Let’s be honest, we all have bad friends we hang onto for much too long. For one reason or another, we let these people hang around and continue to affect our lives in a mostly negative way. They drain us and drag us down, and in the end we’d probably be better suited moving forward in separate directions.
If you think about it, we probably only actually choose a couple of our friends. It may sound funny, but think about it. When you’re young, you often become friends with the neighbors or the kids in the neighborhood that around your age (not your choice). If your parents have friends around the same age, you have “play dates” and those kids become your friends (again, not your choice). You sign up for sports and recreational activities and you meet friends that way (only partly your choice because of who else signs up). In middle school you may branch out and meet other kids that sit by you alphabetically (not your choice), but you probably already know some kids from the neighborhood and recreation. As you get older you start to choose your friends, but if they’re not from a previous association or by a group you’re in, it’s by “social status.” You recognize your self-perceived level of “cool” and find others in the same caste. Then when you go away to college, what happens? You start back at Square 1 and become friends with the roommate(s) to whom you’ve been assigned (not your choice). Moving on, you become friends with people on your team at work, with other married couples when you get hitched, and with other parents of the same age as your children. It’s a bit exhaustive, but you get the point—how many of these friendships are 1) genuine and 2) of your specific choosing?
This is probably the reason that after a lifetime of human interaction, we end up with about 4-5 really good friends. And we take pride in those 4-5 because we’ve chosen them among many and they are reflections of who we are. If a friend is recognized for something positive, we feel proud to be associated with him/her. But as I’ve pointed out, our 4-5 good friends represent maybe 10% or less of all the friends we’ve had, meaning that when we make a new friend there’s a 90% failure rate. So we shouldn’t be surprised when friends turn sour on us, but we are because our friends are an extension of us. We share experiences, stories, secrets, and essentially give ourselves to each other.
There will be times when friends need to lean on each other—it’s what friends are for. They’re there when times are tough and also when the good times are rolling. But I’ll bet that we all have a “friend” who now only comes around when it’s convenient for him/her. Or when he/she needs something. Of course people and priorities change—I’d be naïve to think they didn’t—but when fundamentals and values change, it shifts the entire scale. And because these people are our good friends, we keep thinking one day they are going to turn the corner. But they don’t. In fact, they’ve already turned the corner, just not the way we wanted. We end up obsessing about these people and wasting countless amounts of energy stressing about what they have (or haven’t) done. It affects our mood and then affects the mood of those around us. The bold approach is to have a conversation with them about it because I feel it’s our responsibility to bring people back down to earth and tell them when they’re acting out of character. Unfortunately, enough is usually said through actions that whatever will be said in conversation has already been implied. The only thing to do is to cut it off—say “No” to drama. Move on. People come and go, and if they’re really good friends, it will work out in the end.
As we get older and busier—be it with work, spouses, exercising, whatever—our time becomes more sparing and valuable. Why spend any of that time on people who aren’t worth it?
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