Friends, Expectations, Frustrations | hewhopleasures's Blog

Friends - real friends - are people you can trust.  You can trust them with your emotions, and secrets, and mood swings, and stupidity, and insecurities, and triumphs.  You begin to rely on that.  You build expectations that there is at least one person in your life with whom you can share everything and anything.

We all have friends we share certain things with, but we steer clear of certain topics: Maybe religion or politics or addictions we have that they just can't understand... whatever.

But there's always this one friend you can tell anything to.  Until you find that one subject that hits a nerve.  And then the door closes.   You can't talk about that part of your life, because this friend is no longer objectively listening to you and sympathizing or empathizing in a pure way.  Maybe they try, and maybe the advice, guidance and support they give is technically not changed, but there is that negative energy charge in the tone.  So even though the friend may still indeed be giving the same advice they would have despite this emotional "charge", it feels different because now you have doubts.  It MAY be the same, but it may not.  So you don't hear it the same, regardless.

Everyone has the right to their own feelings. It probably wouldn't be too hard to find another friend with whom you can discuss this one topic and get a fresh viewpoint. Except the old friend knows the back story.  You don't have to explain everything and answer a bunch of questions, you can just tell them what happened last night and that's that. 

Friendships take time. Trust takes time.  The issues we need our friends for are happening NOW. But you choose not to discuss it.  You try to figure it out yourself.  Maybe in the long run that is a good thing. Maybe that is how it should be, and really the only way to find the answers.