“I just don’t want our friendship to change.”
Insert that downcast plea into any life experience ever lived by any human being who has a friend...
a friend moving to a new state, starting a new degree program, having a baby, putting a ring on it, starting to date someone new, breaking up, getting married…
a friend becoming your boss, becoming your co-worker, becoming your employee, leaving your lunch hour time, joining your lunch hour time…
a friend switching churches, switching schools, switching jobs, switching apartments, switching coffee shops, switching TV show loyalties…
And as inevitably as the changes arise, these words inevitably weasel their way out of our lips: “I just don’t want our friendship to change.”
Here’s the tough reality: That friendship will change.
Here’s the beautiful opportunity: That friendship has the potential to grow.
I have a remarkable flock of friendships. And yet, almost every single one of these friendships has undergone at least one major shift in the past two years – and many of them have undergone three or four or ten.
In the midst of these friendships that seem to be shifting faster than I can keep track, I have determined that “a friendship that never changes” is a myth. That the words “We’re trying to maintain our friendship” are a myth.
You see, human beings are not static entities – meaning that we are not capable of staying the exact same. And since friendships happen to be comprised of not one but two of these non-static entities, they are thus incapable of remaining unchanged.
That may be a logically obvious truth, but it doesn’t dim our desire for the stability, the memories, the constancy, and the comfort of our current friendships. And thus we cling and we clamor, attempting to maintain and keep our friendships the same as they were before…the same degrees of closeness and vulnerability, the same shared interests, the same common friend groups, the same news shared and bonded over.
But alas. We cling and we clamor and we try, try, try…but it doesn’t work. And there we sit with our friendship feeling mangled and disappointing and “not at all like it used to be.”
Here’s why it’s “not at all like it used to be”: because friendships are not meant to be maintained. Maintenance is the word you use to describe the car that you’re trying to keep alive, but the car that is slowing dying... “maintaining a friendship” is thus a prescription for the slow, disappointing, mangling process of “It’s Not Like It Used To Be” Friendship Death.
Encouraging, I know.
But let’s move along to the good part. If friendships cannot simply be maintained, and they thus have two choices – to grow or to die – that allows for a pretty remarkable opportunity. The opportunity that every single life transition that otherwise seems to herald Friendship Death could result in not death, but new life. That a friendship with a bit of new soil, with a fresh outpouring of rain, with a new spot in the sun (why haven’t any of my friends moved somewhere warm?)…that a friendship like that has the opportunity to grow.
But, growth is never without a bit of discomfort, right? Trying to grow muscles to run a marathon was uncomfortable. A teething child is not only uncomfortable, but makes everyone within hearing distance uncomfortable, too. Growth is uncomfortable, difficult, and, most notably, slow.
So yup, it’s not exactly easy or natural to keep up with my best friends from college – ones who I used to have pillow talk with every night, but who now are people that I feel lucky if I connect with once a month. It’s not exactly easy to navigate friendships with my married friends who have different life struggles and difficulties than me. It’s not exactly easy to figure out what it looks like to be friends with the people who I also supervise in my job. But growth isn’t meant to be easy. It’s meant to be growing.
Growing my friendships takes effort. It takes a willingness to let things change. It takes an openness to weed out the prickly parts of those relationships and not simply ignore hurt by for the sake of “maintaining the friendship.” It means that I sometimes have to choose to take joy in an inconvenient time for a phone call or learn how to be friends with my friend’s significant other or find the baby aisle in Target. It means effort. Time. Patience.
But every time that I have reminded myself “Amy, it’s about growing this friendship, not maintaining it,” and every time I have made a conscious choice to grow a friendship rather than maintain it, a new little blossom sprouts. The roots of my friendships deepen. And good fruit comes forth.
After all, who wants to say when they’re 80, “We maintained our friendship so well!”? What if, instead, we said, through craggy voices, missing teeth, and shining eyes:
“Ours is a friendship that grew. And grew. And grew.”
Insert that downcast plea into any life experience ever lived by any human being who has a friend...
a friend moving to a new state, starting a new degree program, having a baby, putting a ring on it, starting to date someone new, breaking up, getting married…
a friend becoming your boss, becoming your co-worker, becoming your employee, leaving your lunch hour time, joining your lunch hour time…
a friend switching churches, switching schools, switching jobs, switching apartments, switching coffee shops, switching TV show loyalties…
And as inevitably as the changes arise, these words inevitably weasel their way out of our lips: “I just don’t want our friendship to change.”
Here’s the tough reality: That friendship will change.
Here’s the beautiful opportunity: That friendship has the potential to grow.
I have a remarkable flock of friendships. And yet, almost every single one of these friendships has undergone at least one major shift in the past two years – and many of them have undergone three or four or ten.
In the midst of these friendships that seem to be shifting faster than I can keep track, I have determined that “a friendship that never changes” is a myth. That the words “We’re trying to maintain our friendship” are a myth.
You see, human beings are not static entities – meaning that we are not capable of staying the exact same. And since friendships happen to be comprised of not one but two of these non-static entities, they are thus incapable of remaining unchanged.
That may be a logically obvious truth, but it doesn’t dim our desire for the stability, the memories, the constancy, and the comfort of our current friendships. And thus we cling and we clamor, attempting to maintain and keep our friendships the same as they were before…the same degrees of closeness and vulnerability, the same shared interests, the same common friend groups, the same news shared and bonded over.
But alas. We cling and we clamor and we try, try, try…but it doesn’t work. And there we sit with our friendship feeling mangled and disappointing and “not at all like it used to be.”
Here’s why it’s “not at all like it used to be”: because friendships are not meant to be maintained. Maintenance is the word you use to describe the car that you’re trying to keep alive, but the car that is slowing dying... “maintaining a friendship” is thus a prescription for the slow, disappointing, mangling process of “It’s Not Like It Used To Be” Friendship Death.
Encouraging, I know.
But let’s move along to the good part. If friendships cannot simply be maintained, and they thus have two choices – to grow or to die – that allows for a pretty remarkable opportunity. The opportunity that every single life transition that otherwise seems to herald Friendship Death could result in not death, but new life. That a friendship with a bit of new soil, with a fresh outpouring of rain, with a new spot in the sun (why haven’t any of my friends moved somewhere warm?)…that a friendship like that has the opportunity to grow.
But, growth is never without a bit of discomfort, right? Trying to grow muscles to run a marathon was uncomfortable. A teething child is not only uncomfortable, but makes everyone within hearing distance uncomfortable, too. Growth is uncomfortable, difficult, and, most notably, slow.
So yup, it’s not exactly easy or natural to keep up with my best friends from college – ones who I used to have pillow talk with every night, but who now are people that I feel lucky if I connect with once a month. It’s not exactly easy to navigate friendships with my married friends who have different life struggles and difficulties than me. It’s not exactly easy to figure out what it looks like to be friends with the people who I also supervise in my job. But growth isn’t meant to be easy. It’s meant to be growing.
Growing my friendships takes effort. It takes a willingness to let things change. It takes an openness to weed out the prickly parts of those relationships and not simply ignore hurt by for the sake of “maintaining the friendship.” It means that I sometimes have to choose to take joy in an inconvenient time for a phone call or learn how to be friends with my friend’s significant other or find the baby aisle in Target. It means effort. Time. Patience.
But every time that I have reminded myself “Amy, it’s about growing this friendship, not maintaining it,” and every time I have made a conscious choice to grow a friendship rather than maintain it, a new little blossom sprouts. The roots of my friendships deepen. And good fruit comes forth.
After all, who wants to say when they’re 80, “We maintained our friendship so well!”? What if, instead, we said, through craggy voices, missing teeth, and shining eyes:
“Ours is a friendship that grew. And grew. And grew.”