Drafting this article sitting on my bed after lunch. It’s Vinayaka Chavithi (Ganesh Chaturthi) today ❤
I remember writing about effortless friendships and how friendships barely need efforts after a certain stage.
I had a realization recently that certain people are phase friends – the ones that you are close to at different phases in life. They can be from school, gym, trek / trip, work place, party, etc. This relationship comes with an uncertain expiry.
While there is a well-defined terminology to this (acquaintance, classmates, colleagues etc), we are bound to emotionally bond with people outside family due to similar interests, pasts or trauma. Once an emotional trust is established, it’s not about the official tags; we would introduce them as ‘friends’.
Regardless, I now understand the reason behind ‘When you have a friendship that lasts longer than seven years, there is a good chance the friendship will last a lifetime’. It’s pure luck + amazing efforts from both sides. They actually saw you grow from a dumb person to smart-yet-dumb :p
Not knowing this fact earlier, I’ve poured a lot into phase friendships in a way that I have nothing left to fill the important glasses. This has affected me because by the time I make sense of what’s happening and dial to have a light conversation, they have already bottled up a lot of rant (because of my unavailability) and there begins the arguments – like cherry on top.
These are not nice problems to have – especially when you know somebody is being hurt because of you. It takes a mammoth effort to repair this damage and chances of relapsing to the old behaviour of being unavailable are forever high.
One unsolicited advice: although we have no idea how the phase friendships might turn out, do not get caught up in the problem-solving phase and leave behind the ones who put in efforts irrespective of their situation.
A great learning of ‘forming relationships is easy; maintaining them is the game changer‘ 🙂
~ Adios! Do rate the article!
Mischief Managed 