Hello World!
Let's talk about friendships! One thing I am super grateful for in my life are my friends. I love them dearly and we have become family. They are the people I tell about my joy, my sadness, my frustration, my confusion, you name it I've told them. Friendship is important, you don't want to go throughout this world alone. And hey, if you need a friend I'll be yours!
While friendship is amazing and can be a pillar of strength it can also have its downsides. We can sometimes have toxic relationships. In my case, I had a codependent friendship. We relied on each other too much, and it was hard to function without each other. I thought this was perfectly normal. Now said friend and I had a little bit of an age gap, and it wasn't something that I paid attention to. It wasn't until I started hearing certain things that I realized certain things need to be done.
I was constantly referred to as so and so's best friend, and people would say of here is so and so? It wasn't until I saw that our identities had become one that I knew there was a problem. I am my own person, I am not someone else. And I was so comfortable being one with someone. It wasn't until I saw that this was problematic that I knew something had to be changed. There is a toxic trait that I have where I completely cut someone off with no explanation. I did this for years, and I did this up until last year when I worked through this in therapy. Surprise, surprise I am afraid of conflict (this will be for another blog post). Anyway, I realized that I had started to do that again and I knew something needed to change.
Now I will admit I am a coward when it comes to conflict. I am a people pleaser, and what comes with that is that I have a fear of making others upset (we'll unpack this in another blog post). I knew that I needed to do something. Being the adult that I am attempting to be, I knew I needed to step up and communicate. I will tell you what I did wrong and what I did right. What I did wrong was to communicate the need for distance via text message. What I did right was set a very needed boundary. It was the right thing to do with the wrong delivery.
To summarize, what I said was that I needed space. I felt that we were too self-reliant on one another and I felt that space would be beneficial. I let my friend know that I loved them and that I will always be there for them. My love for them will never change but, I needed to work on loving me too. And being in a codependent relationship was not on the path to doing that. The only thing my friend said was okay. Now to me, I felt like this was a small victory, to them they were hurt. I am at the lower end of the millennial generation. My friend happens to be in another generation, not making excuses for my behavior but I find texting over phone conversations is easier. It's fast, it's quick, and it gets the job done. Said friend, benefited from face to face conversation.
Fast-forwarding two or three weeks later we finally met face to face. I thought everything was fine and dandy but the vibe my friend was giving off said otherwise. When I asked what was wrong they told and me we had a tough conversation. They didn't appreciate the way I had gone about communicating. They saw my point of view and respected and understood it. They were hurt that I couldn't tell them face to face. I apologized and said I would do better, and that if I had any issues I would talk about it face to face regardless of the issue. That was easy, and I wish that I had this conversation a while ago.
Today we are much better, even better friends than before. I think that if you are going through this or feel that your friendship is lack of a better word, consuming you. I think that it is time to do something about it. Learn from me. Communicate! If you have a texting relationship or an in-person relationship, communicate. I apologize if this post was too long but I wanted to be honest, open, and transparent with you all.
Another day as an adult (who communicates)....damn,
Tasha
Wow...