I have struggled all my life with letting people go.
I believe I come by this naturally; a combination of a introverted and nerd-like childhood and young adulthood combined with living in a small town will do that to you. What it manifests itself as is the inability to let people drop out of my life.
I say "drop out" as if this some kind of intentional thing. It is not. It simply the nature of life itself. People get new jobs, people move, people get new interests - and move on.
Not me, though. For years, I have sought to breathe life into relationships that had passed their expiration date.
I have written about it many time before, but I am someone who grew up believing that long time relationships where just the way it worked. Part of this was reading both history and fantasy/science fiction, where historically people often stayed in a single location or where the band of adventurers came together and spent the rest of their time in one's company. Part of this was simply that I had a core group of friends that followed me, one from K-8, one in high school and beyond.
But that, as I have been reminded, is the exception not the rule.
To be fair to myself, I have gotten better about this over time. Originally I would do everything in my power to keep the connection going, probably to the point of being annoying (I say probably. I was annoying). Now, it is more of a periodic check-in where the periodicity cycles longer and longer until a new balance is found or the communication simply ends.
It is better. But it is not easier.
Part of that lack of ease is, I suspect, simply the fact that I somehow feel that I have failed in the relationship: I let the relationship down and that in the event that something happens I will not be there to help or support. Which is rather taking a lot of credit for things I may or may not provide to the relationship.
It helps - a bit - to remind myself of a saying that The Ravishing Mrs. TB found long ago, that there are life friends and friends that come in and out our lives for a season. I had believe most relationships should be life friends; imagine my surprise when it really turns out most of us are in another's life for a season only.
Will I continue to get better about it? I have to; the idea that somehow one person can maintain a relationship that is not longer required is foolish (trust me, I have tried multiple times with the pre-determined result). I am training myself instead to learn to enjoy the relationship while I have it and gratefully let it pass on when the time has come.
Like flowers: here for a season bringing beauty into our lives, then fading away.
The friends I had in high school and university were left behind when I moved out of state to my first full time job. The new friends I made there were left behind when I moved back to my home state, eight and a half years in Chicago was long enough for me. Distance has a big impact on maintaining friendships, at least for me. Enjoy those friends when you can TB.
ReplyDeleteNylon12, geography and involvement play a huge role. Part of it - naturally - is that we can really only focus on things that are directly near us because we have to live and work. Every "out there" relationship is some way not focusing on the here and now. Which makes those relationships much more of an investment. I suppose part of my "awakening" is understanding just what a big investment that can be for people - it was never so much me as it was them needing to focus on the next stage of life.
DeleteI've been in that same classroom. Learning that God can bring people into your life for a time has helped me a lot. Like Nylon12 said, enjoy what you have while you have it.
ReplyDeleteSame here, STxAR. Although I have to admit this lesson was a lot more unexpected and a lot more sudden than I had anticipated needing.
DeleteI found myself thinking about how the Book of Face keeps me up to date on old friends from past lives, but in most cases I'm content to find out that oh, so-and-so is doing such-and-such these days. It's interesting to know but not so interesting that I'm prompted to reconnect in a more meaningful way. These are folks from those past seasons you talk about.
ReplyDeleteWarren, I have the same experience. It is certainly not that I wish ill upon people simply because I no longer interact with them, but by and large there is no real urge to reconnect with them more than the pleasant "that is nice" feeling one has.
DeleteI will say I have tried to make those reconnections in the past. They are seldom if every the same for either party. There is the initial burst of "what happened over the last X years", followed by a catch up of recent days, then usually very little. Our lives are so different now that we can share little but updates.
I think that friendships may be likened to sailing ships going to the same destination.
ReplyDeleteSometimes you are close and sometimes not.
Deep and lasting friendships need a close connection, and time and distance constantly erode friendships.
Both circumstances, and people change/evolve over time.
John, that is a really good analogy. And time and distance do actively erode friendships; it is only by conscious effort on both sides that they are maintained.
DeleteMany work friendships, for example, evolve out of the shared experience of the job; remove that experience and there is little binding others together, except if they had made the effort to have a friendship beyond the job.
I've always though friendships are only as strong as the foundation you built them upon. So many of my friendships are based upon single things, usually geographical and thus the walls quickly tumble when that single thing goes away, i.e. one of us has moved. The stronger of my friendships are the ones where we have many different things in common and with enough time, a solid foundation gets built to overcome the loss of one or two of those connections.
ReplyDeleteEd, a much more cogent explanation to my rather sparse comment that work relationships tend to be only about work. To reach that level though, you need time and connection (e.g., they seldom if ever happen quickly).
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