Confession about friendship

Friendship keeps me up at night. It’s a funny thing. It ebs and it flows, it comes and goes. Does friendship really last forever?

I love my friends, but something that haunts me is thinking that I would somehow be a bad friend. I’m sure there’s some psychological reason for this that I can explore with a good therapist, but it really gets to me. I’m always wondering if others consider me a friend, and I feel the need to be the one to spell it out, just in case it isn’t true for both of us. “I like being friends,” I’ll say as I nervously await the other's response.

Am I putting too much into friendship? No idea, but I know that I would do anything for someone I love. And I love my friends, old and new, close and distant.

As I’m writing this, I’m wondering what you’re thinking. You, being a complete stranger or one of my friends.

I can just hear it: Kim is too much. She’s too clingy, way too invested in this. Kim is way too serious about this friendship we have. She does too much, asks too many questions, gets too personal. Kim is too much.

Man, I’m having mixed feelings about writing this post right about now. But it was in my head and I figured it ought to come out.

One of the hardest things about friendship is letting it go. Maybe it’s a strict boundary of ending the friendship because it’s just not healthy for you. Or maybe it’s more nuanced than that. Maybe it’s a letting go of what you thought the friendship was, what you wanted it to be, what you expected. This happens to me a lot.

Either I can’t be there for someone the way they want me to be, or, more often than not, it’s the other way around. It’s like I have this concept in my head of what a friend is supposed to be and I just can’t shake it. It definitely has to do with being an Enneagram two and middle child, but naming it doesn’t make it go away. I constantly have this feeling like others can’t be there for me the way I need them, the way I expect.

Expectations are the death of us! And I am clearly writing out my unhealthy, unrealistic, narcissistic? expectations for the whole world (or the few people that stop by here) to see. Cue a couple rosy cheeks and tear filled eyes.

I desperately want to change my relationship with my concept of what the ideal friend is. I don’t want to put unrealistic expectations on other people, especially those I love. It’s not fair for anyone to expect them to be anything but them, and I am learning what this means for myself (say hello to boundaries) and what this means for others in my life.

I want to learn to respect and not expect. To admire and not compare. To enjoy and not compete. Friendship is beautiful and can be so fun!

So, my dear friends, I’m sorry for any times I have been weird to you. I’m sorry for putting any expectations on you that did not belong there. I’m sorry for expecting the world from you when you’re only human. I apologize for not voicing my thoughts until maybe it’s too late. I’ll keep on working on it in therapy and apparently with blog posts.

Thanks for sticking around. I hope you feel loved in our friendship. ❤︎