The Impermanence of Friendship
After 58 years of making friends I’ve discovered something. Close relationships are fluid, they are seasonal. Friendship is impermanent. Those friends who wrote in your high school yearbook and inscribed above their signature, with all sincerity, “Best Friends Forever” (BFF) were unaware of this. They have moved on. So have you. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say, that relationship has morphed into something very different, no longer meriting the “best” or the “forever.” Relationships are subject to the second law of thermodynamics like everything else in the universe.
I don’t say this to discourage you or your high school naiveite. I just want to recognize and respect to the evolutionary nature of friendship. Friendships expand and contract, they take on a different shape over time. Some even have lifespans. They pass away altogether. To expect it to remain in its current form for decades is unreasonable. Suffocating.
To know a person deeply, know them in all their beauty, fragility and brokenness, and to choose to love them still, is a powerful thing. And then to have them know and love you back is glorious. But it is temporal. Marriage is an entirely different organism with its own life cycle of birth, childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age, sometimes death. But I’m talking about a platonic friendship – a kindred spirit who can tell you the truth, no matter how wonderful or how cutting that truth is. That kind of friendship rises above all other friendships. To be sure it’s something to treasure, but we must also allow those friendships to evolve, to breathe, and to take on a different shape.
I’ve had best friends. At 58 I can count them on one hand. They are special. Rare. But they are shapeshifters. Like a labyrinth, you walk alongside someone for a season, then a romantic relationship enters the picture, or a deep misunderstanding breaks something in the relationship, or a geographical move pulls one of you in a different direction, and soon distance begins growing between you. Your paths diverge This is the way of all living things. It may be sudden and painful or imperceptibly slow, like continental drift. But it happens.
For those without a long-term traveling companion like a spouse, this can be disorienting. Upsetting. But all of us regardless of marital status must pass through the dawning reality that best friendships are impermanent. In my experience, very close friendships have lasted about ten years. Some more. Some less. But all of them have changed. Then there are long periods without a kindred spirit. And if you don’t harden, if don’t become arthritic in your ability to grow close to someone, other relationships begin to grow. Maybe it doesn’t seem to measure up to that best friend, but I find comparisons unhelpful. All relationships are unique.
Most of the best friends I’ve had in seasons of life continue in some quieter form. When we get together we pick up where we left off. But only for a short period. Life has moved on. We’ve grown in different directions. Life circumstances have changed.
I’ve sometimes heard a parent tell a child, “Stop growing up!” Of course, they mean this in jest, but they are voicing the human resistance to change. But the alternative to change is stasis, and stasis isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Change is good. And whether you believe that or not, relational change is not something you get to control. It happens.
Celebrate the friendships when they are present. Accept their inevitable transformation. Mourn their passing. But friendship doesn’t freeze very well. You and your friend need to take on your next iteration. Accept the impermanence of friendship.