Before college, friendship was simple. If I like you, and you like me, we’re friends, and because we’re friends, we’re going to talk every day and hang out often. No one warned us that growing up would change that.
Being an adult (and by adult I mean legally, because let’s be honest, being in your 20’s is a trial run, we don’t know what we’re doing) showed me that friendship is chopped up to priorities and how close we are. The less close you are, the more your priorities get in the way your friendship. The more close you are, the less your priorities get in the way of your friendship. We hear it all the time: “you make time for what matters to you,” and I believe that to be true. I’ve been learning that the awkward way.
Awkward? What do you mean, Jazmine? I mean awkward like, being in a friend group where everyone calls each other daily–except when it comes to you. That’s one way to find out you’re not as close as you thought, huh? That’s when I tested out the initiative theory. What’s that? I made it up. The initiative theory was my way of being the one to reach out first. “Maybe if I initiate our conversations more, they’ll do the same and we’ll become closer.” I’ve since learned that this theory only works with people who care enough.
When you realize your position in someone else’s life, you have a few options: you can accept it, try to change it, or end it. We always talk about not settling when we date, but we don’t have to settle in our friendships, either. There’s been a few cases in which I’ve chosen not to settle, for lack of better words, for half-assed friendships. But here’s the weird part: I have friends that I go a few weeks without talking to, and friends that I only go a couple of days without talking to. The difference between these friends and the friends I’ve let fade away is that I know who actually cares. When you question whether or not someone cares about you, it makes maintaining the friendship less appealing, and I’ve let those friendships go. There’s something special about friends you can go weeks without talking to, but you know the love hasn’t changed. I have quite a few of those friends that I cherish deeply.
Perhaps one of the harshest realities about friendships during adulthood, though, is that we don’t have the time to enjoy each other all day/every day like we did in school. We still make time, we just don’t have as much of it. Not to mention the fact that most of us end up married, with kids, relocating, etc. There are some factors that change how much of a priority we are in someone’s life, but if it’s a real friendship, none of these things will ever change the love you have for one another.
