Friendships

It's occurred to me recently that friendships seem to have life cycles, or mine do. I don't think I've ever had a good friendship that has lasted more than four years, certainly not one that has been life long.

It's strange, I know a few people who have friends they have known their whole life, I don't know why that's never been the case for me. Oddly I am a person who would greatly benefit from a long lasting friendship. Somebody who has always been there and always will be. I am someone who likes close friendships with just a select few and I value loyalty perhaps more than anything else. I struggle when my friendship group expands and I have always been of the opinion that if you invite more and more people in to your circle, then those who are already there will inevitably get pushed out.

For years this has been my outlook, but it's always blown up in my face. Because as these friendships that I felt were ever lasting come to the end of their life cycle and dry up. My reluctance to let any new people in ultimately means that every few years I'm left friendless. I have nobody to fall back on, nobody to step in to the role of 'best friend' and each time I wonder where or if I'll ever find another friend, sad as that may sound.

At no point in my life do I recall ever definitively ending a friendship, they have tended to gradually fade away and I have always felt there is little I could do to stop that. Over recent years I have valued closer relationships more and more. I don't know whether losing so many friends in the past has made me want to form stronger bonds with those I have befriended subsequently and whether that in turn has made me more nervous about the prospect of losing another friend, or whether in adulthood you just instinctively know how important good friends are and how lost you would feel without them. But I am now finding myself breaking friendships with people as I see the signs that they too will move on sooner rather than later.

I don't know whether I feel as though I'm somehow in the driving seat by doing this or whether I'm just saving face. How many times can your friends sod off before you start to think you might smell? But for whatever reason, this is the course of action I find myself taking more and more. As those who find others begin to believe that things are rosier away from me and as their contact dries up. I find myself continually becoming upset and angry that the virtue of loyalty is not held in such a high regard by other people. And when I find myself constantly begging my friends to be my friends, I think I have to step back and understand that friendships are not necessarily for life and my friend is no longer that. It's a hard pill to swallow, but one I have gotten used to over my life.

It's hard to change the person you are and the traits you hold dear, but I think I have to try to open up and allow more people in to my life so that as the people come and go, I'll have a few more who are left standing alongside me.

Friendship is a funny old thing, but it's something that should never be taken for granted. Never should you think that a friendship will always be there for you if you want it. I have learnt that rarely is that ever the case. Friendship is a privilege and the more it is abused the more meaningless it becomes.