September 24, 2008
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moments of friendship
One of the most damaging moments in any friendship is that moment when one friend is in need and the other… just isn’t there. Whether the person misses their friend’s need because they were busy, or they were too lazy, or they didn’t know, or they were going through their own problems, or they were angry about something doesn’t matter. When you’re going through something very hard for you and you are casting around for a life line and you look toward your friends and find them… absent… it can be a hard thing to forgive. You tend to feel so alone. You tend to get angry and resentful.
But underlying the anger and regret there is a deeper hurt. When your friends aren’t there you tend to start to question your friendship with them. You think: are we really friends? Did this person really ever care about me? And then you start to think of the times you were there for them and you start to feel used. You start to think, how can we be friends if I am there for you but you are never there for me?
But you have to remember that a moment of need is actually remarkably easy to miss. It could only last a moment. There could be a single night. A single moment when a person finally breaks down and casts around them looking for help rather than trying to do it all on their own. And that one moment… you might miss the phone call. You might not be in. You might not be able to ask the questions or say the words that get your friend to open up. It’s very easy to fail in being a good friend. Friendships, real deep friendships anyway, aren’t easy. They require vigilance and hard work and struggle.
And as with anything hard, when you try to be a real friend to someone you have to be prepared to fail. Sometimes you won’t be there. Sometimes you won’t even notice. You’ll have had too much on your mind. Too many of your own problems. And you’ll have to look back and recognize your failure and apologize. And try to do better. To try to be there for your friends again, starting now, as best you can.
Perhaps even harder though is the other side. Where you have to learn to forgive your friends for being absent when you needed them. When you have to learn to let go of the hurt and pain and give your friends another chance. Can you do it? Or will the hurt just fester forever? If the latter your friendship will not survive.
Just keep in mind that when your hurting over some sense of abandonment chances are just as good your friend is feeling exactly the same way about you.
So ultimately the solution to damaged friendships is for each party to decide how much the friendship matters to them. They have to decide whether or not they care about and respect the other person enough to continue it. And if they both decide it does matter, that the other person is worth it, than they need to talk it out, to not judge one another, to apologize, and to forgive. And if they don’t think it’s worth it, they might as well just stop pretending. Nothing is more damaging to one’s emotional security than struggling futilely to preserve a false friendship.
Comments (6)
You speak the truth! Any sort of close relationship, friendship or otherwise, requires that you be a bit forgiving, a bit thoughtful, and a bit selfless.
That said, it only really works if both people are giving equally in all those respects. I mean, a friendship can last a long time with only one person doing all the work (Richard Siken’s poem “Wishbone” is a perfect illustration of this. czech it out: “Let’s not talk about it, let’s just not talk. Not because I don’t believe it, not because I want it any different, but I’m always saving and you’re always owing and I’m tired of asking to settle the debt. Don’t bother. You never mean it anyway, not really, and it only makes me that much more ashamed.”) I know I’ve certainly had many relationships like that. it wasn’t until recently (like the last year or so) that I was done dealing with the bullshit and wasn’t going to be anything to anybody that wasn’t willing to be the same for me… But this is getting too personal.
Good post, as usual. Keep on being awesome.
Eh. Failure is sign of grown too. Or something like that. Sometimes, the friendship wasn’t really there to begin with, we make mistakes of thinking there was a friendship and instead, what we find is nothing. Just a facade. Another fake.
Good post though. Much better than my random ones. Bravo!
well you can’t be there for everyone is one thing so you shouldn’t kick yourself for it. also a person should have enough friends to find someone that will be there for them even if one or many of his friends can’t be there. it’s sort of like putting all your eggs in one basket because one friend might be busy with their own drama to be there for you. as humans you can only handle so many things at once.
sometimes though you will find “fake” friends that you mentioned. i find that fake friends are usually the ones that try to compete with you, try to be better than you or just talk about themselves and they have no idea what’s going on with you because they are so self absorbed with themselves. ^_^
friendship is back and forth, giving and taking… i hate when people put up with bad friends because it shouldn’t be like that. you get one life and you should make it a good one. ^_^ don’t fill it with bad friends. *nods*
It’s so easy to miss that moment…forgiveness is one of the hardest things to learn about friendship.
I have always wondered about this, are good friends only those who always happen to be there at the moment you needed them? Or good friends those who despise knowing that you need them to be there, chooses not to, because they want you to be able to learn to be independent?
What about people who are just forgetful in general? Who always forget to return calls, come on you must know someone like that?
If we avoid people like that and befriend, decided to be deep friends with people who answer their phones and actively take a role to be there for you, how can that guarantee that these people aren’t just doing so not because they want to form deep friendships with you, but rather out of a selfish motive to satisfy their own desires?
The thing is, it’s so easy to pretend, both ways.
And often times, the friends who decide to ignore us to help us stand on our feet are the ones who are overlooked.
thanks for reading nephyo.
@elvesdoitbetter - thanks! awesome poem too. I still do things for people even though I don’t perceive them as being willing to do as much for me. Part of that I chalk up to wishful thinking. But I also think it’s important sometimes to take risks on friendships. And that might mean at first giving more than you get in the hopes that it will bring you closer so that in the future the relationship can be more balanced. But I’ve definitely had friends I’ve withdrawn from more and more as time goes by as I’ve come to the realization that my extra effort isn’t really causing them to change their perspective of me. I guess at the heart of it is respect. You can’t really be friends with someone, at least not the kind of friendships that I want and crave, if that someone doesn’t respect you as much as you do them.
@rianahntr - :) thanks for the praise! Your posts are random, more random than mine, but that doesn’t mean some of them aren’t good too. You need to write more stories! You haven’t written a full short story in ages.
I don’t think we should think of our attempts to forge friendships or to be there for our friends as mistakes. Even if a friendship degrades to the point that it isn’t “real” anymore and not beneficial to either party, that doesn’t mean the process was a mistake in the first place. The good times friends had together were still good times. They aren’t erased by the way things turned out. There was, in most friendships, something there, at some point. We know this if only because people generally don’t hang out with people they don’t give a damn about AT ALL. Whether that something can be preserved or restored, whether it’s enough, and whether it’s worth it to even try are the hard questions. And we all have to make that decision with respect to each of our friendships.
@raindrops23 - I agree that the most painful false friendships are those where your friend appears to be selfish and aren’t giving as much as they are taking from you. The ones that don’t seem to care about you much if at all. But a caveat I have to make is that is often perspective based. Someone might be appear not to be giving very much to you from your perspective but his or her perspective might be very different. In their head, however deluded it may be, they might have a ton of thoughts of sacrifices they’ve made for the sake of their friendship.
Also circumstances differ. A lot of times people just aren’t there for their friends because they really aren’t emotionally stable enough. Their own life is too much for them to handle so they can’t really take on the burden of others needs. Other times it’s just immaturity. Learning to give to a friend and not just take is something we all have to learn to get better at over time.
But I agree we should be pretty strict about it when we can. Life is waay too short to struggle futiley to try and preserve bad friendships especially if they don’t seem like they can ever get better.
@buckeyegirl31 - I agree forgiveness is particularly hard in friendships. It’s hard to let go the hurts of the past.
@duckling8912 - Good points! Frist of all I’m the forgetful person in general a lot of the time. I forget to return phone calls and I’ve not picked up at important times. I try to do better especially when it comes to close friends but it definitely can be a challenge.
But I don’t think because of that close friendships are a matter of random chance. The more someone matters to you the harder you’ll try to help them, however you can even taking into account your own personal foils. And I think that increased effort when reciprocal will in general result in closer friends.
I do agree that there are those who will “be there” in a superficial sense of answering your phone calls or what not but aren’t really interested in helping you or making you better but only in looking like they are a good person or only because they want to later lean on you for your assistance. However, I don’t think his is all that common. Maybe I’m naive but I assume that most people actually are seeking friends, yes selfishly to help satisfy their own needs, but also selflessly at the same time because they care about the person they are befriending.
And yeah I definitely can relate to the feeling like you need to distance yourself from someone not for your own sake but for THEIR sake because you fear they will become depedent on you. I’ve been on both sides of that, having had someone distance themself from me and having, very recently, chosen to distance myself from someone else, in both cases to help the person grow independently. This however I think is a matter that has to eventually come to light through communication, otherwise there are a lot of times when someone won’t see the distance as being for their sake and just see the person putting on the distance as avoiding them or purposefully trying to hurt them. It’s easy for a friendship to become damaged beyond repair when that happens and it isn’t reconciled.