,” call it whatever you want. People need friends for support and love. If you don’t have it, you want it. If you have it, but the other person gives you nothing in return, you are in a friend deficit. You are doing the giving, you are receiving nothing in return and…I’m sorry, I missed the point of the friendship. What are they adding to your life again?
What are some signs you have a taco?
-When that person calls, you are available and you let it go to voicemail.
-You consider what to do in your free time and that person doesn’t cross your mind.
-The thought of spending time with that person makes your stomach hurt, your heart race or makes you grit your teeth.
- You can’t trust that person and you wonder, quite frankly, if they have your best interests at heart.
-You think they might be using you for something you have: money, skills, a ride, who you know, what you’ve got.
-They stir the drama. These people will eventually come around to stir you into the pot.
- When you try to tell them something that is bothering you, they may give you a token amount of time, but they will not allow you talk until you feel better. They have no problem cutting you off when THEY are done.
-Even when they know something is important to you, you have to remind them it exists. (Like a blog!)
-When you try to include them in your life, it only happens when they have downtime. You are NOT someone’s downtime.
- They allow a boyfriend or girlfriend to take precedence over a longterm friendship.
- They constantly argue with you over things that don’t matter; Being right is more important than being harmonious.
- They take your life personally. This can be in the form of your being sick and not showing up to hang out must mean you don’t care about them all the way to you not taking their advice means you think they are stupid.
- They judge how you do things such as parenting your child or choosing a job. We are not talking about someone who carefully helps you work through things. We’re talking flat out judgment.
- They don’t care if they hurt your feelings and they speak before thinking.
- They just aren’t as mature as you are and you’ve outgrown the relationship.
Ok, I could really go on and on and on with this forever. This is a small sampling of symptoms of a larger issue. We must learn how to trust our gut when it says “it’s over, let it go” because when we decide to let go we free ourselves from something that feels unhealthy to us and allows us to be available for something amazing to come our way.
As an introvert, I just don’t travel well. I need a lot of sleep and a lot of time to myself. By that, I mean I need copious amounts of quiet time or I turn into a raging witch who will poke your eyes out if she doesn’t eat on time or stay warm or get enough entertainment…you get the picture.
However, there are times that even the thought of travel isn’t so daunting that I feel like I need to avoid trips. This is especially true when I know that I will see many of my friends and that the people I’m spending time with are those that have similar belief systems to mine. Well, that and I LOVE a good hotel room. Don’t you? All the little soaps and clean towels and beds that are made and lions and tigers and bears, oh my!
Leon and I had been looking forward to our trip last weekend for months. We were heading to CPAC and it was our first real trip ever without AJ. The plan was to be gone for 5 days and to leave AJ with our friend Bryan. AJ was thrilled because for him this meant: No bedtime, all the soda he could drink, video games and hanging out with the coolest person he knows. For me this meant: coming home to a spoiled child, worrying about whether he was getting enough to eat and wondering if his eyes were going to rot out of his head from playing video games.
I got over it and we went to D.C. There are so many things to blog about and they overrun everything I truly want to say. What this means is that you are going to have to deal with me blogging about it in spurts, as it comes to me, instead of a nice block of cohesive posts.
Washington D.C., from the point of view of someone whose city has little traffic issue, is a beast. I have never had to pay so much money to go such a little distance in my life. I will never, ever live there. Luckily, both Leon and I decided that there will be no politicians in this family. For the first two nights, we stayed outside of the city in a complicated little place called Silver Spring, Maryland. It was full of older homes and streets that are similar to something a 12-year old Sims player might put together. The goal was to make it to the Dubliner in D.C. Even the Jesus phone that our friend Allen had was confused as to how to get there from where we were. The miles of snow piled upon the cars and on the sides of the street didn’t aid in getting us to food any faster.
Remember when I said I don’t travel well and I get angry like the Hulk if things aren’t perfect? I was hungry. And I’d just realized I left my phone charger at home. My driving companions were fearful, but Allen is very laid back and Leon was looking forward to seeing his friends at The Dubliner. I’m pretty certain both of them were ignoring me because I was in the back seat, too, but neither would cop to this.
When we arrived, around 8pm on a Wednesday night, the place was packed. Luckily, a friend of ours thinks ahead and had reserved a whole area for our large group. Unfortunately, the staff at the Dubliner didn’t take us seriously because we had about 5 stools for 20 or so people. This led to copious time at the bar.
Which means no one remembers what happened the rest of the night.
Some days are just fantastic. It’d been a long time since I’d had one that put me at one with the all good and I was in need of something stellar to change the funky mood I’d been in for the last several days. Over the weekend, I went to a training that had me look inward and clean out some of the mental gunk I’d accumulated. As this felt like 9 hours of therapy for 3 days straight, I wasn’t exactly feeling up to being happy or sociable. My esteem was in the crapper and I felt down.
However, Tuesday rolled around and it was time for some change. I’d scheduled a cut, color and highlights with my friend Chris, who is an awesome stylist. He’s been taking care of me for almost 2 1/2 years and, beyond being good at what he does, we have a good time when we are together. He’s one of those people that I feel like I can be myself with in that he’s going to get my jokes and he might even laugh at them. We’ll sit and talk for 3 hours with no awkwardness and I’ll leave feeling like I’m caught up on his life and, hopefully, he’s caught up on mine. It’s a good relationship and there are precious few of those around lately.
I got to hear about old women and dirty Subway jokes, political jokes that we have to whisper, just in case the other patrons might hear and I can tell him that my theme for this haircut is “Hot. Just make me look hot. I don’t care what you do to it” and know that it’s going to happen. And it did. And he’s awesome. At one point, his co-worker, who’d kept himself in the majority of our conversation, had commented that he liked to laugh, too, because we were both laughing so hard that Chris had to stop working.
Rare friendships. I love those.
Well, what do you think? It’s got some red in it, as well as some blonde. Oh, and there is a Chris in the picture, too. I’m not getting rid of anyone that says “You already are” when I tell him to make me pretty. Nope. He’s a keeper. I’m not telling you anything else that was said. We share an odd sense of humor.
Besides spending time with one of my favorite people, as well as the best stylist in the area, I got to see one of my besties, Kristin. I rarely go to her neck of the woods, as it’s almost an hour away and there is more to do in my area. However, it’s where Chris is and my hair isn’t going to take care of itself, though wouldn’t that be awesome? “Hair, color yourself!”
Anyway, I happened to choose the day that Kristin only works until 3, which was awesome because I was done around 3:30. I hugged Chris goodbye and set off to the mall. Leon and AJ, who’d both taken a couple of days off for fall break, decided to meet us there after Leon hurt himself playing golf. I’m not going to say a word about golf. Nope. Not a word. It was a somewhat last minute decision that Leon and AJ would come to do some mall-wandering and ended with all of us going to Olive Garden.
I love Olive Garden.
I want to marry Olive Garden and have little olive-ettes.
Then, on the drive home, which was blissfully quiet except for some *whispering* country */whispering* music, I was treated to a sunset that literally brought me to tears. One of the reasons I love Nashville so much is the scenery. There is something so beautiful about the rolling hills and the trees and the natural rocks. When I turn a corner, I’m treated to something new and amazing with every breath. Sorry for the junky windshield pictures. I’m too lazy to clean it and too mystified by the beauty of it to not share it with you.
As I pulled into Franklin, I swore I heard bells. The closer I got to Five Points (an area of historic downtown), the louder they pealed. As I checked for signs of neurological disorder, I realized that I was driving closer to one of the beautiful historic churches in the area. Someone was ringing the bells and it was glorious. The bells and the sunset and the sky and day I’d had…it was all too much.
What a wonderful day. Can I please have more of these?
As adults, we want to believe that we are able to move beyond the things that happened in our past and we very much choose to believe that we are able to forget the people that we have tied ourselves to during that time. We let go of them and “get on with our lives” and heal as much as we can. Something I’m discovering, in my own time of self-awareness and discovery, is that we never really let go of those people completely.
Our feelings do change for people and I’m not questioning that notion. However, I think most people I know would agree that the feelings they have for their first love are very different than the feelings they have for that night in college where the pizza guy looked really good or the girl in the short skirt in the corner appealed to you in a way that you didn’t think was possible. Don’t for a second think you didn’t give those people an emotional piece of yourself, because you did, no matter how small, because you still remember them. And, yet, you may not look upon that period with any kind of empathy, compassion, or wistfulness for them or yourself at that time.
These are not the instances that I’m addressing. I’m addressing the first loves, the best friends, the close friends, the soul mates, the people that you meet on the street that do a kindness for you. These are the people that allow you to have a piece of their heart and with that you, in turn, share a piece of yours with them like a puzzle only the two of you have any hope of completing.
When we give this part of ourselves away, we do so at a large cost. There really isn’t any going back from that point. I remember my first love quite fondly, as he was a good friend before he was anything else to me. He was sweet, funny and shy. We talk online now and then, but what strikes me so much is that it has been so long and our feelings have healed to the point where I genuinely want his happiness in a way that I wish for what he wishes for himself. I think of old friends that I haven’t seen in years and wish the best for them.
I think this is where the popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace come in. Of course there are people that want to “stick it” to the people that hurt them so long ago, but, overwhelmingly, the feeling I get about these sites is that it is more about healing and caring than anything else. We want to know how these people are doing and if they are well. Our reason for that is not always because of them: It’s because of us. It’s because they hold onto a string attached to our emotions that we haven’t quite clipped.
I can think back to my first real crush and smile fondly. I can think of my first best friend and laugh at some of the things we’ve done in our lives. I can think of the first time someone hurt me beyond repair. There are many spots that aren’t healed and there are many that will never heal. It’s up to me to decide whether I’m going to allow those strings to continue to move me like a puppeteer or clip them and free the strings up for new events in our lives.
The man who held the door for me the other day…the old woman who smiled at me when I was stressed out about finals…the way my dogs know when I’m sad and will just lay silently next to me…the way my sister hugs me when she hasn’t seen me in a while…
Sometimes just the recognition of humanity in others reminds us of our own humanity. This brought a smile to my heart and I wanted to share it with you in the hopes that it might lift you as well. Have a wonderful day.
Life is like a game. We all have challenges, thoughts, opinions and beliefs. Often, it feels like something out there, life, karma, catty people, or blue shells (for the Kart lovers), seeks to bring us down. Luckily, we always get up. This is where I wear my heart on my sleeve and my foot in my mouth.
I am currently accepting new sponsorships. Please email me for more information.
Misc
Are you interested in showing your support for my site? Feel free to post a blog button!
We are members of one great body. Nature planted in us a mutual love, and fitted us for a social life. We must consider that we were born for the good of the whole.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Home
When should I let go of a friendship? This question is a hard one that I’ve asked myself so many times in my life that I truly don’t remember the first time I thought “this isn’t working, I’m not happy and this has to stop.” What I do remember is that I generally have allowed my friendships to get to that point where I have begun to feel trapped in that friendship and I have realized that I no longer want to be in any kind of relationship with that person, including as an acquaintance. All of this could have been fixed with some simple communication on my part, on their part, on both of our parts, but it hasn’t happened, or it happened with little results or no long lasting results. Ultimately, my stomach turns, my anxiety increases and it is in my head that…
Life is like a game. We all have challenges, thoughts, opinions and beliefs. Often, it feels like something out there, life, karma, catty people, or blue shells (for the Kart lovers), seeks to bring us down. Luckily, we always get up. This is where I wear my heart on my sleeve and my foot in my mouth.
