Girl, so confusing
I constantly find myself wondering why it’s so easy for men to make friends. I’ve even asked a few of them, and there isn’t one concrete answer. It's always “Idk, he just came to play basketball one day, and he was cool, so we started hanging out,” or “He’s a friend of a friend of a friend and just started coming around all the time; now we’re cool,” or even “Idk how we became friends, we just did.” Why isn’t it that easy for women? Things could be as simple as “I complimented her outfit, and now we’re hanging out on Saturday.” Maybe I’m the only person this situation applies to, but while I think most of us can agree that making those genuine connections is hard, dealing with having to lose those genuine connections is exponentially harder.
As you get older, so many things change, not just your age. You change environments, meet new people, develop new interests, and ultimately have new experiences. Every day, a part of you is evolving. With that comes the realization that some friendships no longer serve you. Friends will come and go from your life. Maybe it’s an over-the-top argument or a series of events leading up to that conclusion, but one day you wake up, and it just clicks. This person and I have no relationship left to fuel. And that’s okay. I’m not at all saying that friendships are transactional, but they have to be equal, or there's no balance. Once you start to feel that imbalance, then you have the conversation, and that one conversation will either leave you feeling lighter or even heavier than before you entered it, and that will be very telling.
Taking a look at your life and pinpointing who you no longer align with is probably one of the hardest things I’ve had to do since entering my 20s. It was so difficult to understand that some friendships aren’t on the same level as they were a couple of years ago, and you now have to adapt to feeling comfortable with where their new placement is in your life. Even losing friends that you thought would be bridesmaids at your wedding is equally, if not harder than, an actual breakup because, unlike that guy you met 9 months ago, these are girls that you had an unbreakable bond with since kindergarten.
So, what do you do in times like these when you feel lonely, are longing for genuine connections, or just want that community or “Village” that everyone talks about? You get uncomfortable. You have those spur-of-the-moment conversations with strangers. You can’t be afraid of being the first one to ask to hang out. You allow yourself to be unapologetically yourself, and you show up as that person in every room you enter. You will attract the village you so badly want. It will be the people who are meant to be in your life and will reciprocate your energy without having to ask them for it. I think we think friendships should be easy, but just like relationships, they take work, and there’s going to be mistakes made, but you can’t be afraid of confronting those things. If you can say that in your life you were able to make at least one connection like that, then you have lived a life worth living.
