My Friendships

The previous post, along with some SARK books I have been reading lately got me thinking about some of my friendships.

Two of my best childhood friends moved overseas. One I kept in contact with continually and though we have only seen each other 3 or 4 times in what must be the last near 20 years (god am I really that old), we can pick up the phone and it is always just like yesterday. I do miss her terribly and wish I had the money to go see her, but Perth is one of those places that seems way more expensive than anywhere else to get to and so I've only ever managed 1 visit to her. The other friend, I lost contact with for approximately 10 years and just reconnected 4 years ago. After several months of talking on the phone, I went and surprised her in Brisbane, not knowing what our friendship would really be like. She looked a little different, having grown her hair long and of course had grown up, married and had children, as had I. We sat and talked for a while, then all of a sudden I looked at her and said 'Oh there you are'. The old person had sort of just come back to me. We laughed, we cried and my time with her was all too short. I also miss her terribly. Her Mother (who was friends with my mother - we were neighbours), recently passed away and I felt loads of pain, for the loss of a very special lady, for my friend and for not being able to be there for her in person.

It all got me thinking about how despite the miles apart, the fact I had lost contact with one of them at one stage and the fact that sometimes we may get so caught up in our own lives that we might not speak for a couple of months, we managed to remain such good friends. Certainly I have or have had friends that live just around the corner and time apart has meant a weakening in the friendship. I also have friends here who fit into the above category of remaining friends despite a lack of contact and pondered what the difference is between the two types of groups. My conclusion - the difference is expectations!

Those friendships that have remained strongest, were ones where there was no set or hidden expectations. There was no rule for the amount of contact, or time between contact or any form of keeping score on who phoned who last (which believe it or not, 1 of my friendships died a slow natural death of, because it had apparently been my turn to call her for way too long???)

SARK puts it nicely too, when she says, that "no 1 friend can be everything". Different friends bring different things, have different needs etc and so we need lots of different friends to fulfill all our needs. She also talks about the fact that sometimes friendship do die and it can be sad, but that just really makes room for something else to grow in the friendship garden - what a nice way to put it.

So, that said, I openly admit to the fact that I often get caught up in my own life and what's going on with me, to the point that I have neglected friendships or failed to put in sufficient effort to strengthen a friendship and I am aware that I need to make more of an effort with many of them. I'm also aware, that sometimes I will fail at this too (as was the case with Lisa) and that sometimes this may mean the end of a friendship (definitely and thankfully not the case with Lisa) . I'm confident however that my friendships without expectations will be the ones that continue regardless, as these are the ones where both parties have come to realise that the friendship is a gift, not an obligation!

And when all is said and done, before we can truly be great friends with others, we need to be great friends with ourselves, accepting all our own faults, so we can accept those in others.