Friendships Can Go Bad Too
No, it’s not always easy. Letting someone go takes courage, because letting someone go is losing a part of yourself, a part that you might never get back… And even worse, there are people who get so deep into our being that when they leave, you’re never the same again…
Not all friendships are forever; some go bad, too. Not even love can escape from its expiration date. And it’s not that we have messed up. It’s just that nothing is permanent. Relationships are not eternal and we have to know how to let them go.
Given that we often have trouble ending stages in life and saying goodbye, this fact becomes a great source of suffering for us. Not even the passing of time makes us immune to goodbyes, especially when we know that we can never go back.
Past a certain time, few of our close friends maintain the same level of trust and less than half of our friends will stay at our side for more than 7 years. In reality, it’s normal for this to happen. Relationships can turn cold from not sharing emotions, because there was a conflict that triggered a foreseen and inevitable separation, or simply because each person’s life goes down a different road.
When this happens, the most difficult thing isn’t letting people go, but rather letting them take that part of you that was always with them. This is the hardest to face, even when the relationship seems to bring you more pain and torture than happiness and desire to live.
The important part is letting go at the right time, at the very moment when you know that there are no longer any guarantees of improvement and that you can’t keep bringing good to one another’s lives. This will be your moment.
Don’t let your memories turn into reproaches. This is when you destroy everything that could have brought you together and let you help each other along the journey of life. Letting go is the best demonstration of self-love that you can show yourself.
Sometimes there are friendships that really shouldn’t be called friendships. They say that friends are the family that we choose, but often, it seems we simply accept what we are given. We have neither the time nor the necessary information to find our ideal companion, which is why it is logical for us to mess up at times.
And sometimes, although we put all our trust in someone and give them everything, we are deceived. It can be these misdoings that distance us and this is normal; nobody wants someone toxic in their life that they can’t trust.
However, relationships are phases and, as phases, they are always changing. If you accept the rules of the game, you can move forward; if not, you will hit a plateau. Even if you love a person, it is possible for this to go away, or at least not be the same as it was before. Just like you, others change and evolve. We are not the same person from one year to the next.
This is nobody’s fault. Friendships go bad and that’s that. You have to know how to accept it.
Memories are good so long as they stay in the past and we don’t live from them, so long as they don’t force us to keep habits that we no longer want and that make us live in constant, undesired reciprocity.
Relationships change, whether we like it or not. It’s likely that you no longer have the same values, aspirations, or plans as you did years ago. It’s normal for it to hurt and for it to be difficult to throw away something that is a part of you, but just like you, your relationships change. For better or worse, it’s just a matter of accepting it.
Image courtesy of Larissa Kulik
