TRANSCRIPT
Like most people in this world, I have at various points in my life experienced loss of friendships. I’ve been rejected by friends. I have had friends drop me. And when I was a child, pretty much universally, when I lost friends, I took it as a sign that there was something wrong with me, something deficient in me, that I wasn’t good enough, that I wasn’t living up to certain standards. And it really hurt me. I felt terrible about myself. By losing friends, I often felt if they rejected me, they must have been better than me. It was just a very painful thing that I went through many times as a child.
However, I have a somewhat different perspective on it now. It happened through my teen years, it’s happened in my 20s, and it’s happened in my 30s. More and more, I have come to see, especially as I’ve gotten older and healthier, that not infrequently now when I lose friends, it’s not because of something deficient in me. Rather, the loss of the friendship is a reflection of my good qualities. It’s a reflection of my strengths as a person. People drop me because I’m too healthy; it overwhelms them. Or that it can be a reflection on parts of them that don’t want to grow, or aren’t ready to grow, or are too stuck. And that doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m even calling them out on their stuckness or calling them out on their unhealthiness, because pretty much as a rule, I don’t call my friends out on their unhealthy behavior unless, of course, it’s really personally negatively affecting me. I kind of have a live-and-let-live attitude: boundaries, respect.
But what I’ve seen is sometimes just my personal expressions of who I am, my authenticity, my healthiness, just me talking about my ideas about my life experience can be threatening to people who aren’t necessarily so healthy. And sometimes, because they want to protect themselves, protect their unhealthy sides, protect their denial even, they pull away from me. Because being around someone who is healthier sometimes can provoke them to grow, provoke them to self-reflect in ways that maybe they’re not ready to do, or it’s just too painful.
I think, again, this brings up the idea for me of what is a friendship. So often, I think from what I’ve seen, a friendship is between two people who have common values, who share common values. And that doesn’t necessarily say if the values are good or not, or healthy or not. Sometimes very strong friendships can be formed between people who have very commonly shared, very unhealthy values. By the same token, a much healthier friendship between two people who share very common healthy values, common ethics, common healthy ethics, healthy ideals, healthy perspectives on life.
But what I’ve seen is when I’ve grown, sometimes my values can become healthier. My ideas, my point of view, my behavior can become healthier, and somehow the friendship doesn’t match anymore. And that doesn’t mean that I’m necessarily acknowledging that openly. Often, I’m not even conscious of it. Or another thing is if I see myself growing, I think, “God, you think my friend would be so happy to see me grow.” Or maybe even unconsciously what I’m thinking is maybe they’ll grow along with me, maybe they’ll stay on the path that we’re going on. But maybe that’s not where they’re at. Maybe they’re not ready to, or maybe they don’t want to go on a healthier path. Maybe it’s just too scary, or maybe there will be too many negative consequences in their lives.
And sometimes it’s confusing. Actually, a lot of times it’s confusing. It requires me to do a lot of processing because it’s not like they’re coming to me and saying, “Oh, I’m dropping you because you’re healthier in ways that I’m not,” or “You are more consciously facing problems that I’m more unconscious about.” A lot of times they just pull away silently. Or sometimes, when I was younger, I think about this in my early 20s especially, when people would pull away from me, I wouldn’t know why. I’d bring it up with them, and they weren’t kind about it sometimes. Sometimes they would criticize me in all sorts of different ways. And when I took a step back and processed some of these criticisms, not infrequently I realized that actually they were criticizing some of my healthiest qualities.
So now, as I get older, and sometimes, yes, people do pull away from me, people who I really valued in all sorts of different ways, I can take a step back and often look at it without having to do any sort of confrontation. Because I certainly don’t like to confront friends, and I don’t like to confront people. “Why are you rejecting me?” What I’ve realized is my best thing I can do in my life is be myself, express who I am authentically, especially in safe environments. And then sometimes just have to accept that that’s how the cards may fall. That’s what happens sometimes, is that people who are my real allies, people who really share these common values with me, they will stick with me. And those are my real truer friends in the longer, deeper sense of the word. And that people who really didn’t share those common values with me, well, the friendship really sometimes just wasn’t that deep.