Friendships are
exciting, fun, easy, hard and sometimes, heartbreaking. If there is one thing I
have learnt over the past few years is that friendships come and go and
sometimes, history means nothing. I have had a close friendship for many years
that has started to head in the wrong direction. When I felt like I had put too
much effort in and got nothing in return, I started to pull back and reign in
the amount of effort I put in. Surprisingly (or not so surprisingly), the
effort from the other side never changed and my lack of contact was never
questioned. While pulling out the effort, I was putting less emotions in and I
started to not hurt as much every time a promise was never fulfilled.
There is a
saying about how you should never rely on happiness from anyone but yourself
which is so true, but yet not. It is hard to receive a text from a person who
says they ‘miss you so much’. Then you try and organise a catch up and what do
you know, you don’t hear back. Or maybe they promise to organise a catch up to
make up for the last time they let you down and it never happens. Suddenly 6 months passes and
you’ve had the same conversation every month that has eventuated to nothing.
I guess
friendships can be a little like relationships. You keep putting more in
thinking the other person will change and they will come around. Except, that
never happens and over time you start to build resentment for the things that
you thought would change to begin with. Then you wonder if it was your fault
and you start to think about the friendship and what role you played and what
you did wrong. Yes, of course you did something wrong along the way, but was it
your entire fault? Probably not.
Over time, I
have built other friendships. I now regularly catch up with people I didn’t
even know 5 years ago. I will admit that I don’t have a huge amount of friends.
In fact, apart from a select few I still keep in touch with from school, the
only other people I catch up with now are ones who I have met through S. Sure I’ve
had my own friends along the way, but those friendships run a course and all
too soon you are only facebook friends with not much in common. One of my goals
this year is to try and make new friends that I can catch up with and invite to
dinner. I’m not sure how, but I will figure it out I’m sure.
Steve and I are
friends with a couple we see almost once a week. They have a really wide group
of friends that they make an effort to keep in touch with regardless of the
fact that they have a 6 month old baby. They have people over for dinner at
least twice a week and they enjoy entertaining. I love and admire that they do
this and I hope that in the near future Steve and I can learn to open our home
to friends and family more regularly. To be honest, it isn’t that I don’t want
to, it’s that I don’t really think to. It doesn’t have to be a lavish meal. A
simple meal with a drink and some laughs is all that is needed to keep in touch
with people and to let them know you appreciate their friendship. Hopefully by
doing this we can create a network of friends that are there for us and in
return, we will be there for them.
There isn’t
really much point to this post to be honest. I just had thoughts in my head
that I wanted to write down so here it is!
Have you had any
friendships that you thought would last run their course?
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