Expendable Friendships

FRIENDSHIP (Photo credit: Woody Shakti)

So how can you tell that a friendship is falling apart or that it is coming close to an end? Sometimes it’s very hard to tell. This is a tough subject as there’s a lot of variables to take into consideration. How much were you talking prior to things getting weird? Also to what degree has it changed? Are they making excuses to not talk with you anymore? How has things changed? These are a lot of the questions that people ask themselves when they feel that a friendship has started to fall apart.

You start to think where do I go from here? Should I talk to them about how these changes make me feel? Do they start to get defensive and make excuses? Do they even listen to what you are telling them? Do they only ever talk to you digitally? Never in person or on the phone? Are you being clingy?

When you start to ask yourself these questions, then it is a good sign that something in the friendship has recently changed. In today’s society friends are pretty much expendable and do come and go. Even best friends forever, sorry girls they don’t last forever, even if we want them to.  Good friendships can last forever, but they take hard work and commitment on both sides. Even for those friendships that are long distance and where people haven’t talked in a long time.

Before it even get’s this far, is the friendship on a one way street to doom? Like do you always start the conversations? Or the one to make the calls to the other person? As I talked about in my blog about Friends ignoring Friends, many people try to pass off being busy as an excuse so that they don’t have to a. either admit their feelings, or b. they don’t have the social aptitude to explain their feelings to the other person. Having been on the end of both scenarios, I can say that they both totally suck.

Honestly if you don’t want to be friends with the other person tell them, and explain why. Give them the opportunity to change and grow. As most likely you have outgrown the friendship that you have had with them.

If your on the receiving end of a friendship like this, don’t beg for the friendship back. If they give you the opportunity to grow along with them than take it and run with it.  However if the friendship does fall into pieces, let them know that you will always consider them a trusted friend and that when they need you that you will always be there for them. Don’t cry, and make sure that they understand how you feel about it all. If they start to get angry or defensive and violent, walk away, as they were never really a true friend in the first place then.

If the friendship does end up as being expendable, walk completely away, if you have them on Facebook, delete them. If they text you, block their number, if you have them on an IM, remove them. Honestly if they were a real friend they will have your phone number and will call you if things are that important. This is much harder than it sounds, especially if you also have strong feelings for this person as well. As hard as this will be, you will end up looking a lot more respectable then they are, and could ever be.

For the people who think that friends are really expendable, than you are up for a wakeup call. No one is expandable, and do you not have any respect for the person you are making feel like garbage? I know I have zero respect for those kind of people and try to steer myself clear of them. So with that, I’m going to leave you with this question. How would you react to a friend that was snubbing you or ignoring you?