By Abby Lass
Managing Editor of Arts
Friends.
A lot of the time we’re not really sure how or why these people came into our lives – whether you shared a class in sixth grade or were mistakenly invited to his bar mitzvah – but we’re absolutely certain that we want to keep them around. Unfortunately, this can sometimes be more difficult than we expect.
With hectic schedules, family drama, and the constant struggle to figure out who the heck you are as an individual, it can be hard to maintain friendships in a way that fulfills both of your needs without being too taxing on either of you. It can be a daunting task to repair a broken relationship or even to start a new one, but it’s certainly a worthy undertaking.
My friend is an international scuba diver and I have to train every day for the world chess championship – how do we make time for each other?
You may have thought you were busy in middle school, but the phrase “time crunch” takes on a whole new meaning when you hit freshman year. Suddenly, you’re not getting home until five or six in the evening and all that’s waiting for you is a mound of homework. You tell yourself you’ll do something fun over the weekend, but you know that those precious 48 hours are already filled with test prep, soccer practice, and babysitting your neighbor’s grandchild.
So when are you supposed to see your friends?
It can be difficult, I’m not going to lie. There will certainly be times when you feel too tired or sick or stressed to embark on a wild evening with the people you love, but that doesn’t mean you have to spend all your weekends alone.
Winnie the Pooh taught us that the best of friends are the ones who can do nothing together, and I couldn’t agree more.
The people I’m closest to are not the ones who take me on a weekend getaway to New York City or the ones that insist on going out when all I want to do is stay in. No, my best friends – and the people I see most often outside of school – are the ones that will be exhausted with me. Since September, the majority of times I’ve hung out with people have been filled with movies and yelling at the screen, or even desperately trying to finish a French project.
Just because someone no longer fits in your life the way they used to does not mean that they’re not a good friend, and there’s no reason to try to blame them for changing when you’re probably doing the exact same thing in their eyes.
The people who make good friends are the people that you love spending time with, no matter what you’re doing. It can always be fun to force yourselves to get dressed up and go on an adventure, but you’re also both allowed to summon each other via Snapchat and watch Disney shorts on your phones. Doing what makes you happy with the people that make you happy is always a good use of your time.
But at the same time, you should never feel obligated to hang out with someone. Obviously no one likes being cancelled on, but if you have a valid reason, your friends should be able to respect that (and for the record, needing some alone time is a completely valid reason).
There is absolutely nothing wrong with taking one night a week to sit in solitude, drink tea, bust out a week’s worth of APUSH notes or watch the same TV shows that you’ve been obsessed with since you were five. Giving yourself time away from everyone, even the people you love, is an excellent way to take care of yourself. Rebuild your energy reserves so that the next time you see them, you’ll be more ready for an adventure.
Like with any relationship, trust is key. Even if you haven’t been able to hang out in a few weeks, make the effort to message them first. Send them an inside joke, or a midnight reminder that they should probably go to bed eventually. One little message can mean a lot, especially when you haven’t seen someone in a while.
And if, for whatever reason, your friend hasn’t been able to put in effort recently, trust that while they care about you and want to hear how you’ve been, now just may not be the best time.
My friend just got a new girlfriend/job/obsession, and I don’t approve at all.
I hate to break it to you, but it’s not really your place to approve.
Maybe your best friend’s new girlfriend isn’t the perfect girl that she seems to think she is, or maybe that nose ring wasn’t as good a decision as it seemed in the moment, but you have to know when your opinion is necessary, and when it’s not. Your friend surely values your opinion, but you have to be aware of when they want your genuine thoughts on the matter, or if they just want their own opinions to be validated.
And as frustrating as it may seem, sometimes your job as a friend really is just to validate what they think.
No matter how long you have been friends with someone or how much you think you know about them, you never really know the full story. Your advice on how to handle a specific situation might make perfect sense to you, but it may not be right for them, and at the end of the day, it is their decision to make.
Doing what makes you happy with the people that make you happy is always a good use of your time.
The danger of this is, of course, that it can be frustrating when your best friend keeps making decisions that you both know are not the right ones. How can you be expected to sit by and watch as they continue to fail or get hurt?
It can be incredibly exasperating, but one way that you can get rid of these negative feelings is to separate your involvement in a situation from your friend’s. Their mistake in making a decision is not your mistake in making a decision. Them making one decision has nothing to do with how you would handle that situation. At the end of the day, they are the one going out and living their life, and hopefully they respect you enough to let you do the same.
If you want to be the friend that is entrusted with someone else’s feeling and secrets, you have to respect their choices and give them what they ask for, not what you think they need.
I’ve been feeling an increasing amount of distance between my best friend and I recently, and I’m not sure how to address it… or if I even want to.
For all the effort we put into selecting our core group of friends, it’s amazing how easily these people can slip out of our lives without us even realizing. Whether there’s growing animosity for some reason or you just feel a disconnect because you haven’t talked in a few weeks, it’s important to acknowledge the distance so that you can get your relationship back to a state where you’re both comfortable and fulfilled.
Sometimes, all it takes is a “Hey, I haven’t heard from you in a while. How’ve you been?” for the relationship to bounce back, but other times the rift can be more difficult to navigate.
If there is some tension running deeper than busy schedules, don’t be afraid to get to the root of the problem. Are you resentful of something? Do you feel used? Or, perhaps most commonly, have you two just become different people?
This last one might seem trivial -– we’re in high school, we’re always changing anyway right? But I’ve lost far more friends to the simple fact that we no longer have anything to talk about than to a fight or misunderstanding.
That’s not to say that any friendship with someone who doesn’t share your exact interests is doomed to fizzle and die, but when you are no longer able to get excited about the things that excite them, or you no longer feel like they can comprehend the things that you love and need, then there is certainly a disconnect.
When you get to this point, there are two really only two options: Drift away, or stand up and fight. It can be hard to know which is the right choice, given your particular situation, but it is always important for you to listen to your own individual needs first.
There are people that I fought for years ago that I’m still so grateful to have in my life, and there are people that I let go of or that let me go that I have no regrets about. It’s all just a matter of maturity.
Just because someone no longer fits in your life the way they used to does not mean that they’re not a good friend, and there’s no reason to try to blame them for changing when you’re probably doing the exact same thing in their eyes.
You don’t have to shut them out if you make the decision to let them go. In the end, it’s all a matter of expectations management: If you no longer see them as one of your closest friends, then the best friend duties fall on someone else, someone who might deserve the title more.
It can be hard, but a lot of the time these occurrences are anything but personal, and it’s important to remember that you are living your own life, and it will go on regardless of who is making the journey with you.
Even when we successfully avoid stress and overcommitment, we’re all very busy people. Caring about someone enough to put their needs above your own is a very special thing and, frankly, not everyone deserves that honor. There’s nothing wrong with saving your love for the people who will love you back.
But that doesn’t mean fighting for your friends’ place in your life, or your place in theirs, isn’t worth a midnight text and a mug brownie.
