I recently let a longtime friendship sort of… fade away. We first met when we were 15 years old, two mismatched kids who lived mere minutes apart. That accidental geography somehow turned into nearly three decades of friendship, during which we’ve seen each other through marriage and divorce and babies and death. That’s not the kind of friendship you walk away from on a whim.
But I did walk away. And even though I know it was the best decision for me, I’ve also felt guilty (and been made to feel guilty) about it for months.
So, if you’re reading this and going through something similar, this one’s for you. Because what I’ve figured out since, and what I wish someone had said to me sooner, is that letting a friendship go is not the same as failing at friendship.
Since it’s hard to trust that’s true, though, I asked people who study relationships for a little insight.
Life changes, and we change with it.
How does the expression go? “To all things a season.” That’s not to say that some friendships don’t last your entire life, but it’s pretty common for social circles to narrow as you grow older.
“I don’t think it means people value friendship any less,” therapist Meredith Van Ness, LCSW, told me, "I think life simply asks more of us."
That obviously makes sense, and yet it’s one of those things you don’t really think about when you’re in the middle of a transitional stage with a friend. Van Ness reminds me that, as we get older, our values shift. Responsibilities pile up and, in turn, our actual capacity changes. "Between careers, kids, aging parents, marriages, health concerns, and everything else life throws at us, there simply isn't enough time to invest in every relationship the way we once did,” she explains.
Adding to the confusion of all of this is the fact that we’re in the middle of a loneliness epidemic. Connection is a basic human need, and one that so many of us yearn for more than we’re getting. It would be shameful to squander a friendship you already have… right?
Don’t think of it that way, says Van Ness: “That doesn’t mean every friendship is meant to last forever. Sometimes making room for healthy, reciprocal relationships also means letting go of the ones that no longer fit.”
Circumstance is the foundation of a lot of dated friendships.
When I think about who I was at 15 versus who I am now, of course I’m not the same person. My circumstances now are wildly different from those back then. And that’s a reframe I needed to really wrap my head around: Many friendships weren’t necessarily built to last, because they were situational.
“You make friends where it is convenient to meet people,” explained Dawn Friedman, a licensed professional clinical counselor. “So you make friends in college, then you leave college. You make friends at work, and then you change jobs. The moms you hang out with on maternity leave might not be the same moms you hang out with when your child is in elementary school.”
That lands for me. Sometimes, the perfect person to survive those newborn-fog years with just isn’t someone you call five years later when you have a rare kid-free day. “A great playdate hangout,” Friedman says, isn’t always the same thing as a person you connect with on a deeper level, who you’d choose to spend your limited free time with.
And nope, that still doesn’t make you a bad friend.
If you’re a data person, Friedman points to the “convoy model” of social relationships. The idea? That we all move through life inside a shifting network of ties, the whole formation rearranging as we go. Research suggests that as we age, with women in particular, our friendships tend to get fewer but closer. It becomes less about circumstance and more about choice. “It’s not a failure,” Friedman said. “It’s expected and typical for most women.”
Parenthood plays a big part, too.
For me, the person I’ve become in parenthood made it much clearer that I no longer fit with my old friend. From a purely logistical standpoint, I need to be selective about who I spend my extremely limited time with. “When you have children, your free time shrinks dramatically,” Van Ness says. “Many friendships become more about logistics than intention.”
But there are also your standards.
How I view the world is different in motherhood. I want to surround myself — and my kids — with people who believe in things I think are good and important, things that matter to me. When your time is finite, you get choosier about where it goes.
“For many of my clients, as they work on themselves and develop stronger boundaries, have higher standards for compatibility, or just allow themselves to explore new interests, they change and sometimes friendships won't change with them. This is OK,” Friedman shares.
Van Ness agrees that you figuring out what works for you in terms of the people you surround yourself with is actually healthy. “You're more likely to invest in friendships that feel supportive, easy, and mutual," she says. "You simply have less room for relationships that consistently leave you feeling drained."
How do you know when a friendship has run its course vs. is worth fighting for?
This is the question that I’ve struggled with the most. Did I just need a little space from this friend? Should I give it time and then try to figure out how to fold this person back into my life?
Friedman addressed this question with two stories. And although they took place years apart, the central idea was the same: a friend confronted her about the space between them.
In the first instance, she realized the friend was right… but Friedman also realized that she didn’t feel like that necessarily needed to change. “She just wasn’t the person I thought of when I had time to be social,” Friedman explained. So, she simply told the friend, “You know, you’re right. And I’m sorry that hurts you.” Straightforward. Just an honest acknowledgment that the season of their friendship had perhaps shifted into something else.
When a similar situation happened years later with a different friend, Friedman realized this time she couldn’t see herself without this friend in her life. She leveled with the friend about her mental load; she’d been drowning, and she’d let that create distance. She started inviting her friend to be there even when she felt like she was barely keeping her head above water, and the result? “Fifteen years later, we’re still friends.”
Van Ness says that if you’re at a pivotal point in a friendship, it might be time for a gut check. Distance alone isn’t necessarily the kiss of death, because adult friendships very naturally ebb and flow with busy seasons. What you should really pay attention to is whether the friendship is still healthy. Can you be yourself around this person? Is the effort mutual, or is it more one-sided? Can you talk through sh*t when it comes up?
Or, as Van Ness puts it, “Do you leave feeling supported more often than depleted?”
If the answer to these questions is yes, it might mean there’s good stuff there worth fighting for. But if the answer is a consistent no, well, it could be time to walk away — and that is allowed.
What about the guilt, though?
Both experts offered a comfort here: The guilt doesn’t mean you did something wrong. “Guilt doesn’t automatically mean you made the wrong decision,” Van Ness shares. “Sometimes it simply means the friendship mattered.”
Getting to a point where you feel it’s time to let go doesn’t undo the time in your life when that friendship did work. It doesn’t erase the version of you that person got to know, and vice versa.
Maybe the biggest takeaway for me came from getting permission to do something I’ve felt I didn’t have the right to do: grieve the friendship. “People often think grief only belongs after a death, but friendships deserve grieving too,” Van Ness says. “You can miss someone, appreciate what the friendship gave you, and still recognize that it no longer fits your life."
And Friedman — bless her — went straight for the thing underneath the guilt, which is that so many of us (women especially) were raised on the gospel of being nice. “We are allowed to realize we don’t like people we used to love, and they are allowed to be unlikable,” she tells me.
Sometimes, there’s an obvious reason you’re ready to move past a friendship. Maybe they’re toxic. “But sometimes,” says Friedman, “it’s just that friend is no longer present for us in the way we need or want, or we can’t be there for them in the way they need or want.”
And you don’t owe anyone a farewell essay explaining why, either.
“Lots of times clients will say, ‘But I need to tell her why I don't like her or I'm not being honest,’ and that's not necessarily true. Realizing you no longer vibe with someone isn't a statement on their worth as a human being, it doesn't make them our enemy, and it doesn't require a big discussion about it,” explains Friedman.
She points out that it’s a little bit like dating. “Friendships, like all relationships, are complicated and they can be about timing just as much as they can be about connection ... Some people we will just ‘date’ for a while. Some people will break our hearts.” And, even though it can be hard to admit, “we might break hearts too.”
You can look back and move forward.
I don’t think my friend and I will ever be the kind of friends we once were, and I’ve made peace with that. I’ve learned that I can hold on to what those decades were without diminishing them to a mistake. They were real, and they counted. But the friendship just stopped fitting the person I’ve become — it’s much more complex than that, naturally, but that’s the bare-bones truth.
As Friedman reassures once more, “We can grow apart from people, and they can grow apart from us. It's normal. It happens.”
So, if there’s a person in your mind right now as you read this, maybe it’s time to let yourself off the hook. Not every friendship is built to last forever. And when one reaches its final stop on the journey, you’re allowed to move on. You can be grateful and gone at the same time.
source https://www.scarymommy.com/lifestyle/letting-go-friendship-guilt
Comments
Post a Comment