Friendship Breakups
A few days ago, I listened to the Voice Hugs Podcast, with Vivian and Rowena as the host. I knew the podcast from Rowena, because she has a Youtube channel called Rowena Tsai and she also work at Beauty Within.
Their last podcast episode, at the time I am writing this blog is about friendship, the title was “We Used To Be Best Friends”. I myself have a rocky friendship throughout the years. From friendship breakups, rejections and even toxic friendship, I can honestly say that I went through it all.
Hearing the podcast really cheered me up because their thoughts regarding their friendship, reflected my life. So I decide to summarize what the podcast talk about, so here are some points.
1.You can always grow closer after growing apart
If you are like me, then you know that there are people who are not good at keeping friendship, including myself. While the people around me seems to have a knack of it, from my sister who are still close with her best friend from elementary school. Or my brother and mom, who have a close best friend basically since there were in kindergarten.
But I seem to not have their traits. My friendship’s seems to be the opposite, where there is always and end date for our friendship. Like from elementary to middle school, every time I went up a grade I had to find new friends because my old friends would stop hanging out with me.
But it change in 11th grade where I finally got a best friend. And we manage to be close for 2 years, despite going through COVID and not seeing each other, which is my greatest streak. But lately I feel that we are growing apart. Not because of any drama, mind you. It’s because we went to different universities and we talk to each other less and less.
Honestly at first, I try to fight us drifting apart. Either with late phone’s call or chatting everyday. But still it seem not to be working because we were not able to connect as we used to do. I thought that I am going to fail my longest friendship yet to date.
But I listen to the 12th episode of Voice Hugs Podcast and I felt better when I heard Vivian talked about her experience that is similar to mine. Basically she talked about during her senior high school , she drifted away from her high school best friend. She saw that her best friend became too busy with her first relationship and her college freind, that she felt that she was being replaced.
Her situation mirrors mine where I do fear that I am being replaced within my friendship and how I hate that my friend and I are growing apart. I was anxious on how Vivian’s friendship would end.
She told that she did ended up in a fight with her best friend. But the good news is that she resolved her issue. And she still stay in touch with her best friend and their friendship lasted until now.
What she said gave me hope that even though my best friend and I are going through a tough patch, that does not mean that is the end. Like now, I think of it my friend and I are going through a new season of our friendship where we do no talk everyday because we are scrambling to get things done.
Or in a cooler terms, my friend and I are now in the college arc. And it is matter of time, until we level up our friendship into something better.
So whenever I have anxious thoughts regarding my friendship, I just take a deep breathe and said to myself, I can grow closer to my friend even if we grow apart.
2.Friends come and go
The second thing I got from hearing Voice Hugs is that friends come and go, and I never felt validated more than I heard the hosts talking about friendship that ends.
I am a prime example of seeing my friends and go, because I experience it all the time. Like I said before, when I was growing up, I never have a set group of friends. We just stopped talking either because we are in different school or different class.
What I find true from this statement is that you cannot stop a friend from leaving. It is very true because last year, I tried hard to hold on to my old friendship and I failed hard.
So, basically last year I decided to confront my ex best friend, C. How I had enough of her attitude and how I knew that we are slowly growing apart. Basically I had told her either she change or our friendship will end. Then We made amends and we both promised to strengthen our relationship.
But sadly I was wrong. Because after graduation, we decided to hang out and I felt that there was distance between us (literally and figuratively). Like there was a distance because my other other friend, A was between us all the time. And we could not talk freely because we were always cautious with our word.
And after that encounter, I did not only lose C, I lost A too. I do not know why I both of them but now I know it was because we were going our separate ways. But back then I felt the most lost in my life, because I genuinely did not know what I did wrong.
While from the Podcast, Rowena also shared a similar experience but the other way around. She knew that she hurt her best friend at the time, and she apologized for her behavior through email, and she never got a reply back but at least she found closure.
And hearing her story, it made me found closure with my last friendship. Like I really did what I can to make it as long as possible and it ended anyway. But I found peace knowing that in the end that I did everything I could and there is something to be proud about.
And it did gave me hope about starting a new friendship, because now I know that I have learned and I do hope that the right people will stay in my friendship. It might happen to me in 10 years but it is not impossible,
3. Do not pick your eggs in one basket
This advice seem random but I swear it had something to do with the podcast. So Rowenas and Vivian’s last advice that I recalled was to diversify friends. I know it seems pretty selfish to have a friend for one purpose and only go to them for that purpose. But let me explain.
I always take it personally when someone only calls me for that one very specific thing. It could be about college thing (mostly) or about other assignments related things. But mostly people only contact me if they had a need for me.
I was always offended that people did not check up on me even though I helped them so much. The old me would think : I invested my free time to help them and in return, they just use me. Bah, they’re bad.
However I realized that I am asking too much here because as much that I want people to be close to me, how can I expect it to happen if I do the same thing.? Like I also only contact them if I need them.
And there’s no shame of having a friends for a specific purpose but we all have our strength and weakness. I used to hate it how it seems that we are utilizing people but in reality that is not the truth.
The truth you cannot rely everything into 1 person because they have lives and their own struggles. And you might not get along all the time, because you are not growing with your friend at the same time. You might have a different understanding with them, after all, growth is not always linear
I realized that I rely everything on my best friend. To rant about college advice, to give me reassurance and to talk about random stuff. And the moment, we are growing apart, I was instantly scared because I feel like a sense of myself is lost within her.
Basically I have to learn to be patience with my best friend and stop relying everything at her. For now, I only contact her if I need to talk about random things because I know that she gets me. And this is not permanent because if we can grow closer again then we can talk about anything. But now, in our new level of friendship, it’s time to take a few steps back.
I am planning to talk more to my college friend and stop relying heavily on my best friend. I am not pressuring myself to find a best friend, but rather I’m just going to try to make friends while I still can and have hope that I can find the right person.
So that’s all about the episode. Do you like what I am writing about? Then so, you can check Rowena’s and Vivian’s full podcast below and you guys can click the link: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0mkqyJ7vKbSfzqbLGI0D8l?si=94184b20fe494536
That’s all from me. Joline.
