You can’t force a friendship. If you want to avoid double date drama, you just have to practice amazing diplomacy.
One of the most important questions to ask yourself if you’re giving someone a lot of leeway is this: would you cancel on them for the same reason?
You can find yourself in a tough position if you decide to keep a friend around who is doing things you don’t agree with. How do you remain a supportive presence in her life when you don’t support her choices?
There are many reasons we might hold on to friendships that make us feel less than great, but it's important to evaluate whether that relationship is doing you any good.
“Around this age, people begin to hone in on their values and their life purpose. It is around this age that there is a change in their interests, and people begin to think about life and their future differently due to major life changes."
When we don’t have social engagements to go to and the only way to carry out friendships is through video chats and simple outdoor park hangs, we see friendships for what they really are.
As you get older, you start to discover what your values and beliefs are around some pretty major things like money, fidelity, and politics…These are things that didn’t impact your friendships when you were young.
What happens when your best friend announces she’ll be marrying her boyfriend you do not like? Maybe he’s fine even but, he’s just all wrong for her. Everybody knows it. The other friends. Her family. It’s starting to look like you won’t just be laughing about this relationship in a few years
You start paying close attention to who initiates the hangs. You realize there are some friends you’d literally never see if you didn’t reach out to them. You see what happens if you go ghost on them for a few months and…nothing. Well, you decide you’re done with them.
“Wow, your friends are like…really nice” my childhood friend, who was visiting from out of town, said in awe after attending a small girl’s night I’d put together in her honor. I wanted her to meet the other wonderful women who’d come into my life throughout the years when her and I had kept up […]
Every vendor she finds—from the florist to the caterer to the DJ—you take issue with. You look up Yelp reviews, taking a screenshot of the negative ones. You tell her disaster stories of others who tried to have their weddings at that venue. You don’t know why you’re doing this. It’s not like she’s going to cancel the wedding because she can’t find a florist just yet. But you feel like, in your way, you’re protesting the wedding by being negative about the vendors.
Be careful not to spend all of your time with your new boyfriend, leaving your friend in the dust. Or, on the flip side, if you’re the single friend, try to have a balanced outlook: is your bestie really neglecting you or are you perhaps a bit codependent on her, and can’t handle her having another significant relationship in her life?