If you’re lonely, consider reviving a friendship that ended because of life, not because of personality or hurt feelings.

[00:00:00] Kay: I think if you just open that door to people that you were once so close to, for whatever reason, your children, or you work together, you were college friends together or something in that space of time. You know, maybe make up something. I just was looking through a drawer and I saw an old photo of us together. Thought I’d just call and check in.

[00:00:19] Nina: Welcome to Dear Nina: Conversations About Friendship. Today’s episode is about reviving an old friendship that ended not because something bad happened, because that’s not what we’re getting into today. We’re talking about those friendships that faded because you moved, because life moved in a different direction.

Maybe you used to sit on the bleachers when the kids were young, and then kids got into different things but you used to spend a lot of time together. Now you’re at a different stage of life where maybe you’re looking for friends. Considering the people you used to really connect well with is a place to start. My guest is Kay Paschal, who tells us her story of having a really tight group of friends in her twenties because of various reasons really stopped spending time together. They didn’t have schedules that aligned and nothing happened in terms of somebody doing something cruel to somebody else.

It wasn’t like that. There was nothing to have a confrontation about. They didn’t fade out because they didn’t have things in common anymore. They still had a lot of things in common. There was just a lot of schedule issues and other things career and whatnot.

Kay actually has done, lots in her career that has nothing to do with talking about friendship, but her story was so compelling to me because I love this positive spin on what happens in a good way, sometimes, not all the time, after friendships have faded out or ended for some reason, they do sometimes have future legs to them. If you’re lonely, or you’re just finding that some of the current friendships you have are lacking in some way, dipping back into once close friendships could be something to consider.

Let me tell you a little bit about Kay. After founding and owning two private preschools for 25 years in Atlanta, and you will love her accent. I loved her accent. Maybe if you’re from the Atlanta area, it will be nothing special to you. I really, as a Midwesterner, enjoyed it. Anyway, she did that for 25 years. She started a new career by writing a book and speaking to moms and women’s organizations and participating in parenting conferences around the country. Kay’s book, Insert Giggle Giggle, Laughing Your Way Through Raising Kids and Running a Business was recognized by Zippy Owens media as a finalist best book for parents. Let’s welcome Kay to Dear Nina. All right. Hi, Kay. I’m so glad to finally meet you.

[00:02:45] Kay: Well, thank you so much.

[00:02:46] Nina: I really feel lucky to have your perspective on a subject that really is a good follow up to one that I did with Dr. Miriam Kirmayer, and that was episode 109. That was about quiet quitting, which is different than ghosting.

Quiet quitting can happen because you want to purposely move away from a friend, but could also also happen because life happens and it’s not necessarily like you made a conscious choice to move away from this friend. When you and I were emailing about your friendship story and your life and some of the rich friendships you’ve had, we started talking about this idea of reviving old friendships that have drifted apart, but not necessarily because anyone did anything to upset anyone, just life. And you and I were talking about, it doesn’t always have to stay that way. And I think people struggle with that. It’s why I constantly tell people not to burn a bridge. It’s not necessary.

So I want to hear a little more about your story and I’m going to let you just talk, talk about your adult life in the early adult life to where you’re at now.

[00:03:46] Kay: Well, in my husband and I, in our young twenties, he was in his master’s degree program at Georgia Tech and he met a fella there that was getting his degree also at his master’s. His name is Mike and he had gone to undergraduate school in a very small college in North Georgia. as friendships develop, especially in smaller type colleges, they were very, very good friendships. And when all of those people graduated, most of them moved down to Atlanta to get jobs and live together and various things. One day he just invited us along to a party that this group of friends were having. I don’t know if it was a cookout or some sort of holiday. And so we just tagged along with him and we made an immediate connection with this friends of his from college. I mean, it was almost immediate. We started as 20 year olds do. None of us had children. We just spent every weekend together. I mean, it was cooking out, going to happy hour, meeting after work, tailgating a party, football games. It was just everything. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, most weekends, we were all together for years.

Then my husband took a job transfer to Texas and we were out there almost four years. And of course, just naturally, a lot of them visited us. We, of course, came home to Atlanta quite a bit, but you know, when we would come back, we were involved in seeing all of our family. There wasn’t a lot of time to then visit them.

It was just kind of a natural progression of moving away from being so involved with that group of people. Then when we moved back four years later, we started looking for developing our preschool business, our family business. We had to find property. We had to do everything associated with building and starting this business. We had our second son when we moved out to Texas, our first son was a year old. And then when we moved back, I was seven months pregnant with our second son. So, you know, we had all of that going on.

It just was a normal erosion of that friendship. They were all still getting together. We just constantly were having to say no. We just did not have time eventually, as happens, people stop calling because, you know, they can’t be calling you every weekend. Hey, do you want to come over and cook out? Hey, do you want to meet us here? Can you go out there? No, we, we really legitimately could not do any of that.

[00:06:04] Nina: I appreciate this point of view. We’re going to pause here for a second because one of the questions I get asked a lot is about people who don’t reach out. And what do I do with my friend who doesn’t reach out? I often give the advice that you should not take every time someone doesn’t reach out personally, or it’s a lot of times, many of us who are good at reaching out. That’s just something we’re really good at because we’re more organized with our time.

And if you don’t have any time on your calendar that you can either foresee because you are just in, a really difficult time of life, or you can’t foresee it because you are not organized with your time. It would make sense that you’re not going to reach out to your friend because what are you going to suggest?

Let’s go for a walk. When? It’s not like you’re reaching out to anyone else. It is natural though. Even though I tell people, please don’t take it personally and just keep reaching out. I would also in the next breath say, however, if the friend truly never says yes or doesn’t reach back, you know, at some point, at least once in a while, okay it’s probably time to consider that. So if one of your friends from back of the day had gotten in touch with me, I probably would have said, give them a chance. They’re in a really hard time of life. They’re building this business with kids and all these people’s parents they have to deal with, and they’re trying to find property.

And. I would have told your friends to give you a chance. It sounds like they did.

[00:07:15] Kay: Yes, they did. I mean, they continued to involve us in things and reaching out and, you know, it almost got to a point because like I said, I say as regretful as it was, and as much as we Loved and enjoyed these people, we just legitimately did not have the time when the business got going, certainly I was there 5 days a week. So was Steve. But then on the weekends, he was up there doing maintenance type things and all of that type of thing. he would be gone Saturday and Sunday, buffing the floors and fluffing up the mulch on the playground and, we didn’t have time to get a babysitter and go out for happy hour or a cookout.

We would see them very infrequently. I mean, there would be times because, you know, we have season tickets. To the Georgia Tech football games, and a couple of them, of course, had gone to Georgia Tech with MBAs and liked Georgia Tech. So there’d be random times that we would tailgate with them, and it would be great to see them, but then there’s almost that fear that that maybe they’re going to start calling again, and we’re going to have to start saying no again, over and over. I mean, it was, it was such a double edged sword of loving to see them all and thinking, Oh gosh, we’ve missed out on so much and we really need to get back in these relationships and maybe right after something, maybe we tailgated with them, maybe the guys decided to do golf, one Saturday and, and that happened, or I went and had lunch with a group of the girls, but then, We would move right back into, okay, we don’t have time for this.

And then of course our boys got older and our older son was traveled all over the world, Irish dancing. He was a Irish dance competitor. And our younger son was in travel baseball. legitimately between our business and our boys being in such elite type activities and traveling so much again, we had no time for doing a lot of things with that group of people while they were continuing to keep intact because their friendships were even stronger than the ones that we had developed with them over a 10 or 12 year period. these were very deep, wonderful relationship that we had with this group of people. I loved them dearly. There wasn’t anything going on in my life for that 10 or 12 year stretch of time that they weren’t involved in. So it was really tough.

[00:09:32] Nina: So just to get the time, straight here. In your twenties, you guys were really tight before you moved to Texas. And then not only did you move for some time, you came back and by then you were building the business. And so it was just sort of a double edge.

Cause like that move is not a no big deal. Like to leave is, is hard and this is a pre social media, pre group texting. Yeah. Think about how that might have changed things. Absolutely.

[00:09:58] Kay: Yeah, we didn’t have a cell phone. I mean, this was in 1989, 1990.

[00:10:04] Nina: it’s interesting to think about how technology might have changed it, but maybe not for the better because You would have always been a little bit on the edge of that group text, like this is how it would have played out.

They would have been talking about the plans, talking about the plans, and then they themselves would have had to decide, okay, are we taking Kay off of this? Like she never comes. They’re never available. should we take her off this group text and are we a burden to her? Cause no one wants to feel like they’re annoying you. You ever see these memes that go around like, sorry, I annoyed you with my friendship. Right, right.

[00:10:31] Kay: Yeah. Yeah. Well, that’s what I was saying before, you know, there was that once we moved back and certainly reconnected with them on some level and they would say, Hey, we’re going to do this.

We’re going to do that. And we were always having to say no, but yet I didn’t want to not be asked because maybe every now and then we did go. It just sort of just naturally had this kind of fading off because there was a whole lot more no’s. n there were yeses. you don’t want to keep up with someone, let them know, okay, now we’re meeting here. Now we’re going to do this. Now the time has changed if they’re not coming, like you say, you just kind of drop them off. sporadically through the, the 25 years that we owned our preschool, that this period that we were not as involved with these people as we were, The 20 years before that, still, we still connected with them every now and then.

[00:11:22] Nina: I know what you mean. You were friendly. You were more than acquaintances. You have a history. You had a rich history, so you were more than acquaintances, but you really weren’t close anymore. It actually takes a lot of self awareness I think it’s wonderful for people to hear this. I usually get anonymous letters from the point of view of people who feel, and I’m not saying they feel this incorrectly, but how you feel, how you feel.

But it’s usually from the point of view of someone who feels they’ve been wronged in some way. And somebody could tell the story like they’re the victim of a group dropped them. And you really could have chosen to tell the story that way. And then the group didn’t care that we were building a business and they weren’t sensitive to the fact that our kids were in elite sports and they just like moved on without us. And you’re telling it in a much more compassionate way. Like you understand that. Yeah. How many times can you ask somebody before you stop asking? I mean, it’s totally natural.

[00:12:10] Kay: Yes. And, at any time that they were having one of the, one of the girls is really, really what you were talking about being that type of organized friend to this day, she’s the one that still organizes all of our girl group lunches. if there’s a Halloween party, it’s at her house. If there’s a Christmas party or any kind of holiday party, it’s at her house. And her name’s Linda. And she’s wonderful with that.

[00:12:36] Nina: Everyone needs a Linda.

[00:12:38] Kay: Yes. We all count on

[00:12:39] Nina: and be grateful to her.

[00:12:41] Kay: absolutely. you know, she would still invite us to the Christmas parties. if there was going to be some big football party, you know, she would send me a text or give a call. Hey, I’m having a group of people over love for you and Steve to drop by. And I’m like, Oh, you know, we certainly will try to, sometimes we would.

And sometimes it didn’t work out. She didn’t need for me to confirm, not confirm. I mean, I just cannot give enough credit to whatever it was about this particular group of people. That we just happened to fall into how gracious they are about the comings and goings. And I will say that there was another couple that I can, think of that lived a little bit outside of Atlanta, wasn’t able to travel as easily.

They had a very busy life and children too. they came sporadically, but always this group was so welcoming. Anytime anybody could join, and yeah,

[00:13:36] Nina: that’s not so usual either. No, I don’t think

[00:13:39] Kay: that’s very usual at all. The second Steve and I sold our business and of course, our boys are grown and believe it or not, we still have a lot of responsibilities and ties together with our, with our two boys, but you know, the second that we sold our business and retired, that was in November of 2018, we were on a cruise with these people in January of 2019.

It was just like no time had passed at all. That cruise was so meaningful because we just went right back into a lot of those memories and remember this and remember that. And okay, what trip is next? Now that it’s been almost five years since we’ve retired from our business, we don’t do everything that this group of people do, I guess, just because we’ve gotten to our own rhythm of life or whatever, because they are still such a tight knit group.

I mean, they are just, if you’re lucky enough to have to be in a friend group like that, you’re so blessed beyond measure. And I’m just so glad to be more than just in the periphery of something like that. I’m more than that. But they really have such a blessing in their life.

[00:14:46] Nina: A lot of people are looking for that kind of thing.

I mean, I know that it is something a lot of people desire. Advice I give on that is for anyone hearing this and they’re like, Oh, I’ll never have that. It’s not something you look for. You look for a friend. Yeah. Never look for a group. I’ve seen a lot of college TikToks going around. I’m in the algorithm of college freshmen TikToks.I have a college freshman and maybe that’s why.

And I see a lot of people crying in the camera saying how lonely they are and they see all these people going out and having fun. And every once in a while, if I’m brave, I’ll write in the comments and I’ll say, don’t look for a group. you’re looking for a group. Just look for a friend. That’s where it starts because a group is still just made up of individuals.

It starts with individuals and then, you know, you, you add one, you add one, whatever. And then over time a group may form, doesn’t always go as nicely as this one you’re describing. And there’s comfort in that, but yeah, you got to start with one.

[00:15:35] Kay: something else very interesting about this group, when we were the 10 or 12. Maybe even 15 years span that we were very involved with this group. It was not unusual, not only for Steve and I, but for other people in this friend group. I mean, Steve and I may invite just another couple out for dinner one night. we may go ride up to the mountains one afternoon with just another one of these couples. No one ever felt left out. Oh, that’s

[00:16:02] Nina: magical. That’s the best thing ever.

[00:16:04] Kay: Yeah. This is what I’m telling you about this group. we would invite this couple to use our extra two tickets to a football game. No one ever said, I wonder why they didn’t invite me.

I mean, that was never a thought with this group and if we ever got together at someone’s house to cook out or do whatever we do, everyone was free to say, you know, well, last weekend we were up in the mountains with so and so and so and so, and nobody ever thought or Steven and I never got in the car and said, well, I wonder why we weren’t invited.

Why did they pick them? Why do you think that is? Let’s try to, let’s try to

[00:16:36] Nina: identify that so other people could learn from it.

[00:16:38] Kay: I do not know. It’s confidence. I really don’t know.

[00:16:41] Nina: Yeah. It takes a confidence. Because a lot of times when people make comments like that or feel worried about that, which is totally natural, it happens a lot, of course, it’s natural to kind of wonder like, why, why not us? Why were we invited? It takes, I think, a certain confidence in your friendships, which starts with confidence in yourself to kind of not assume the worst, not assume, oh, they don’t really like us as much as we like them, right, that, that would be the natural thing to do thing like, Oh, we would have invited them. So we must like them more than they. Yeah, that,

[00:17:11] Kay: that was, um, that was never a situation that, that my full experience with this group, even when we were in the throes of being so central to this friend group, you know, we would hear each other say all kinds of things that we did without the others in the group and it just didn’t matter.

You joined when you could and you didn’t, if you couldn’t, and we only had two extra tickets. We couldn’t invite everybody or, you know, a new restaurant had opened and someone lived a little bit nearer to us. You can’t invite 10 people to everything you ever do.

[00:17:44] Nina: That is so right. Oh my gosh, you’re really, it’s like, you’re just talking right out of my brain. Kay, what can people who don’t have such wonderful past friends in their life and such a wonderful non jealous group, what can they take from this idea of trying to revive a social life after a long period of time of maybe a dormant relationship, it doesn’t have to be a whole group, even just with one friend, like maybe you had one wonderful friend 20 years ago and things ended up not badly, but they did kind of fade out.

Would you recommend trying to revive a relationship like that, you know, in your 60s, 70s?

[00:18:21] Kay: Well, I think learning from this, what we’ve talked about on the podcast and what I’ve experienced in my personal life is don’t assume that these people did not want to be friends with you. I regret that I did not myself keep up and that we didn’t do more with these, friends, but legitimately, we could not, we just did not have the time that we wish we could have had. I think that that happens with a lot of people and especially today in today’s society. I saw something the other day, somebody said that you really recycle your friends about every seven years.

[00:18:57] Nina: What it is is that you, it’s not that you recycle them. It’s that your closest friends, the people closest to you change about every seven years. Right. Okay. That’s a better way to say it. Yes. Yeah. Yes. I mean, it doesn’t mean that you lose all your friends and completely start over, but seven years ago, most people, like listeners, if you think about it, like who were you spending the most time with?

Who was your number one text person, call person seven years ago? It may still be the same person now, but maybe someone else is in pretty close second or something. And maybe someone who used to be maybe second or third is down more by seven. Not necessarily because something happened, but just life.

[00:19:31] Kay: I think a lot of parents fall into this is you become the friends of your children’s parents because you’re at football games or we’re traveling with Irish dance competitions and they know everything about you. You see each other at practice 4 or 5 days a week.

They know what you had for dinner the night before and what you’re going to go home and cook for everybody when you get home from a baseball game. These people are so intimate. And now I have really no relationship with those type of people that I was so close to when my boys were doing things with their children.

But if I saw those people now, I would just be thrilled to see them. And you never know, because our life situation is different now. . A relationship could certainly start right back up. We could say, Oh, my goodness, I haven’t seen Why don’t we grab lunch?

Okay, you grab lunch and then you never know what that might lead to. And I think with this group of friends, just like if you do feel yourself falling out of a friendship for no reason other than the consistency factor for whatever reason is removed. You know, there’s not that natural pattern of getting together. Maybe just give them a call. Hey, you know, I was going through some old photos and I saw a picture of all of us together. I just wanted to call and check and see how you’re doing. And that’s going to lead to a lunch maybe, which may lead to another lunch, which may lead to let’s go to the park and walk around or join an exercise class together. You never know, unless you reach out to somebody, what that might spark. And I think just keeping that door open, like these people kept the door open for Steve and I you know, like I say, they go on trips. They’re very much a traveling group now of retired people that we are.

They always let us know what they’re doing. If we can go, we go, if not, we Hey, they have a good time together. And I love to hear about it when they get back. I think if you just open that door to people that you were once so close to, for whatever reason, your children, or you work together, you were college friends together or something in that space of time.

Maybe make up something. Like I said, you know, I just was looking through a drawer and I saw an old photo of us together. Thought I’d just call and check in.

[00:21:42] Nina: And it’s a worthwhile thing because people are so lonely, I just hear from so many people who are lonely. They don’t know where to start.

And I think that is like really the main takeaway here is that maybe start with these faded out friendships that didn’t fade out because somebody hurt you in some way, right? Just. And yeah, it’s not just that people are busy. It’s that like, I like your point and I should have brought that up earlier that they call it the third place.

The third place might be the bleachers, something outside your home, something outside of work. There’s like this idea of third places where people get together. Sometimes people will say like a coffee shop, unless you have like a regular Friday morning breakfast every Friday with a certain group.

It’s not a third place to just run into someone somewhere. It has to be a regular thing, a class, a writing class, a sewing class. When that third place part dissolves, it can be very hard for the friendships to transcend that third place. it’s not personal. So there’s no reason that you can’t look to that as a place to heal a little bit of loneliness that you might be experiencing and might not even be that the deep friendship that happens is with that person. It might be someone you meet through that person. Maybe that person then invites you to something. You meet someone else and you just, yeah, the door open policy. I love that.

[00:22:50] Kay: Yeah. And I will say with this particular miraculous group that we’ve been discussing, they never quit reaching out, even if it was only two or three times a year when years were going by and we were not coming to everything, you know, they still let us know about those big things and the big parties. Every now and then, you know, the guys would get together and play around a golf and kind of think at the moment.

Oh, well, this is gonna. Lead us back into this and that and the other, but it didn’t for whatever reason, because our boys were still at home. We still had our business. We were still wrapped up in a lot of things, but it was just dipping your toes continuously back into this group and just keeping that connection that little thread with them that allowed when we now do have time we can really develop that a whole lot more. And it’s just been such a pleasure of my retirement life to get back into this with this group of girls and this group of couples just, been really great.

[00:23:49] Nina: Uh, so special. And, and I think the final takeaway on that is not, it doesn’t have to be so black and white. It’s not come to everything or nothing. You could keep a little bit of, of a connection and I also think an unspoken thing here is I know you’re saying that you had no time, no time. You obviously made some time to go sometimes. Yes. Do you think that was really important?

And if you hadn’t, I’m not sure they would have been quite as like excited to revive the whole thing. Right. Right. Yeah, sure. It’s possible. So I think you did a smart thing by I’m sure the time you did show up, it probably still was hard on the schedule, but you just like, you must’ve had some sense, like, okay, we have to show up sometimes, you can never come.It’s smart.

[00:24:29] Kay: I mean, and we obviously Love to go to parties. we’re not reclusive people. I mean, we’re, we’re very social. Most of our social time, it seemed got taken up with people that we were happy to be around that had some kind of involvement with our children as, as kind of, uh, narrow, uh, As that seems, it was a wonderful way to be a family.

I don’t have any regrets about that. We enjoyed all of those people that we spent so much time traveling with and spending days at the ballpark or at dance competitions or whatever. I mean, they were wonderful, wonderful, special people in our lives. Really just enjoy whatever stage that is. Make the most of those friendships, the ones that, that, you know, are strong that you developed in college or in different ways that are still meaningful, but you’re still, you know, continuing to keep that, like I say, that little thread to them as well, so that you can reel that back in at any time.

And, and those people. Just, we’re so gracious to love seeing us whenever we can come. And I’m so glad that they continue to include us, and now we’re included more and more.

[00:25:38] Nina: That’s a great note to end on. Keep those threads alive. Don’t burn bridges. Don’t burn the thread. Do not take a match and light that thread on fire, everybody. If you can help it, life is short, but it also has, if we’re lucky enough, healthy enough, God willing, different stages where we get to have different kinds of time. Kay, thank you so much for coming to visit me at dear Nina. I love that we are now connected beyond just Instagram. Like now I feel like I know you better and can’t wait to keep seeing you out there.

You have such a nice, wonderful presence. I can see why your friends didn’t want to let you go.

[00:26:10] Kay: Oh, that’s very sweet. I appreciate that.

[00:26:14] Nina: All right. I’m going to have everywhere people can find you in the show notes and Kay, as you know, cause I know you’ve heard the podcast, I’m going to end by saying come back next week when our friendships are going well, we are happier all around.