Having done so much research for my previous article on how to grieve friendships, this piece on friend breakups resonated with me so much I wish I wrote it. But I didn’t. So I defer to the much smarter, funnier, sharper, more talented writer… Lane Moore.
I want to share this specific passage because it’s everything I thought and felt inside my body and mind, but couldn’t put into words. Lane does it so beautifully, it will break your heart, then a little light will shine through, and those feelings you were too embarrassed to say to anyone, will be seen + validated.
Here’s (without permission, heh) a snippet from her new book, You Will Find Your People.
(Emphases in bold are mine.)
As much as it can be heartbreaking if someone turns out to be not what they seemed, or for your friendship not to be the forever friendship you’d hoped it would be, the upside is that this can bring you to the realization that you can trust yourself. Your suspicions that these are not the right friends for you anymore and that there is nothing you can, or should, do to fix it are warranted. I’ve found myself in this exact position so many times, but it shifted in a larger way only in the last few years. It is so beyond frustrating to realize that your “I finally have friends, yes! I did it!” was a bit of a false positive, and actually some of these friends are still kind of bad, and you just want to shout “AGAIN? Seriously?” And when it happened this time, I realized a lot of my friendships were still being chosen from the places where I was not yet healed and therefore my friendships were still not working, even if progress had been made. Realizing that was what was happening freed me to take a step back to reevaluate what I was tolerating, and what wasn’t mine to fix. I was, for the first time ever, allowing myself to say, “I tried my best in this friendship,” let it go, and focus on people who did love me and did care. Was it easy? Oh goodness, no, it was not.
For most of my life, I thought that friends were whoever chose you, who ever applied for the job. But now I realize that you deserve to choose who you let into your life. You get to choose who has access to you. And as hard as it can be, sometimes you can only meet the right people once you release the wrong ones who aren’t making you happy and change the rules for who gets access to you.
This can be so hard to do thought, especially because when you love someone, you’re invested, and you’ve put in the time to find a w ay to fit together. But everyone is a puzzle piece, and you can’t always see why the edges don’t quite line up when you’re together, but you know it when they don’t. You feel it.
You want to grow, you want to be better, but what if as you do, that you realize there are people who don’t fit in your life anymore? Sometimes the people you bonded with in the past fit you well at the time because you were wounded in the same way. But the more you work on yourself, the more you heal, the more you grow, and they don’t fit anymore, you will wonder what warped them. Was it weather? Did someone get this puzzle WET??? But the truth is you have changed shape. Your edges have softened, you have expanded. Maybe they stayed the same. Maybe they contracted or expanded in a different way. But you don’t fit anymore.
On the surface, this is growth, this is the goal. But no one really tells you what growth can cost you. You want the people who came with you to follow you to this new place. To grow as you grow, alongside you.
“But no one really tells you what growth can cost you.”
– Lane Moore
We believe that partners come and go, yes, but friends and family are forever, they are our constants. And I want my constants like they are free breadsticks at an Olive Garden. You told me I get them, I know other people got them, I saw them on TV, and I swear to god if you don’t bring them out for me soon I will smash every window in this Cincinnati mall location!
We spend so much time in our childhoods learning about practicing fairness, but the world itself is not fair, as much as we’d like it to be. We’re not all walking the same path, with the same resources and the exact same timing. Ideally, we’d all get the support systems we were promised, but then some of us don’t, and no one taught us how to fill those cracks. No one teaches us how to find power in vulnerability, how to build intimacy, how to grow as a person, or how to grieve when you’ve outgrown the people you once loved. Or when they outgrow you. And they definitely don’t teach us how to navigate the anxiety that can come up in your friendships. I am so endlessly nervous around some of my friends, which I assume you’re not supposed to be. But just the same I am often plagued with worry: What am I allowed to need? Who am I allowed to be? And is having these anxieties about friendship more about the baggage I have from my past, or is this friendship wounded, or worse, broken entirely?
So here are some signs your friendships are not working for you anymore. This doesn’t mean they’re irreparable, but you may need to talk things through. Again, recognizing these patterns is all about gathering information, so you can know what you need to do next:
You felt that, right? I bet you felt it at your core, at least with some of these paragraphs.
If you want her 7 tips about recognizing friendship patterns, well you get the book already!
It’s such a good read. It’s like having a friend coach you on all things friendship, incl friend breakups.
xo, Miranda
