How to View Changing Friendships

Oct 22, 2014 by Jim and Jerolyn Bogear

 

I was reading an article online about keeping your friends through change – particularly when moving from your 20s to your 30s. So many major life changes can happen during those years – college, new jobs, marriage, children, your brain becomes fully developed. (As the mother of 20-year-olds, I couldn’t resist adding that last one.)

But with those changes – at whatever age – our friendships continue in a new way or they don’t. Sometimes, distance, life-experience, careers…various life-changing events, can pull us a different direction from our friends. That is when we have to view those friendships with new eyes.

Now let me say, sometimes those relationships simply end and that isn’t always a bad thing. Maybe the change is so great that we have lost all points in common. But instead of mourning the loss, we can celebrate the value of that relationship in the time we had it. That friendship was for a season, and it was good. We added something to each other’s life for that time. Now we’re  moving on.

Those are usually painful moments to face. I’m not sure if it’s because you miss the friendship or because it reminds you that you are getting older, life is changing, and you have to change with it.

But there can be a positive side to changes in our friendships.

• You can have friends all over the world from different periods of your life.
• With communication so readily available today, you don’t have to lose touch even if distance has separated you. We have friends from our childhood whom we connect with periodically.
• You can learn from your friends who are at different life-stages than you. Instead of bemoaning the difference, embrace the experience. Value them for the different stage that they are entering and celebrate it with them.
• You are opening up your time to meeting and befriending new friends — ones who can enrich your life just as much as the old ones…maybe even more.

Human beings, and thus the friendships we form, are organic. To think we will all stay the same person with all the same interests, ideas, and life-style just isn’t practical. But we can maintain those occasional friends and the long, abiding ones, as well, when we embrace the change and truly value our friendships for what they are – a gift.

How do you view your changing friendships?

~Jim and Jerolyn