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Female Friendships: BFF...L??
167 Plays1 year ago
Do you believe in friend soulmates? Are changing friendships stressing you out? On today’s episode, Julie explores the importance of female friendships and the inevitable struggles that come with them as life changes.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Outside of Session' Podcast
00:00:06
Speaker
Welcome to outside of session. I'm your host, licensed clinical social worker and therapist BFF, Julie Hilton. We're going to cover all the things here, whether it's mental health, entrepreneurship, relationships, trauma, or just life. Nothing is off limits. Hopefully you'll laugh a little and learn a lot, but most importantly, feel encouraged on your journey to live empowered.
The Importance and Complexity of Female Friendships
00:00:31
Speaker
Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of outside of session. I hope everyone is having a fabulous Wednesday. If you're listening to this when it drops. Um, today's episode, we're going to talk about something that was actually another request from an Instagram follower, and that is all about female friendships and not only the like importance and significance that they play in our lives as adults,
00:00:59
Speaker
but also like the struggles and complications that come with them as well, especially as we as we age and we go through different life changes and stuff like that. Like female friendships can be so beautiful, but they can also be really hard too. So today we're going to talk about all of those things.
Expectations and Boundaries in Friendships
00:01:19
Speaker
To start off with, I wanted to share with you a quote that I wish I knew where I saw this. It was somewhere on the internet. If I did a better job of research, I probably would look it up to be able to give credit to whoever said this, but I'm not. I'm just going to tell you about it. But there is this interview that I saw with this woman who said her female friendships, like the women that she had in her life,
00:01:42
Speaker
those relationships were just so like deep and rich and fulfilling that she found over time that it was becoming really hard to have a relationship with like a man, like a partner, um, because she was heterosexual and she was having a really hard time like connecting with a man because she was like that those relationships for her were just so much more like surface level.
00:02:09
Speaker
And the beauty and again, the richness of her friendships showed her what real connection was. And so it almost made it hard for her to have a relationship because she was just like, what even is this? We're so surface level. And I wanted to bring that up to say that sometimes I think that we get so
00:02:32
Speaker
obsessed with our relationship status, with our romantic relationship, that we forget how much friendships add value to our life. Um, and I also share that not to say anything about like relationships with men.
00:02:49
Speaker
there are plenty of men out there that can go really deep and you can have a great connection with and um like I would definitely say with my husband I have the deepest conversations of my life with him um so I'm not saying that that those relationships are always lacking but I do think that we sometimes forget how much we get out of our friendships and how much they can offer in our lives and like the beauty of them right like they can just be so
00:03:14
Speaker
Um, they can last so long and you could be in a lot of ways like your most authentic self with your girlfriends at times. Like they can meet so many of your emotional needs that when you think about like what they can be when we're talking about friendships on that level,
00:03:33
Speaker
then also like no wonder they can also be incredibly complicated and painful and there's a lot of struggles with them as well because I think that we normalize struggles in our romantic relationship like in marriage or if you're partnered with someone for a really long time like we normalize a lot of like the struggles that we have in those relationships and we think it kind of just comes with the territory but we expect friendships to be easy and fun
00:04:04
Speaker
when if you're going to have that level of vulnerability in a relationship, it is going to come with a lot of hard emotions as well. In other words, we can't put this expectation on our friendships for them to be this fulfilling and be this long-term and hold the depth of so much of what we share with our friends.
00:04:29
Speaker
And then have the expectation that they're always going to be easy and light and fun and always like go with the flow and never have any changes or struggles as well.
00:04:38
Speaker
So I want to start off by saying that like when we talk about the struggles in friendships and with our girlfriends, there has to be a somewhat of a level of expectation that it's going to be hard.
The Challenge of Making Friends as Adults
00:04:50
Speaker
Because again, like it's another person and they come with their own baggage and they come up with their own feelings. And we go through so many different changes in life that of course it's going to be painful at some point.
00:05:00
Speaker
And I want to start off by saying like the thing that is most important to me with having long term friendships and having successful friendships is number one managing expectations and number two really good boundaries.
00:05:16
Speaker
And if you didn't listen to the Boundaries episode, it was like number one or two this season. I think it's like the most listened episode that I have so far because I think everybody just knows that we need boundaries in relationships and we have a really hard time doing it because it's not something that we're typically taught how to do very well. And so those are two things that I really want to focus on today as well is just like our expectations and our boundaries that we set within our friendship.
00:05:41
Speaker
So I also want to point out that one thing that I've really recognized as a therapist as even in my own life is that I have so like I have this conversation all the time with clients. There are so many grown women who are really good people like good quality people.
00:06:00
Speaker
And they say all the time like I need new friends like I know I need more girlfriends in my life and I don't know where to go to find them. Like how do you make friends as an adult because it can be it can be a really big challenge. And on one hand, I want to normalize that and let you know that if like you're struggling with female friendships that you are not alone that that's actually a very common thing as an adult. But I also want to give like a bit of context to why I think that is.
00:06:27
Speaker
It's because literally we didn't have to like learn how to make friends and we didn't have to put much effort into making friends basically our entire life until we get to adulthood. Like think about it when you are a kid like your mom is setting up play dates and that largely is for herself so that she has like another adult to hang out with and can like have something to do because that's what you need when you have little kids.
00:06:51
Speaker
But there are forced friendships. You're basically your entire life. And then when you think about you go to pre-k kindergarten elementary school.
00:07:01
Speaker
you automatically are surrounded with all of your peers, like everybody is close to your age. And friends are for the picking, like they're all around you. And all you have to do is like, find your group, find your people. In elementary school, it's usually just like, who is in your class and who sits at your table. And that's who you ends up being like your best friend.
00:07:23
Speaker
And then by the time you get into like middle school and high school, you find your click a little bit better, whether you're with the band crowd or the cheerleading crowd or whatever it is, like you find your people, but you have so much to choose from and you're spending like 40 hours a week with them. And that's like all you're really expected to do is hang out with your peers all day. And I also think a lot about how, like when you just think about human development,
00:07:51
Speaker
from the time you're born until about I don't know maybe like 10 years old you get your sense of self from your family of origin like your nuclear family like whoever it is that's raising you whoever it is that's in your household so that could be um
00:08:08
Speaker
caregivers, grandparents that live with you or extended family that lives with you that plays a big role in your life siblings. Like those are the people that you get your sense of self from. That's who kind of tells you who you are. That's who you pick up their your sense of humor from, like all your family dynamics. And that's also whose opinion of you is most important. But by the time you get to like your pre teen years, that shifts to where
00:08:35
Speaker
your peers are most important and their opinion is most important. And that's where you start to get your sense of self from, which is why middle school is so like incredibly hard in so many ways is because all of a sudden your friend group is what's most important to you, like even more so than your family in a lot of ways. And that's why things like are so painful in middle school too, because like your friends opinions are everything to you.
00:09:00
Speaker
And the reason I bring that up is because this is also the first time in life where we start to develop like more of like a depth of those relationships where you share more with each other. And that's how you learn to be a friend. And at that point, you're also learning or you think that like friendships are for life.
00:09:21
Speaker
like LYLAS, BFFL, like you really think we're going to be best friends for life. And that's where you that's where we're also learning our first like commitment and relationships and like loyalty too.
00:09:37
Speaker
And so when you've got those these people that have been around, like at that point, for a lot of people, you met in elementary school, and now you've already got like five, six years under your belt with this person. When the dynamics start to change in the relationship, that's our first taste of like struggles in a relationship too, you know. But still, like even if you have a fallout with one friend, there's always like a another friend group just to fall in with because again, you're around your peers all the time in high school.
Life Changes Impacting Friendships
00:10:06
Speaker
And it's not until after high school graduation that I feel like it's the first time that people start to choose their own path. Like everybody is kind of on the same level of expectations in high school, as far as like academic expectations or extracurricular expectations, those kind of things like everybody's kind of on a level playing field then.
00:10:26
Speaker
like you finished ninth grade you're expected to go to tenth then you're expected to go to eleventh and so many things are already laid out for you on like you don't have a lot of decision on where your life is going at that point but as soon as you graduate high school and you're eighteen all of a sudden you're an adult and you're expected to make all these really big adult decisions
00:10:43
Speaker
But still, basically, you're expected to either go to college, go to trade school, or to start an entry level position in a job like or go to the military or something like that. Like it's still whatever's next is an entry level position. So you're there with other people starting entry level.
00:11:03
Speaker
So it's kind of still the same, like you're still around a lot of your peers for the next couple of years. But then after that, it's a free fall like free for all because some people are choosing to get engaged and get married and start having children. While some people are starting to use drugs, and some people are starting to go like in completely different directions, like literally right now,
00:11:27
Speaker
My best friend is a couple years older than me actually and she has a one year old. She has a two year old and a one year old. God bless her. And so she is just now at this phase of her life beginning motherhood while one of my really good friends from high school just had her first grandchild.
00:11:45
Speaker
And so their lives have gone in like such completely different directions and one isn't right and one is wrong. They're just very different. So my point is, is like you lose this sense of we know what we're doing together. And I think that that's where a lot of like women in their 20s start to feel like this comparison of what am I doing with my life? And that's why I think that people start to have a lot of shifts in their friend groups and they start to like have to let go of some friendships because you just start going in very different directions.
00:12:15
Speaker
And I don't think we know how to navigate that very well. Because again, like, expectations are changing of our friends, but we're not very aware of it. And we're not having a lot of conversations about it. And if you're not aware of it, and you don't know what your expectations are, you can't put any boundaries in place around it because you haven't even identified what needs to have a boundary yet. And I think one of the
00:12:43
Speaker
One of the things that is so hard for female relationships is that we start going through completely different experiences. And if you haven't gone through that experience, sometimes
00:12:56
Speaker
it can feel like your friends that haven't gone through that experience just are really disconnected and have no idea what you're going through. So they don't necessarily, it'll feel like they don't know how to support you or they just don't get where you're coming from. Where again, like when we're in high school, we kind of all know where we're coming from because we're having so many of the same or similar experiences. So what I mean by that is if you were the first one in your friend group to have a baby,
00:13:25
Speaker
then that can feel very isolating because all of a sudden you're the friend that can't go out as much anymore or is tired all the time or is having to, um, think of someone, like think of someone and put someone else first in ways that people, the other people in the friend group might not understand. So that can feel very isolating at times.
00:13:51
Speaker
And it's not limited to the changes that are happening in your early 20s. I have a couple of clients right now who are dealing with aging parents. And that is like a whole other journey that you start on. And if your friends aren't going through something similar,
00:14:12
Speaker
That is another thing that it can feel very isolating and feeling like nobody understands what I'm going through right now. They don't know how to support me because part of that is like a little bit true. You don't actually know how to support someone if they aren't able to tell you what they need. And if you haven't gone through it so you don't have your own like similar experience to fall back on.
00:14:30
Speaker
So everything from like going through getting married to getting divorced to having children to raising teenagers to grief to moving to job changes like all these different life changes are happening and Relationships change and what you can give like what you have the capacity to give to each other changes over time and
00:14:52
Speaker
And it's just so freaking complicated. And again, when we're talking about a relationship that has lasted years or perhaps decades, and we're talking about how much you both have changed, not only like the life changes that you've gone through, but how life has changed you through those experiences. So we're talking about personality changes and growth and like, um,
00:15:14
Speaker
just like I'm so different now than I was 10 years ago, right? We think about how much we change and then we expect the relationship to stay the same. No wonder it's so hard, right?
00:15:27
Speaker
And I want to share a personal story with one of my really good friends, one of my best friends, where we both, like we were thick as thieves for years. And then we both went through some really big life changes. And I think that we started to notice some strain in our relationship.
00:15:47
Speaker
And we had to sit down and have like a really kind of like hard conversation about how we both were probably holding each other to a standard of like wanting that person to be the person we met like 10 years ago and not like neither one of us were really evolving with how we expected that person to be.
00:16:16
Speaker
and how that was causing like a big division in the relationship. And what I mean is I felt like she wasn't allowing me to change. And then I realized that she felt like I wasn't allowing her to change either because I still needed her to be that old person and she still wanted me to be that old person. But we both were like, yeah, things are totally different now. I can't be that same person to you anymore because I'm not that same person. So we had this kind of like, come to Jesus talk one day where it was just kind of like, this is who I am now.
00:16:44
Speaker
And if we can't allow our friendship to catch up to the changes and allow our friendship to change, we're probably going to lose each other. And we either need to be okay with that, which would be painful for sure to like walk away from it, or we needed to give each other this space to grow and evolve. And of course we chose the latter and our friendship is great now.
00:17:06
Speaker
But our friendship looks way different than it did 10 years ago because of life, right? And I think that we cared about each other enough to sit down and have that really hard conversation. But I think so many female friendships end up falling apart because they don't have that kind of conversation with each other.
00:17:39
Speaker
Now, with that being said, I also feel like it is important to recognize that some friendships are not lifetime friendships.
00:17:51
Speaker
And that is okay. Like I think that some friendships serve a purpose in our life for like, for like a season. And it's not a matter of like, when people don't have a part, like they don't serve a purpose in your life, you let them go. But I'm just saying like,
00:18:11
Speaker
sometimes it is okay to let go and to love them and have so much like gratitude for the role that they played in your life at a certain point and to be able to say it's okay that they're not that person for me anymore.
00:18:27
Speaker
And that is a really, really hard call to make. It's hard emotionally, but it's also hard to like come to that conclusion and to decide when is this person, like when is it time for me to let them go.
Visualizing Friendship Layers
00:18:38
Speaker
And so I want to give you a kind of like a visual of a way to maybe work through this in a way that won't feel like you're having to cut somebody off in a negative way.
00:18:51
Speaker
or like completely cut them out of your life. But it's a visual that I think is really helpful and I've used this with my clients a lot. And I actually think that there's a name for this, like a clinical name for this diagram visual that I'm about to tell you about. But being the good clinician that I am, I can't even remember what it's called. But what I want you to do is I want you to imagine a circle.
00:19:14
Speaker
And it's a small circle. And I actually advise you doing this if like female friendships are something that you're maybe struggling with right now. Maybe this would be a good exercise for you to do, but I want you to draw a small circle in the middle of a page. And this circle represents like your core group of people like these are the people that have your back 100%.
00:19:34
Speaker
you can be your most authentic self with them. You communicate with them probably daily. Like these are the people that you spend the most time with. Like your lives are really intertwined with each other. So it's not like you're on the phone necessarily just telling each other about life, but you're like actually experiencing life together or you're like doing life together as some people like to say. And I hate that quote. Um, like that was so overused in church that I can't stand it now. Um, but essentially like you're doing life together.
00:20:04
Speaker
And what I'll say about this circle is that a mistake that I think people make is that they want the majority of the people in their life to be in this circle. So they want to have all of their friends in this circle. They want to have multiple family members in this circle. And I want you to shift away from that. If you have zero people in this circle,
00:20:34
Speaker
that's probably pretty average at some point in life. Like there are times when nobody meets that criteria in life. And that can absolutely be like a lonely place to be. But there are times in life when the majority of us, I don't know if I'll say the majority of us, there are plenty of us feel that nobody should meet that level of criteria.
00:21:00
Speaker
And so if your expectation is that you have multiple people in this inner circle, I want you to start to change and release that expectation of other people because that is not realistic. I think the average person has between one and three people in this circle.
00:21:18
Speaker
And that can be a spouse if you have a good relationship with your spouse where you would genuinely feel like they are your biggest supporter, your biggest cheerleader, you can share anything with them, you can be your most authentic self with them. That kind of spouse can go in there. I think if you are a spiritual person and you have a really healthy relationship with a higher power, whether that's God or whatever connection you feel, I think that relationship can go in there.
00:21:44
Speaker
even though that in and of itself is a completely complicated relationship. And I should probably do an episode on that eventually. Um, but maybe a higher power, maybe God can go into there. Um, and then if you're lucky, you might have a friend or two possibly, but we're talking about the person that is ride or die is your first call for everything that knows every single one of your secrets.
00:22:14
Speaker
Um, that you don't have to catch them up on life because there's never anything that they're not there for. So that can be a friend. Maybe that can be a family member. Like, um, if you're really close with a sister or a cousin or like your mom or somebody like that,
00:22:32
Speaker
maybe one other person can go into that category. But I think we need to shift away from the feeling that lots of people meet this criteria because this level of connection you can't have with that many people. And so I think that that's the first mindset shift is to think there are times when maybe you don't feel like anybody goes in that circle. And
00:22:57
Speaker
That's pretty honest, right? And then at the most, I don't think I've ever seen anybody have more than like three people in this circle, if we're being completely honest here.
00:23:08
Speaker
But then I want you to draw a ring like another circle around that circle. And that is like the next level of relationship. And I think that that's where it's more appropriate to put most of the relationships that we're actually trying to cram into that most inner circle. I think a lot of them need to function more in that second layer. And to me, the second layer is friendships that are like,
00:23:37
Speaker
They definitely know the majority of what's going on in your life. You see them pretty frequently or if they live like cross country or something like that, you're in touch pretty frequently and you have developed a good way to maintain that relationship. It's not just like the affection that you have for that person.
00:23:55
Speaker
There are times that when I have a friend that I love dearly, but I only talk to them a handful of times a year, I would not put them in this category. Because when we do talk, we it would take hours to actually catch up on like the day in and day out of life.
00:24:10
Speaker
But maybe I keep them posted on the majority of like the high level things that are going on in my life. So that second layer is the people that you actually call when there's an issue, but they're probably not your first phone call that probably is when you're in like the first layer.
00:24:27
Speaker
I also think that this layer you can be for the most part your most authentic self around them. But it may be that there are certain things that you're more reserved on. Like there may be certain things that you don't feel comfortable sharing with them.
00:24:42
Speaker
And that could be for a handful of reasons. It could be like your own fear of judgment that prevents you from it, even if it's not like an actual concern, like they might actually be very non-judgmental and could be potentially really supportive if you chose to share that with them. But for some reason, you have hesitations with it, which is probably more of like a you thing than it is a them thing. But for the majority of yourself, like you feel like you can be your most authentic self with them.
00:25:07
Speaker
I would also say that this category you probably have some like time under your belt with this person. Like it's not necessarily the person that you just met at work and you guys clicked immediately and you're getting close really fast. Like I would say this layer you need a little bit of like
00:25:23
Speaker
have a little bit of longevity with them. Like you've probably met each other's families, you've probably been around for multiple either like relationships or issues or stuff like that. Like you've got to have a little bit of history with them to be probably in that second category. And I think what's really important as you make your diagram for yourself is to think about the expectations that you have for people
00:25:47
Speaker
Like the difference of expectations that you have for people in like this first innermost circle versus the second circle. So like with your first circle, you might say, if I were in an emergency, I would expect these people to drop whatever they're doing and come help me. Like for me, my husband is definitely in my innermost circle. Like if I had a flat tire, I got in a wreck or something like that, he would be my first call. And I would expect that nothing in his life is more important than
00:26:17
Speaker
coming to me if I were hurt, right? People in my second ring, or my second circle, they would get a phone call about it for sure. And I might call to see if they can come help me. But I don't think that I would necessarily expect them to drop everything.
00:26:34
Speaker
Like I don't think that there would be an expectation that I would be upset with them if they couldn't drop everything is what I mean like if they couldn't I would probably go to somebody else in that second or I would be calling the people in my first being like where you at. But I think it's really important to define that there is a different set of expectations for circle two than circle one.
00:26:53
Speaker
And again, like the reason why that's so so important to me is if we try to cram everybody into the first circle, we're going to hold everybody to this unrealistic expectation that they can do for us and be for us something that they cannot be. And I think that that's where hurt feelings come in and resentment comes in. And where you have like a lot of strain in the relationship is because you have unrealistic expectations of the person.
00:27:19
Speaker
So then I want you to draw another ring, another circle, and we're going out to a third layer of relationships in our lives. And these are people that the way I would describe like this third layer is probably people who you have so much affection for, but for whatever reason, like you can't be as close to them. So that could be like distance or, um,
00:27:44
Speaker
family and job responsibilities. Like everybody is just so tied up and they're so busy that you just don't have the capacity. And a lot of that is because
00:27:55
Speaker
you have like a responsibility to the people in your first ring, then you have a responsibility to the people in your second ring. And if people are in your third ring, like they, they're not as much of a priority, because they have their own first ring and second ring, and they are like responsible to other people. So in this category, I think about like,
00:28:20
Speaker
old friendships that maybe you're just not as close to anymore, but you still love them dearly and you want to know what's going on in their life, but you don't expect to be the person that they call first. You know that you're going to be further down on their list if something is going on in their life and vice versa.
00:28:38
Speaker
And I think that that's really important because again, the way I'm describing it is you still have so much love and affection for each other, but there is an understanding that the expectations are different because of where you guys are in life and that they're just not in your first or second ring anymore.
00:28:56
Speaker
or maybe they never have been. Maybe it's these people that you've met and you love, but for whatever reason, the friendship hasn't grown and blossomed into something deeper. So they've always kind of stayed on that third ring.
The Role of Work Friends and Evolving Dynamics
00:29:07
Speaker
And another thing that I want to point is, that's okay. And I think another reason why people get hurt in friendships a lot is they think that if you meet someone that the goal is to get them to your innermost layer.
00:29:23
Speaker
And I don't think that should be the goal for everybody. Like some people are meant to be your third string relationships. And they are beautiful when they're there, and they function really well, and they add so much like depth to your life. But they may not ever see you at your most like vulnerable, authentic self. And I think for a lot of people, that means they think it's shallow, and therefore adds no value to life.
00:29:51
Speaker
But here's the thing, I'm going to be honest. We're all so busy and so overwhelmed that we do not have the emotional and mental capacity to be everybody's first ring. We don't.
00:30:08
Speaker
And when you try to be that for everybody, that's where you burn yourself out and you're not able to do it. And so you end up doing a really poor job of it and you end up disappointing people. Let people in your third ring stay in the third ring. It doesn't mean that it's shallow. It doesn't mean that it is only a surface level. It just means that we have different layers of relationships in our lives and
00:30:35
Speaker
the accumulation of all of these different layers, it was what gives life so much like depth and beauty, in my opinion. So if you have someone that you're not really close to, it doesn't mean that Oh, they're undependable, or it never moved past like a certain mark, because they couldn't go there. It just meant that that's not that's not who they're supposed to be in your life. They are your third layer for a reason. And people in that third layer can still bring so much like joy.
00:31:03
Speaker
and they can still be counted as your people. It's just on a different level. And I even think sometimes about like our work friends. Work friends are so important y'all. That's where we spend so much of our time. And it's so funny to me because I can think about people that were like 30 years older than me like when I was 20 they were in their 50s and we got along so good.
00:31:23
Speaker
And they served as like a little bit of a mentor, but we were also in the trenches together at times. And like those relationships really like meant a lot to me because they made me laugh, they helped me get through my shift, like for whatever reason. But just because we don't keep in touch regularly, just because they're not coming to my birthday party, just because they're not the first person I call when I'm going through something, it doesn't mean that they didn't serve a purpose in my life. It doesn't mean that we didn't like add joy to each other's lives. It doesn't mean that they weren't there for me at times.
00:31:53
Speaker
And again, like vice versa, like sometimes our work friends, we know the most about them. You know what I mean? Because it's like there is this level of separation. So not everybody like here's a big point that I want to drive home, not everybody is supposed to be in your inner circle. Let your third string friends I'm calling them third string, but you get what I'm saying. Like I don't mean that is like a negative at all. Let them stay there and let them be in your life and don't write people off because they're not in your inner circle.
00:32:22
Speaker
not everybody is going to be. And then there probably is another layer that exists beyond that, which I let it just be like, I don't even draw another circle, I just let it be the corners of the page that are left. And those are the people that intentionally
00:32:40
Speaker
are probably not a part of your life anymore. Whether you've had to either like let that friendship go or you just haven't heard from each other in a really long time so it like fizzled out on its own. Or it could be people that you very intentionally broke the relationship with and there are boundaries around those relationships where it's like uh-uh this person doesn't have access to my life anymore because they treated me poorly. But these are the people that like when you think about your life they come to mind
00:33:07
Speaker
But either the relationship has fizzled out or you intentionally don't have contact with them anymore. But I still feel like they deserve to be on the page somewhere. You know what I mean? And so that's how I visualize it. Obviously, you tweak it for yourself when you're doing this. But here's here's why here's some of the points that I want to make with this diagram or whatever. There are different layers for a reason.
00:33:34
Speaker
And if you haven't identified where people are in your life, then your expectations of them are going to be really like blurred. And if you wonder why someone isn't meeting your expectation, it probably is because you are trying to force them to be into like a layer that they really aren't functioning at anymore. And a lot of times that is because this isn't an evolving picture. You don't meet someone
00:34:04
Speaker
Put them in a category and then they stay there for life. That's not how it's meant to be because that's not how life works. People that were your number one at some point may not be your number one. They might slide to a number two.
00:34:16
Speaker
people that were your solid two for a decade, they might actually be a three at this point because life has happened and they have changed and your circumstances have changed. And the reason why you're having a lot of like tension and resentment in the relationship is because they really and truly should be at layer three and you're still trying to hold them to layer two.
00:34:40
Speaker
And I think that it can be extremely painful to be honest with yourself and say, this person is not my number two anymore. This person because of life and because of lots of different reasons, now probably should be a number three, or maybe they're even at this point on that outer layer.
00:35:01
Speaker
that doesn't even like they're like floating on the edges of the paper. And the painful part is you haven't accepted that you're still expecting them to function at a number two. And really, they aren't anymore. They're just not at that place anymore because life has happened.
00:35:18
Speaker
And the reason I really like this activity is because it gives you a visual that when you sit down and you're really honest with yourself about where you stand with people, you can have some of those hard conversations with yourself first, but then potentially with them as well about what your expectations are for the relationship. And if they have changed working to accept like, okay, well, where does this person fit into my life now? And here's like a big,
00:35:46
Speaker
caveat with it or a big like point that I want to drive home. It is not a bad thing for people to change. It is not a bad thing for someone who you used to be really close with to go through a phase where they move organically to a different layer because of life. It doesn't mean that one day you guys won't get close again and they end up moving from like three back to two.
00:36:16
Speaker
It just means that you're taking an honest assessment with where has the relationship gone? What do you have to offer them? What do they have to offer to you? How do you guys function in the relationship at this point? And putting this on paper really helps you to say like, okay, maybe I'm the one that has like an unrealistic expectations of them.
00:36:37
Speaker
And if I change my expectations, the relationship would actually function a lot better and there wouldn't be that tension. And I think that that's when I described like the conversation I had to have with my friend. Like we had to have this honest talk with each other about what are we actually expecting from each other?
00:36:56
Speaker
And how has life changed that we can't have those expectations of each other anymore? And what do we want to do with that? Do we want to adjust to each other's new expectations so that they, so that you can like preserve that relationship? Or do you want to take a step back from each other, which again is not a bad thing. Like that's part of life. That's part of growth is that not everybody is going to stay the same in our life for the rest of our life. Like BFFL,
00:37:25
Speaker
changes a little bit over time. It doesn't mean that there's a loss of loyalty. And it doesn't mean that there's a loss of love. It just means that we are evolving and accepting change. And again, thinking about
00:37:39
Speaker
Thinking about how hard marriage can be if you're trying to spend your entire life with one person for like multiple years, multiple decades. Thinking about how much you change over that time. And that's probably the person that you have your life combined with the most.
00:37:55
Speaker
And so to think that a friendship who your life is not as combined, and by that I mean like your address, you know what I mean? Like the day in and day out of life, like your responsibilities and stuff like that. To think that a friendship would not change over time is just to me an unrealistic expectation that we put on other people. But if you allow for room to grow and change and space between you,
00:38:21
Speaker
I think like when you give each other that permission, then it doesn't, you won't take as much of a hit to the love that's between the two of you if you have more grace for how the other person is changing and how you're changing.
Conclusion: Gratitude and Purpose of the Podcast
00:38:36
Speaker
Okay, I have gone way over what I expected to talk about today, but I hope this was helpful. I hopeful it was helpful if you're struggling in some of your friendships. A, to think about like why they're so hard is because they bring us so much. They offer us so much value in our life.
00:38:51
Speaker
and B to think about it is okay for them to change over time and having that really honest conversation with yourself of how have things changed? Maybe what expectations are you holding other people to or vice versa that you need to have like an honest conversation with yourself and probably them too about this is not where we are anymore and that's okay.
00:39:14
Speaker
And three, like visualizing where they are kind of like on your diagram, so that you can look at, okay, well, if I'm if I'm moving away from this person, who does that allow to come in?
00:39:30
Speaker
to be okay with that. And I think that that is one of the most painful thing about any relationship is accepting when it's not as close as it once was. I'm not saying don't grieve that. I'm just saying that it's normal and it's okay to allow yourself to go through the process of accepting it so that you can release any or avoid any like resentment or tension in the relationship.
00:39:55
Speaker
And again, with that being said, shout out to all my besties who listen to this podcast and they hype me up and they are just so empowering. We have such like a good fun time together. Like thank each and every one of you for the value that you add to my life.
00:40:10
Speaker
And if nothing else, I hope this podcast helps you to think about your girls today and maybe just send your bestie a message right now about how much they mean to you and the value that they add to your life and just have a bit of gratitude for the blessing that they are to you. That's it. That's all I've got today. I'll talk to you next week. Bye.
00:40:31
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Outside of Session. Remember, while I am a licensed therapist, this podcast is not a substitute for individual therapy. The contents of this episode are for educational and entertainment purposes only. If you are having a mental health emergency, please dial 911 for immediate assistance or dial 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.