on friendship

I’ve always thought friendship was a two way street. Growing up, my sister and I were taught that you get in what you put out. I did have a friend who commented that I expect a lot from my friends, but she acknowledged that I expect a lot from myself too, so it seemed fair, that I should maybe be more patient and flexible with both. I’ve been working on it for a while now, and I feel I just let things go more easily. On Monday night, I wanted to accomplish all these things after work. Instead I downed half a bottle of wine and ate dinner in front of the TV, read my book in bed and was asleep by 9. Instead of beating myself up about it, I let it go. And with friends, sometimes it’s not worth it. If they can’t make it to your birthday or they can’t make it out one night, it doesn’t mean you’re not friends. There are some things though that need to be reciprocal, that have bothered me with some friends lately, and I decided to do an experiment. Instead of always planning, and asking them to do things all the time, I left it. Just to see if they’d reciprocate with an invite, or drop me a line to hang out. Guess what. They didn’t. It took almost a month. But I’ve decided (2012), that I’m not going to stress about it. It’s their choice what kind of friends we are (weekly, monthly, bi-monthly), and I’m not going to push it. I have friends who want to see me every week, or talk to me every day, and I’m not going to bend over backwards to try to organize everything all the time. Friendships are like relationships, and you have to be able to communicate and reciprocate. I believe that when something is bothering you, and bothering you enough, it’s worth it to get it out on the table. Some people would rather be passive aggressive about it, but I had no qualms, before Christmas, to tell a friend, that just because she had a boyfriend, I didn’t think it negated our friendship, nor was an excuse not to spend time on it. She may have disagreed. Boys seem to sometimes cause girls to re-evaluate their priorities. But I believe, if and, when relationships end, you should still have friends. And even more so, you need friends when you’re in a relationship. My girlfriend and I had this conversation just before Christmas, “Should your significant other be your be all end all and need to know everything about you?” Both of our answers were no, but I’ve been surprised to find many of my girlfriends, who I thought to be very independent ladies, get into a relationship and everything goes flying out the window in favor of him. I get it, I get the honeymoon phase, but everything in moderation, and sometimes learning to balance can be one of life’s greatest challenges. In favor of not killing every relationship with high expectations (2012), I’ve just chosen to put energy where it’s coming back to me, and that’s in those reciprocal relationships, where the other person puts in the same energy I choose to in relationships. It’s that simple.