Our culture loves the idea of friend groups. Take a look at the Fellowship of the Ring, the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Divergent, The Office, or even Jane Austen’s Bennet sisters.
These stable friend groups seems strong, impenetrable, hopelessly secure and constant, modeling what seems to be the ideal of lifelong friendship and belonging. And so we gobble the novels, we pay money for movie tickets, and we take Buzzfeed quizzes to find out which friend we are in the group (And let's be real - we all just cheat the test to make it say what we want, anyway...).
We love the idea of friend groups.
We love this idea of a collective friend group traveling through life together, remaining relatively the same, with no bumps or disruptions to the cozy friend group dynamic. We covet the stability of this constancy. We cling to the potential for it to be true in our lives. And we yearn for the words, “We got together, and it was like nothing had changed,” to be true in our lives.
The other week, a college student told me, “Amy, I’m just worried that when I graduate, I won’t have my group of friends who will be with me for the rest of my life.”
Do you want to know what I told this student? After asking some questions and nodding quite a bit, I gently said, “I actually don’t ever want you to have a friend group like that.”
Why did I say that to this young student? Because in the midst of this reality of yearning for such stable, constant, impenetrable, lifelong friend groups, I have a theory…
These lifelong friend groups? They’re unrealistic. unhealthy. and unhelpful.
First of all, I want to be clear that I think friend groups in and of themselves are a good thing. They provide us with a healthy variety of friendship and community. But, why do we expect that the cozy group of 5-7 that we “always” went to Applebees with in high school or “always” lived together during college or “always” ate lunch together at our job…why do we expect that cozy little group to stay knitted together impenetrably for the rest of our lives?
When we grip and cling to a friend group continuing, even in the midst of life change, a few things happen:
1. The people in the friend group aren’t allowed to grow. If I yearn for a stable “friend group”
from college to always remaining the same, then I am not allowing some of my best friends in the
world to grow and change and be different. That’s not fair.
2. The friend group becomes an exclusive clique based on fear. Cliques are obviously so
middle school. But, besides the middle school stench of an exclusive clique, it results in a
bounded group of friends where no one is allowed to enter and no one is allowed to leave. This
inevitably results in a fear-based friend group…one where we are always worried about who will
try to leave and who will try to come it. It is exhausting to be a part of a friend group who is
always posting “Keep Out” signs. (Plus, for those of us who follow Jesus, I actually think that
cliques are a terrible way to follow Jesus.)
3. Unchanging friend groups don't bless our friends to form new friendships. Some of my
closest friends in the world now live in other cities than me. And even though I want to still be
the person whose house they come to after a bad day or whom they celebrate special occasions
with, I don’t live in the same city. So I want to encourage and bless my friends to form new
friendships, new friend groups for this season.
You see, it turns out that my friends aren’t MY friends. They are more accurately my FRIENDS. When the emphasis changes from the possessive word to the descriptive word, my FRIENDS are free to become who they are created and called to be. I am free to enjoy them without clinging to them, and we are both free to enter and exit former and current friend groups without penalty.
I am in a transitory stage of life where I crave stability and security. It’s easy for me to desire that in my friend groups and in the stability that having “a group” would bring. But I don’t have that, and I am hoping to keep it that way. Yes, I have a group of friends that I live with. Yes, I have a group of friends that I work with. Yes, I have a group of friends that I go to Bible study with, and I still have a handful of mini-groups of college friends and high school that I get to see at weddings. But I don’t have a “group,” and even though it feels scary to say it, I don’t want one.
I want my friends to change, just like I want to change.
I want my friends to be welcoming, inclusive, loving, and caring to the people around them, and I
want to be the same way.
And I want to bless my friends to make new friends, to have new friend groups in their particular
seasons of life…just like I want them to bless me to do the same.
So, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants? As entertaining as you are, and as much as I sometimes covet the close knit tapestry of your friendships, I don’t want to live my life clinging to a friend group from the past or searching for that “perfect” friend group of my adult life.
Instead, I commit to changing, just as my friends change. To welcoming new friends in my life and in the lives of my friends. And to blessing my friends toward new friend groups and letting them bless me.
And then just maybe we’ll be friends, instead of promoters of friend groups. And we’ll free ourselves and one another to become the people that we are created and being created to be.
These stable friend groups seems strong, impenetrable, hopelessly secure and constant, modeling what seems to be the ideal of lifelong friendship and belonging. And so we gobble the novels, we pay money for movie tickets, and we take Buzzfeed quizzes to find out which friend we are in the group (And let's be real - we all just cheat the test to make it say what we want, anyway...).
We love the idea of friend groups.
We love this idea of a collective friend group traveling through life together, remaining relatively the same, with no bumps or disruptions to the cozy friend group dynamic. We covet the stability of this constancy. We cling to the potential for it to be true in our lives. And we yearn for the words, “We got together, and it was like nothing had changed,” to be true in our lives.
The other week, a college student told me, “Amy, I’m just worried that when I graduate, I won’t have my group of friends who will be with me for the rest of my life.”
Do you want to know what I told this student? After asking some questions and nodding quite a bit, I gently said, “I actually don’t ever want you to have a friend group like that.”
Why did I say that to this young student? Because in the midst of this reality of yearning for such stable, constant, impenetrable, lifelong friend groups, I have a theory…
These lifelong friend groups? They’re unrealistic. unhealthy. and unhelpful.
First of all, I want to be clear that I think friend groups in and of themselves are a good thing. They provide us with a healthy variety of friendship and community. But, why do we expect that the cozy group of 5-7 that we “always” went to Applebees with in high school or “always” lived together during college or “always” ate lunch together at our job…why do we expect that cozy little group to stay knitted together impenetrably for the rest of our lives?
When we grip and cling to a friend group continuing, even in the midst of life change, a few things happen:
1. The people in the friend group aren’t allowed to grow. If I yearn for a stable “friend group”
from college to always remaining the same, then I am not allowing some of my best friends in the
world to grow and change and be different. That’s not fair.
2. The friend group becomes an exclusive clique based on fear. Cliques are obviously so
middle school. But, besides the middle school stench of an exclusive clique, it results in a
bounded group of friends where no one is allowed to enter and no one is allowed to leave. This
inevitably results in a fear-based friend group…one where we are always worried about who will
try to leave and who will try to come it. It is exhausting to be a part of a friend group who is
always posting “Keep Out” signs. (Plus, for those of us who follow Jesus, I actually think that
cliques are a terrible way to follow Jesus.)
3. Unchanging friend groups don't bless our friends to form new friendships. Some of my
closest friends in the world now live in other cities than me. And even though I want to still be
the person whose house they come to after a bad day or whom they celebrate special occasions
with, I don’t live in the same city. So I want to encourage and bless my friends to form new
friendships, new friend groups for this season.
You see, it turns out that my friends aren’t MY friends. They are more accurately my FRIENDS. When the emphasis changes from the possessive word to the descriptive word, my FRIENDS are free to become who they are created and called to be. I am free to enjoy them without clinging to them, and we are both free to enter and exit former and current friend groups without penalty.
I am in a transitory stage of life where I crave stability and security. It’s easy for me to desire that in my friend groups and in the stability that having “a group” would bring. But I don’t have that, and I am hoping to keep it that way. Yes, I have a group of friends that I live with. Yes, I have a group of friends that I work with. Yes, I have a group of friends that I go to Bible study with, and I still have a handful of mini-groups of college friends and high school that I get to see at weddings. But I don’t have a “group,” and even though it feels scary to say it, I don’t want one.
I want my friends to change, just like I want to change.
I want my friends to be welcoming, inclusive, loving, and caring to the people around them, and I
want to be the same way.
And I want to bless my friends to make new friends, to have new friend groups in their particular
seasons of life…just like I want them to bless me to do the same.
So, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants? As entertaining as you are, and as much as I sometimes covet the close knit tapestry of your friendships, I don’t want to live my life clinging to a friend group from the past or searching for that “perfect” friend group of my adult life.
Instead, I commit to changing, just as my friends change. To welcoming new friends in my life and in the lives of my friends. And to blessing my friends toward new friend groups and letting them bless me.
And then just maybe we’ll be friends, instead of promoters of friend groups. And we’ll free ourselves and one another to become the people that we are created and being created to be.