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Best friend neglect
So me and mt best friend are both sophomores in college &we used to be inseperetable. Even freshman year. Now this year when she's at school she barelyyyy talks to me. I always make the effort but she never does. It's been going on all year but she's coming home for summer soon. I know we wil be back to our old selves again but I don't want to only be her best friend when she's not at school. Because when I'm away I am busy but still make a huge effort. Whenever I confront her about it she says she's so busy... Yet she has a lot of time to tweet. I feel so stressed and depressed lately over our relationship. Besides talking to her because that never helps so far does anyone have any ideas of what I should do?!
Thank you s much!
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Maybe give some free advice about: Friendship?
I can understand how you're feeling but there is nothing much you can do. You already talked to her, you can't force her to make time for you.
In my opinion, this is what normally happens when you get older and older. You lose touch with your friends and you make new ones.
Me and my best friend growing up were inseparable. We ended up going to different high schools and had different friends but we always considered each other best friends even when we'd only talk maybe once a week, sometimes even only a couple times a month.
We ended up going to the same college and we saw each other a little more but we both had different friends but we'd hang out maybe once every couple weeks or so. I think that's just what happens because I still love her to death and I'm not in college at the moment but she calls maybe once a month.
I went to this conference the other day and one session was talking about friends. One part she said that if you have a friend that you are very close to, even when you don't see them as much as you used to, you'll still have that closeness.
Especially when you're older, when you're married, have kids, ect. You will still have that friend that you will talk to from time to time and still consider them your close friend.
You guys are distancing and there is nothing wrong with that because I'm sure you both have your own friends. You don't have to be mad at her for not hanging out with you like she used to. Just accept it and make plans every so often to hang out.
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College isn't the problem you know. It's a fact of life that most often we drift apart due to life's experiences. If not for college, perhaps marriage and moving to where husband has work, having and raising children takes a lot of our focus, or the career that you have chosen and working your way up the ladder.
You say with summer you'll be your old selves again. Maybe at this time, have a talk together to promise each other to stay in touch to matter where life takes you or how busy you get. This means it will be a fun treat to hear from each other, not a regular thing. You can not expect her to agree to stay in touch and hear from her daily, once a week, once a month even. It may somewhat a regular pattern to begin with though not often and then switch to times when a couple of years go by before you hear from each other. Only a very tiny bit of humanity get a chance to grow through life in person with a childhood best friend.
I will use my mother in law for an example. Now in her eighties and it being hard for her to get around, she finally does not meet her childhood friend anymore. But all through life, they kept in touch with letters and phone calls. When I married into the family, she showed me pictures of her best friend from childhood and stories of how their lives changed. Yet even after a few years went by they found a way to make a visit and get together in person. All those years they kept in touch and when they got together, it felt as if no time had passed, she was the same friend inside as Mom remembered from childhood, her personality intact.
I can attest to that. I had a childhood fried. I am in my 50's. Over life, I had a chance to be together 3 times only in person, besides the letter and then later facebook. But when I was in person one of those times, I shook my finger at her in play admonishing her and she snapped with her teeth at my finger so quickly it startled me causing me to pull my hand back quickly. She started giggling and I realized that I used to shake my finger at her in tease all the time and Every time, she reacted in exactly the same way.
It is wonderful to have a childhood friend to keep tabs on throughout the years. If you get blessed with it, Enjoy that. Not many have that.
You will have many new close friends and perhaps even have several best friends at the same time...it's possible, it happened to me. You may make big changes in your life, take big steps of growth that transform you into a person who now has less in common with your friend. What you will have in common perhaps is working a job, dating, getting married, having kids, your kids' marriage and becoming grandma. The circumstances in each of those situations may differ greatly. What if for example one of you has a man who ends up abusive and you divorce while the other is happily myarried to the best guy ever. What if one has no problem birthing children. The other has inability to get pregnant and must adopt or has many miscarriages. All these circumstances will change each of you in subtle ways where you become even more different from the young person you remember. When I changed from my Christian beliefs 10 years ago to a blend of Christian and earth based religion, I found I could no longer discuss how church is going for me since I no longer attend. That is another thing I do not have in common with people any more, even the more recent friends made in my church days.
If you can understand this in your mind and choose to accept if, the stress and depression should disappear. If you mentally fight the changes, you will continue to be stressed.
I hope you find peace with life's changes now because there are a lot more to come.
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Unfortunately this is part of life. Childhood friends rarely extend past high school as our lives change greatly once we become adults and leave home for college and work. We form new friendships, new circles of friends and mature differently based on where life takes us. Someone once wrote "You can never go home again."
This is a very true statement. When I was your age I could not afford to go to College I chose instead to go into the Military. Most of my friends went off to college. I still received my college education it just took me a year longer then they did. At the same time I saw a great many things they didn't. I was forced to grow up and mature faster then they did. For I saw war, wounded soldiers, the dead, the poverty of others and everything that goes with war.
I also saw parts of the world that most of them would not see until they were much older which allowed me to experience these countries in a much different manner then they will or I will when I visit them again if I do.
One thing I noticed very early in my time in the Military was that when I came home on leave I had little in common with the friends I grew up with. They were existing in the safe and secure world of college while I spent every day preparing aircraft to go off an bomb cities in a country far from where I was stationed an never heard of. Before the Vietnam war I had never heard of Vietnam or some of the countries surrounding it.
I think you should prepare yourself for your friend to be a different person this summer then the one you are expecting. There is even the possibility that her time at home this summer may be short as she may choose to come home spend some time with her family then go off to be with her college friends or even her college boyfriend.
These are distinct possibilities. I think it is wonderful that you want to keep her as a friend and to try and maintain the relationship you have had all these years. The reality is this may be passing you by. I would suggest that you not be dependant on her for your only best friend and look for someone new at school who share your present interests as your long times friends' shared interest seems to be changing.
I wish the possible reality had a better outlook for you though I doubt it. What I feel is happening with your friend is all part of life's cycle and we all have to adjust, move on as life is forever changing on us.
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