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Almost nothing is better than the feeling we have when things move along with ease in our friendships, when we feel listened to and understood, cared for and loved, by people we’ve treasured. With our friends, like with a romantic partner, we may make plans far into the future, and we may also fall into spontaneous adventures with no plans at all.
A key difference is that in friendships, people may tend to feel more awkward about asserting their needs and desires. This seems especially true for women as women have been socialized to develop and maintain relationships often at any and all expense to themselves. As a result, it can become more challenging to articulate one’s preferences, limitations, or need to change one’s mind about something for fear of upsetting the other person. But what happens when that’s almost unavoidable? Is it possible to encounter these disruptions without it interfering with the ease, flow, and depth of a friendship?
Let’s look at two cases.
Take Lisa for example. She's a 26-year-old physical therapist who, since finishing school, has been living with her parents to save money. Now really wants to launch out on her own and live independently. The thing is that she and her friend Emma had been planning to live together, but the area is expensive with few affordable rentals and every place they saw came up short for one reason or another. Eventually, they narrowed down their search to a few key areas and had a couple of possibilities to check out, which seemed quite promising.
Suddenly, there were some new wrinkles to consider: Emma failed her teacher’s exam to qualify for the jobs she most wanted to apply to, while on the other hand, Lisa landed an incredible new position at a hospital across state lines. Now the places they were considering were no longer as viable for Lisa as these would introduce a commute of almost an hour each way. But, how would she break the news to Emma? Should she suck it up and drive the extra 10 hours a week to keep her end of the agreement to find housing together? Or, would that prove to be untenable and she’d need to let Emma know she has to find a place much closer to her new workplace? She was worried and knew that Emma was having a hard time and didn’t want to make her feel worse. She wanted to preserve the friendship, yet she needed to honor her own needs related to career growth and personal time.
Let’s look at a second example that closely mirrors the first and then we’ll examine the patterns between them. At almost a little more than double Lisa’s age, I was faced with a predicament with a friend. In my case, I had a trip booked with a girlfriend that we had planned for months. She had reserved our hotel and I had purchased tickets to two Broadway shows we wanted to see. It was shaping up to be a perfect weekend.
But five days before we were scheduled to leave, my husband got the news that his brother died unexpectedly. We raced out of town to be with their 92-year-old mother and to take care of everything involved in closing down a life. It was immediately clear to me that I’d need to let my friend know there was no way I could join her in New York City. I instinctively knew where I needed to be and it was right where I was—with my husband and his family. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to be anywhere else, and I figured that would be obvious to anyone looking at the situation.
My husband still encouraged me to go even for a day but it seemed entirely impossible. I called my friend, left a voicemail, and then texted her. I proposed that I’d contact all the places and handle the cancellations and rescheduling and hoped that we could find a date a few weeks later. I also knew there’d be no financial penalties since her flight was free, we were within the proper timeframe with the hotel and restaurants, and I intuited that I’d work it out with the theaters about our tickets.
Lisa’s case and mine share commonalities. We each had made verbal commitments to our respective friends and wanted to honor them. However, other life events changed the nature of the decision-making process. As much as we wanted to creatively strategize other solutions to make our original plans work, neither of us could knowingly sit with the extreme discomfort of keeping those plans—in my case, leaving my husband at a most horrific time, and in Lisa’s case enduring a commute that would take a toll on her body, mind, social life, and her bank account given the price of gas and car repairs. And our friends happened to be in vulnerable, needy positions of their own, with my friend struggling with mental health issues that interfered with her ability to be flexible, and Emma wanting to have something to count on as her other prospects were proving less reliable.
Sadly, we experienced similar responses from our friends that revealed significant, complicated limitations. Emma admitted she wouldn’t make that sort of commute yet somehow still wanted and expected Lisa to. Lisa wound up saying, “Do you see that you’re asking me to do something you say you’d never do?” In my case, my friend simply wouldn’t budge and couldn’t see a way to reschedule our trip despite my offer to make all the new arrangements. As it turns out, she wound up going on her own. A month later, I went on my own and met a dear college friend who lovingly accompanied me to the shows I wanted to see. We were in situations that were untenable, we couldn’t be all things to all people or in two places at the same time. We each faced a decision that seemingly put our own needs and priorities above our friends.
Both cases point to the importance of the following: staying true to our innermost core, speaking our truth, showing compassion for the other person, doing our best to honor initial commitments yet being flexible when they must change, realizing the limitations we encounter in our friends, and being a good friend to ourselves in the process. Both cases invite the question of in five or 10 years from now, what matters? For Lisa, it’s a balanced life with a blooming career, and for me it’s a marriage where we’re there for each other no matter what. Trustworthy, reliable friendships should be able to withstand those important priorities.
