#024 On keeping and pruning friendships
Or, how the natural cycle of gain and loss can be good for us.
General Housekeeping
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This fall has been ridiculously busy, between building up a client base, settling our home, and attending three weddings in the last four weeks😵🫥—one of which I was in and needed to help the couple—this poor little post has been sitting waiting for about two weeks, because I forgot to schedule it. And that’s life sometimes.
So, without further ado, we’re talking today about understanding friendships, yourself, and knowing when to stay, when to quit, being honest, and why.
“ Make new friends but keep the old, One is silver and the other gold. A circle's round, it has no end, That's how long I want to be your friend. ”
When I was a girl, it was especially difficult for me to keep and make friends. As I’ve grown older and hopefully wiser with experience through the years, I’ve learned a few things about friendship—how much we need it, what kinds there are, and navigating the loss of people that inevitably occurs as we age through our lifespans. Not everyone can come along with us on our journeys, but they can and do impart lessons that can harden, soften, sweeten, or make bitter the expectations we have toward others.
Types of friendship
C.S. Lewis is among my favorite writers, and his books have provided gems of wisdom through the hills and valleys of my adult years.
In his book The Four Loves, Lewis describes friendship and its forms, its primary type of love is agape, from the Greek. I added two subgroups that I think bear expounding on for the purpose of this issue, especially given the age we live in.
Convenience: you became friends because you went to the same primary school, worked together at the same time, meet at the local community meet up. These can last through life transitions, but must be attended to like a plant, but often, they wilt over time, and the bond you had fades. These people just happen to be in your immediate sphere.
Utilitarian: the friendship serves a specific purpose for a specific time. These don’t often stand the test of time. They are exactly what the name implies, for one or both parties.
True friendship: To quote the article at cslewis.com “We develop a kinship over something in common and that longing for camaraderie makes friendship all the more wanted. ‘Friendship must be about something,’ Lewis says, ‘even if it were only an enthusiasm for dominoes or white mice. Those who have nothing can share nothing; those who are going nowhere can have no fellow-travellers.’”
The other types of friendship, I think would be classified into those of utility.
Fair-weather: Fair-weather types of friends are only there in your life when times are good. When troubles strike you, bad times, down-on-your-luck type events, these people fall away, leaving you wondering where your support went.
Foul-weather: Foul-weather types are the people who come to you when their lives are in trouble, seeking consolation, comfort, or support. Outside of that interaction, there is little to no communication or deep, emotionally rich contact between the two of you. The friendship is one-directional.
As is often the case with hindsight, as we grow older, our experiential knowledge, hopefully, is formed in such a way as to help us navigate relationships and spot bad actors, or at least selfish and/or immature ones who see us as a trifling entertainment and nothing deeper. We must learn to be on moderate guard, a guard that requires the development of discretion, maturity, right judgment, and most importantly, insight and awareness of yourself psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually. As my husband kindly added, we also need to stop making excuses for the behaviors and actions of others.
“They not only need to see it, but label the behavior as such as a separate judgement,” Augustine related.
Developing right judgement
In order to develop right judgement, we have to define our terms, and understand what is meant by this. Since I come from a Roman Catholic and thus theological perspective, my view would differ from someone who’s worldview was informed by Judaism, Islam, atheism, etc. But in order to understand what a “right judgement” is, you need to know the worldview, framework, religion, etc. (choose your synonym) that you are coming from and how it defines right or correct, from bad or wrong-headedness. Some perspectives view the world in absolutes, whilst others view things through a filter of true or false, which differs from good or bad, or right and wrong. Understanding this helps the individual to clarify how the way that they see the world is based on their perceptions and interpretations.
For each person reading this, if you haven’t figured this out already, depending on where you are in terms of your psychological maturity, take a moment to pause and consider: what are the standards you use to judge “good” from “bad”?
And where does it come from?
The term right judgement, in this sense, means “right” as in good or correct to the thing, which is the standard, of making astute observations about what is beneficial or detrimental to our ultimate good. As my husband commented while I wrote this, “It sounds like you’re talking about the virtue of prudence.”
prudence, noun
pru·dence ˈprü-dᵊn(t)s
1: the ability to govern and discipline oneself by the use of reason
2: sagacity or shrewdness in the management of affairs
3: skill and good judgment in the use of resources
4: caution or circumspection as to danger or risk
As we go through the exercise of utilizing prudence, the order of operations generally follows as:
Observation: we see what has transpired and begin to process/understand what has occurred or didn’t occur.
Judgement: we determine if it is good or bad, helpful or harmful, beneficial or detrimental — to us, others, the situation, the greater good, etc.
Reason: the ability to apply and unite concepts to make claims about what is true.
These three interact to help make up prudence — determining what is for our good and what isn’t.
In relation to friendship, sufficient judgement to determine the nature of the friendship requires insight into how the person behaves, how they treat others, how they treat you, how they hold themselves accountable, and by extension, how you behave and how you treat others, hold others accountable, etc.
In the (RC) monastic life, the three levels are:
self-knowledge
self-acceptance
self-transcendence
The last two points cannot be made without honest self-reflection and introspection. On the path to development, ideally, our parents or a mentor would help form us in our ability to develop self-knwoedlge, in a healthy way, that allows us to reflect on our choices, understand what contributed to that decision or action, and extract/distill that knowledge for future use in later life experiences that help us to make good or better judgements, which lead to better outcomes — a.k.a. PRUDENCE.
This true knowledge of self includes understanding your temperament, being honest about your weaknesses, how your passions (wrath, lust, greed, avarice, pride, vainglory, gluttony, sloth) drive and/or derail you from achieving your ultimate good or “transcendence”. For my Christian readers, this would be attaining heaven, the beatific vision, and union with God and Christ. This self-knowledge helps to lead toward
discretion, noun
dis·cre·tion di-ˈskre-shən
1a: individual choice or judgment;b: power of free decision or latitude of choice within certain legal bounds
2: the quality of having or showing discernment or good judgment : the quality of being discreet : CIRCUMSPECTION
3: ability to make responsible decisions
4: the result of separating or distinguishing
Through the virtue of discretion, your knowledge can be formed in the terms of the quality of the thing/item/standard/situation.
Or, the quality of the friendship.
We have to have to have a system by which we organize right judgments, and knowledge of ourselves and our needs, anthropologically, to determine when the relationship or friendship we are in is in service to the good of our development as a fully-formed, mature, and responsible person (again, one must define and determine what mature and responsible is and how you know that), in reference to the mantles of authority and responsibility we are given or take upon ourselves. By being honest with ourselves about who we are—how we act, how we fail to act in our own best interest, and how the people around us helped us to be formed, shapes our view of the world, people, and human nature—we can determine if the friendships we have are good for our well-being, serve someone else’s ends, or, if we’re being truly honest, when or if we are using someone else for our own selfish ends.
Here is your moment to pause and reflect:
If you’re making excuses and or lying to yourself, or, doing so for others,
What does it shield you from?
What behavior does it serve?
How does making the excuse or telling yourself a lie help you? Harm you?
What is the driving reason for why you want this person in your life, and vice versa?
What binds or bound the two of you together in the first place?
Pruning, or how water rises to its own level
Often, people will say in the circles I travel in, that what you consume becomes a reflection of your soul.
A terrible boss once gave me a great piece of advice:
Water rises to its own level
Jordan Peterson makes a similar, though somewhat tangential, point in 12 Rules for Life in “Rule 3: Makes friends with people who want the best for you.”
Peterson recounts the story of a young man that he knew back before he went to college. The man did alright for a number of years, but failed to reach his potential because of the company he kept, and ultimately died rather young and unsuccessful. There. I saved you 20 pages of lobsters and tangential rambling.
Clothes may maketh the man’s appearance, but more importantly, it is the company you keep that makes his character. We raise our expectations and challenge ourselves based on the people that we are exposed to, and the culture of the people we surround ourselves with determines the values we subscribe to, live out, and pass on — in our behaviors and actions, what we say, and what we espouse. We are a collection of not only all the personal experiences, good and bad, but the influences of the people we meet and choose to be around on a regular basis.
Emotional attachment to people we have good feelings about can cloud our judgement just as much as sex can. The number of men and women I’ve seen who remain in unsatisfying or bad relationships because they have a misplaced sense of duty, obligation, guilt, or just straight up delusion. I digress.
But friendships are much the same way.
There was once a young man I dated named Liam whom I remained friends with for a little while after dating. Once, we talked about the people he was friends with. He was good hearted and with a pleasant nature, stoic and a bit melancholic, but the people he hung out with were immature: loud, inconsiderate, flaky, reactive and overreactive to things happening around them, insecure, self-centered. Trying to politely point this out and to make the point that perhaps they didn’t have his best interests at heart, he balked and stated that because he had so few friends, he was working diligently to make the effort to keep the ones he had, and dismissed my concerns.
Over time, one of our mutual friends, Steve, came to realize that the same group of people had the traits I pointed out, and began the process of pruning, especially after someone brought drugs into his house; the tipping point occurred during a party, when the acquaintance of one of the group members had rather loud intercourse in the bed of one of Steve’s roommates. As Steve said to me, “I want to feel safe in my own house.” Can’t say that I really blame him.
Steve pruned, and as he did so, began the slow process of extricating himself from those relationships that were unhealthy and unhelpful to him growing, maturing, and keeping the values that he cherished. He recognized and accepted what was a genuine, mutually affirming friendship that encouraged him to be a better man — rather than stay stuck in, say, doing drugs, disrespecting property and the homes of others, leaving your messes to other people to clean up, going to party after party because of FOMO, and not flaking or ghosting people when you said you’d show up.
Liam stayed with those friends for a time. I’m not sure any of them really stuck. But knowing Steve, I saw the positive changes take place over time. He worked hard on himself in therapy, and while he isn’t married, he has developed deeper, more genuine friendships; that crowd of people dispersed and has not stayed together or cohesive.
If you want to grow and be a better human being, find those people that help you reach a higher water level. Otherwise, you will continue to sink and be drug down into the mire of behaviors and attitudes that may keep you stuck mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, from growing into a whole person. And if those things are arrested, perhaps consider how those influences keep you stuck physically where you’re at—perhaps, a difficulty in removing yourself permanently.
There are many questions you can ask to reflect on.
Here are a few to help get you started:
Does this person or group of people encourage me to be better or do good, supposing you have a shared concept of what “good” entails?
If you don’t, spend some time considering what does the word “good” mean to you, in various contexts: good behavior, good outcomes, good actions?
Where does your understanding of good come from? Is it experiential — from watching the behaviors of others? Is it from the values or, lack of values that were practiced by the people who you interacted with from a younger age? Does it come from what you’ve read, watched, or listened to?
Do you feel comfortable with this person/people? What about them makes you feel uncomfortable?
Do you feel safe with them? Why or why not?
Are there behaviors that have a detrimental impact on you? Which ones, and how does it affect you?
Are there behaviors that have a positive impact? Which ones, and how?
What kinds of people in your personal life have left a positive impact?
In what ways?
How has it changed you and your perspective on doing or behaving certain ways?
Conversely, what kinds of people have left a negative impact?
What made you leave or stay? What were your reasons?
How did you discern or understand this? What was the process you used? Can that process be applied to other people in other situations?
If you had a child, would you trust them to look after that child and be responsible — both short-term and long-term care?
The friendships that sustained us at one time aren’t always ones that are fruitful. During graduate school, I felt the pain of being deeply, genuinely alone, and struggling to find time to make friends. My schooling was more grueling, compared to others, though many experience the suffering of poverty and low or no-employment. People I had thought of as good friends didn’t keep up, and try as I might, I didn’t have the energy, between an internship where I was paid nothing, working a very minimum wage job, and schoolwork. People whom I wasn’t close to reached out to ask how I was doing, and the simple act of their thoughtfulness helped me make the effort to try and reach out to them, and a friendship flourished, friendships that I have managed to retain, past graduate school and now into the beginnings of my marriage.
Others, sadly, withered and died. The lamentation and sorrow still exist, but the acceptance was the most difficult part of the exercise. But the pruning must be done.
People express the sadness at friends not being the same people that they once were; but the person also forgets that they too have changed, experienced the same events differently — different interpretations to be sure — and struggle with that realization and adjustment.
We can feel left behind when people stop calling, writing letters, texting, interacting, and we may not know the reasons. Sometimes it can be a misunderstanding — the person thinks that you didn’t want to talk to them anymore, and let things wither. Or you both got busy. We go through different seasons at different times—one of you is married and has children, while the other struggles, perhaps marries later and has kids, and now the first couple experiences the loss of a miscarriage, while the second is busy juggling job, kids, and spouse.
But as much as we can feel left behind, we also need to pause and consider how we have changed as people, and assess our needs. Friendships we had in the past may not be good for us anymore, or, if we are being honest with ourselves, perhaps weren’t good for us to begin with — we were in a state of denial, or perhaps to our embarrassment, we weren’t mature enough to recognize that the relationship wasn’t the best for us.
The people we make friends with when we are young are generally utilitarian and/or out of convenience, and we may not always recognize that. A few years prior to Covid, there was a young woman who became very insistent on being friends with me and several other women. As we spent time together — I can assess it better now in hindsight — she expressed an enormous amount of anxiety that she struggled to get to the bottom of. She was planning on getting married in another country to a man she had been dating long-distance for about five years. In the time that we spent together, she absorbed a lot of space discussing her fears and anxieties, and had the briefest awareness of how expansive her anxiety was. We’d get together once a month as girlfriends, and I began to resent the friendship, as it felt very one-sided and more about her problems than it did about genuine shared loves of the same thing. Later, after she had gotten married and left to live in another country, and I had more time for reflection and some education, I realized that ours had been a relationship of convenience and utility for her, though I don’t think she would see it that way. I was an outlet for her to vent and dump her feelings and frustrations, and though we tried a long-distance phone call once, I realized the friendship could not be revived. Once I got over my resentment and hurt feelings, I realized I was relieved; it had helped her, and given me insight into how people are, and has helped me to be able to help others in similar situations.
Often, the people around me see to have a vague concept of what actually being friends with someone is like.
Friendships, like relationships, take work, and an effort by each person to maintain the bond. As we go through the phases and seasons of our lives, creating new friendships can seem difficult, and we can often feel left out, with events changing how we relate to and view one another.
A few weeks ago, our friend Tori related how she had changed significantly over the years from her college friends, from "my bad girl days” as she calls it. They had recently had a slumber party, as adult women, away for the weekend from spouses and family, jobs and responsibilities. It was during their nighttime conversation that Tori noticed something.
My friend realized, along with the other women, that as much as they had enjoyed one another’s friendship over the years, each had moved on and lived in different seasons: one was married with kids, another was unmarried and struggling, my friend had learned to accept being single and lives in a spiritual marriage with Christ.
“It’s the kind of thing where maybe we do this once or twice a year, and that’s good enough,” she related.
And she’s right.
Sometimes, friendships fade, and it is alright to reminisce and have a reunion; it is up to both parties if they wish to renew the friendship; and on occasion, it is ok to cherish what was there and let things lay in their new circumstances.
As Tori mused, “Some friendships you let grow in the shade, and that’s where they do best.”
Others are like succulents and maybe you only need to attend to them every once in a while. And that’s alright.
Till next time,
Pax 🕊
I am a dork who loves therapy tools, and gets monumentally distracted by fun things.
Not an interesting read per se, but a tool that has been somewhat helpful, like a feeling wheel, is an interactive website on the interconnectedness of emotional states. It’s beautifully designed, and rather fun to poke around the color schemas of related emotional families. It appears to be based in an element of CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) about how an event influences your feelings, which influences your reactions, and allows you to explore and reflect on your own emotional states.
The Dalai Lama and Paul and Eve Eckman’s Atlas of Emotions.
I’m striving for one more post for October, slated for the week of Halloween. Cheers.
I saw your post on Facebook and I read it here. Glad to find another person who writes on Substack! Friendship is a topic that I always find interesting. It's not always easy to discern which ones to keep and which ones to let go, especially so because our Christian values urges us to love our neighbor. Looking forward to reading more from your blog. God bless you!