As far as friendship advice goes, different month, same issues–though each thoughtful and honest question I receive has its own twist. The question I chose for the newest installment of the column comes from a woman who already knows it’s time to move on from a friend group that isn’t too interested in her and her family, but she’s feeling hurt anyway and wants help moving on. I hope I did just that.
Hi Nina,
My kids are in early elementary school. As a family over the last couple of years we had started getting to know people through activities and socializing with a small group of 4-5 families on a semi-regular basis.
Our communication with this group has been pretty minimal during Covid. There have been impromptu Zoom meetings that didn’t always work with our schedule. We kept busy with our neighborhood pod, family self-care, and we’ve been fairly conservative about socializing outside of our neighborhood. We did, however, choose to do some summer activities for the kids where we ending up seeing this group again. Things are different now though. There have been a couple of gatherings over the summer that our family hasn’t been included in, and the vibe between all of us at the activities was different, too.
There’s a part of me that knows this wasn’t the right group for us: We didn’t totally connect past the kid stuff that brought us together; the gatherings were more draining for me than energizing; and our kids get along, but aren’t “go to” friends. But it still hurts.
In a way it’s helpful because this unique Covid social situation has helped illuminate what I already felt in my gut and now we can move on, but we were really excited to possibly have found the illusive new friend group. It still hurts.
Any insights on how to navigate these friendship transitions and be kind to ourselves along the way would be appreciated!
Signed, Hurting
Dear Hurting,
You are already so far ahead compared to others who write to me with similar situations. I know you’re feeling left out—or more specifically, let down—but I’m very optimistic for you.
Over the past few years I’ve answered this question about what it looks like to be trying with friends vs. chasing them, this question about not allowing a certain friend group to make you feel like you’re in 7th grade, and this one about the difficulty of finding “your people.” I don’t expect you to read all of those, though that last one is my favorite if you want to pick one.
I bring those questions up as examples because they remind me of your dilemma with one important distinction. At the time when those letter writers sent the emails to me, they were one big step behind you in the process of moving to the next stage in the often-times awkward and yes, hurtful, process of reassessing your place in a social circle. They were still trying to figure out whether to keep trying with a particular group, whereas you have seemingly long known that you’d have to move on from this crew sooner or later. Don’t take for granted that you’ve already accepted the fact that these families aren’t going to be your inner circle, your “illusive new friend group” as you said. I bet in your own life you’ve seen people waste many, many, many years chasing a friend or a group of friends. Maybe you’ve done it before and you refuse to repeat that pattern. Either way, I’m glad you’re not forcing yourself to create chemistry where it doesn’t exist.
Your head start, however, doesn’t make it any easier to pick yourself up and start anew with the friend-making for you and your family, which you will do because you’ve done it before so you know you can do it again, exhausting as it can feel sometimes. That is an important kindness you can offer yourself—the utter certitude that this stuff is hard for almost everyone at some point in life.
The best piece of advice I can share is to remind you that we don’t have to ever stop making friends. Instead of looking to land in that one perfect-for-you group, try to be open-minded about always being on a friend-making journey.
Then you won’t put too much pressure on any one friendship AND you will continue to meet quality people along the way.
Wishing you the best with a fresh start for September, Nina
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