Changing the rules of friendship
July 28, 2009 by Juliet Chase
Filed under The Art of Happiness
Have you ever made a conscientious effort to change a habit or behavior and then feel like you’re being punished because friendships change for the worse or disappear altogether? Smokers trying to quit often suddenly realize that the majority of their friends are smokers even though if you’d asked them before they tried to kick the habit they would probably tell you they had lots of non-smoking friends. It can be the same with any major change – you’ve changed the rules and not everyone thinks its for the better. Almost always this has more to do with how they see themselves than how they see you.
For example, if you had a habit of complaining that you decided to break but your friends were co-enablers then odds are good that if you stop complaining you are breaking an unwritten contract as well as implying by virtue of taking the action that it’s a bad habit that can be corrected – if they don’t take a similar action the friends may see themselves as deficient even if you don’t see them that way. Relationships between friends tend to fall into roles. If one person changes out of that role, be it mentor, conspirator, confidant, student or whatever than there’s a chance the friendship may need to take a hiatus for new roles to be negotiated and it may not come back together. There are lot more examples in Could friendships be ruining your life?
The good news is that the smokers that successfully quit eventually do find whole new circles of non-smoking friends as they change their daily habits to include new things. The same goes for the person that quits a job to go back to school, moves across the country or starts their own business. That period in between the old life and the fully developed new life can seem lonely and scary – heck, it’s scary without friendships changing, but if it happens it’s likely a painfully necessary part of the process. Approaching it with an open heart and a healthy dose of patience will deliver you safely into the arms of the friends that stuck by you and a whole bunch of new ones that you wouldn’t have met otherwise.
