The Seventh Question: Thank You For Being a Friend!
A Bustle article that made the internet rounds this week has me questioning what it means to be a good friend. Let's discuss.
Sorry not sorry if this song is stuck in your head now:
This week I want to explore friendship. What it means to us, how we receive it, how we give it, and more.
What do you think a healthy friendship looks like?
I’ll tell you why this topic is on my mind in just a second, but first some icebreakers to get you going:
How do you think you show up for your friends?
Do you let your friends know when you need support? Why or why not? What about letting them know they’ve hurt you, or made you happy?
Have you ever gone through a friendship break-up? Why? How do you feel about that decision today?
How should friends handle conflict?
How do your friends raise you up? Hold you back? What about how you do the same for them?
Make a list of the most impactful friendships in your life. Do you notice any commonalities? What can you learn from them?
Drop a Line
As always, if you ever want to share something that one of our questions has brought up for you, just drop me an email or a DM with your story.
And always feel free to hop in the comments below. I’d love to take some of your journaling prompts for future editions!
A Parting…Something
Friendship is our topic this week because a few folks have shared this article with me and I’ve seen it pop up a few times on my Twitter timeline now, too.
This question gets explored in the article by profiling several individuals who have seen friendships or familial relationships ended/changed, and often the explanation given is delivered using terminology affiliated with therapy (e.g. “I’m ending this to protect my peace as I cannot hold space for this kind of negativity”).
It goes without saying that there are many reasons for a friendship to end naturally: one person moves, life gets in the way, parenthood, mistreatment, etc.
But what many of the profiled stories in this article highlight is not friendships ending due to natural causes or protection from physical/emotional danger/abuse, but rather immaturity and avoidance (I say this as someone who has made many decisions grounded in both).
Disagreements, discomforts and disappointment are going to come up in any friendship. That’s part of any relationship, platonic or romantic. We have disagreements with our partners, our parents, our co-workers, our children…everyone! Friendships are no different. But friendships have some of the lowest stakes of any of these. We’ll humor our co-workers because we need to keep our job, we suffer our family because it’s blood. Friendships don’t require us to make a larger sacrifice to end them (like forgoing a paycheck), and they don’t have the same baked-in guilt if we abandon them, like with our family.
So when faced with the choice of telling someone how our feelings are hurt or how they’ve disappointed us, it’s easier to just create a wall and cut that person off than it is to try to work through the pain with them. As a recovering people pleaser, I know what that looks like. We’re too afraid to put them in pain by sharing ours, that we instead sacrifice a relationship we care about just to prevent rocking the waters.
This takes its most common form in the phrase “protecting my peace.” This language is thrown around a lot lately, but I think its commonplace use has become the perfect proof of this article’s title question.
Protecting one’s peace is a noble endeavor and there’s nothing wrong with it! But often I see it used to do one of two things:
Stifle dissent. Not so much the case in this article, but many thought leaders, social media talking heads, and public figures will say they are “blocking the haters” in the spirit of protecting their peace. They claim to be staking out a high-ground by silencing bullies and mean-spirited speech, when in reality they are doing their best to avoid engaging with critical response to their public statements and ideas. Blocking a bully is never a problem, silencing dissent because you don’t want to face it is cognitive avoidance.
Avoid tough conversations. Which brings us to the larger avoidance that is common when using this phrase. Instead of, again, explaining a need you have, or how you might not be able to meet a friend’s need, someone unilaterally decides this friendship is not working for them and terminates it in the need of peace. I’m reminded of the time my father was in the hospital, and one of my closest friends didn’t ask me about it for several days. I was shocked and hurt he wasn’t inquiring. Now, I could have waited, told him what Anna’s friend told her (“I’m in a place where I’m trying to honor my needs and act in alignment with what feels right within the scope of my life, and I’m afraid our friendship doesn’t seem to fit in that framework.”), but instead I told him how I was feeling. Yes, it was hard to tell a close friend he disappointed me, but it also gave him the chance to explain himself, for me to express my need, and for him to decide if he could show up for me in that way (he could and did). An awkward few minutes? Yes. A friendship saved and strengthened? Absolutely.
This is my long-winded way of getting around to saying: yea, I mostly think this article is onto something. Is it a change initiated by the growth of the mental wellness movement, or is it acquiring language to justify an impulse we all already had? I’m not one to know.
What do you think? Have you read the article? Am I onto something or lost in my own thoughts? Let’s discuss below.
Otherwise, have a great week readers, and see you Friday!