I've been thinking a lot about friendships in the last little while. Reflection on my friendships of the last 12 months has led me to question everything I thought I knew about friendships.
Let me explain why friendship has come into question for me....
I have one friend who only wants me around when it suits her. She gets angry if I don’t call her and yet she rarely calls me. She never visits but expects me to visit her all the time. Her reason? She has kids and I don’t. The thing is, her children are almost all in their teens and she has no problem leaving her family for jaunts with her other girlfriends which appear to be more and more frequent. Yet I feel like I am subject to anger, manipulation and being a back up when her other more ‘important’ friends are not around.
This friend who I have known for years and honestly, who I deeply love, seems less and less interested in my welfare. If I am visiting, and someone else drops in, suddenly I become the person who makes them the coffee and completely insignificant (except for the coffee). I am certainly not her confidante anymore, as I hear her either on the phone to others or in real life, tell them deeply personal things which I was always privy too. Now I find myself having to pull teeth to get any info out of her. It’s quite hurtful and I find myself asking if this is a real friendship.
Then there is the guy who I thought of as my ‘surrogate’ father; the guy who would openly tell anyone and everyone that I was his/their ‘adopted’ daughter. Well, they offered to have me move in with them bc of my health issues. It seemed like a dream come true for me and so of course I snapped up the offer only to have the situation turn extremely nasty.
Again, I have known these people for many many years – approx 15 years, and to have them suddenly turn against me for such small things (I won’t go into it here, but needless to say, I’ve had professional people tell me it was domestic violence – or wud have been classed as that if I had been the guy’s partner), well it does make me question my judgement of people.
Then there is another guy who I have been friends with for some years. We were so close – at one point we had a romantic relationship, and then friendship. I supported him through some extremely challenging situations (like the death of a parent) and even though I wanted to cut and run many times, I stuck it through bc I believe that friends don’t dump people when it gets too hard.
Last year, through my friendship woes with the ‘surrogate father’, this friend then proceeded to go behind my back – for my own good mind you, and cause more problems in an already tumultuous relationship. The intention was to smooth things over even though I begged repeatedly for him not to get involved. He didn’t respect my requests and continually butted in, making things ten times worse than they ever could have been.
Then, when things really hit the fan for me, I would ring him up to talk to, and he would literally turn his back on me. I thought friends stick together no matter what. Again, this hurt me to the core, and I can only wonder what this guy deems friendship.
But then there are the positives of friendship....
I have a friend who has been one of my closest friends since we were 4 years old. She is married now and has 4 gorgeous children. I am godmother to one of these little angels. We both have our ups and downs in our own lives, but listen when the other one needs a friend. The only problem is, that bc she has 4 littlees, we don’t get to catch up much. However, whenever I visit, I always go home with either leftovers, flowers from the garden, fresh eggs, or freshly picked vegies and an enormous sense of happiness and contentedness.
Or another girlfriend who is like a little sister to me – someone who doesn’t care if we don’t talk in months, but when we see each other it’s like no time has passed. Someone who also does what she can for my good. Recently she got me something for my new house which I wasn’t expecting, a massive gift! Or she will out of the blue, take me out for tea bc she works and I don’t and she knows I can’t afford it. The other week, she offered to come out of her way, pick me up each Sunday and go to church with me bc atm I don’t have transport, and she knows how much I wanna go back to church.
You can see here that there are two types of friendships: the ones with strings attached and the ones without.
The problem is, I know deep down with everything inside of me, that all 5 of these people love me very much – but some of these friendships are healthy and some are, to put it bluntly... NOT!
So, what to do????
Some might say the obvious answer is to dump the unhealthy friends. But it’s not so easy when you are me and have a massive capacity to love others and to see the good in them no matter what.
Obviously, the unhealthy friendships only exists bc we somehow get something from the other person that we really need – or feel we need. But is it worth the pain and anguish? I don’t know.
I do know that without some of those friendships my life would be more boring. I would be more alone. Maybe they are there to fill the gap in my life as in the last few years my friendship base has become so much smaller.
I used to be the girl who knew everybody and everybody knew. I was the girl who flitted from one group to another at gatherings bc I had so many people to catch up with. And I genuinely did spend time with each group of friends. I was heavily involved in the church youth group scene and was a leader on a myriad of camps, rallies etc. I loved the attention and I loved being a leader.
And you know, if you happen to be on my friends list on Facebook, well, then you are one of the privileged 1200! Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have that many friends who I know in real life who are also my FB friends. At least half are there for the games only. Then at least another 300 are either old school or youth friends – people I don’t really know anymore but am interested in hearing what they have been up to since our younger days. Then there is another 100-200 at least, who are from the church I just recently left (and let’s face it, I was losing contact with these people anyway, so to stay in sort of touch via FB is ok... for now).
Then there are another 50 or so who I would class as family – cousins, aunts, uncles, surrogates (yes I have a few ‘extra’ brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles) etc. who I might not see anymore, but bc they are family, it’s really lovely to see pics of the new bub or the new harvester or to just check in etc. Or I have them on there so that they know Im doing ok.
So when it comes down to it, I guess I’d be lucky to have maybe 50 people on my FB who I genuinely have a relationship with on a day to day/month to month basis.
But the real truth of it is that it seems like I don’t have the energy for a lot of friends anymore. I don’t know whether it’s bc I was burnt so badly last year, or the fact that I have an auto-immune disease and Bipolar that scares people away. Or even just that everyone is so busy with their own lives that they don’t have room for me now.
I have heard that one of my cousins lives about 2kms from me (I have just moved house) and in the old days, she was one of my favourite people. I keep thinking how much I would love to catch up with her – after all it’s only about 5 or 6 bus stops from my place. However now, with my stupid body in pain all the time, and the fact that it’s been so long since we’ve properly caught up, will it be awkward? Does she really want to hear how I’ve been going? Is it more duty that makes me want to visit? Do either of us have the emotionally capacity to sit there and listen to the other as we catch up after so long? Has too much time passed? So many questions go through my head, meanwhile no visit is happening and no friendship is building.
We had some dear older friends over for tea last night (yes, they tasted yummy, lol). And it took a great amount of effort on my part to prepare – mostly bc it was above 40 Degrees Celsius and I was having a bad pain day. But we had the loveliest time and it was fantastic to catch up with these beautiful people. And yet today, I am so lethargic, and listless, and in incredible pain that it makes me hesitate to do it again with someone else, even though the emotional rewards are great.
Sometimes the effort is worth it, but maybe it’s a matter of pacing urself and picking and choosing the time and people you want to invest in.
I know I haven’t really drawn any conclusions here – but I think that’s because I am still processing it all. Im sure that if I have any great revelations I will share them with you.
In the meantime, have a good one.
xo
