Don't Treat Your Friends Like They Are Your Therapist: Navigating Adult Friendship Realities
Apr 23, 2024Season 3Episode 176
Ever find yourself reminiscing about the simplicity of childhood friendships, only to be met with the tangled web of adult relationships? Let's discuss why your friends shouldn't be your makeshift therapists and how crafting boundaries is less about building walls and more about building respect. Understand the beauty of choice in your social circle and the thrill that comes with forming fresh bonds in the adult playground.
Ever find yourself reminiscing about the simplicity of childhood friendships, only to be met with the tangled web of adult relationships? Let's discuss why your friends shouldn't be your makeshift therapists and how crafting boundaries is less about building walls and more about building respect. Understand the beauty of choice in your social circle and the thrill that comes with forming fresh bonds in the adult playground.
Hi guys and welcome back to Confessions of a Wannabe it Girl, the podcast to help you filter out all the BS in pursuits of becoming your own it girl or the next it girl. And in today's episode, something every it girl needs is what that would be adult friends. We love having our girly pops, our boy-y pops that didn't quite translate the same having our guy friends, whatnot. But something that is a little bit different I have realized in adult life is adult friends are different than your friends you might've made in middle school and your high school friends, and also those relationships mold and change Today's episode. We are going to talk about adult friendships.
Speaker 2:
Welcome to Confessions of a Wannabe it Girl. I'm your host, marley Fregging, and I'm here to help you filter out all the bullshit and become the next it Girl. This podcast explores the reality of what it really takes to make it out there. As it turns out, it is way less Instagrammable than I thought it was going to be. I'm still very much a work in progress, but there's simply nothing else I'd rather be doing than chasing my dreams. So let's learn from my mistakes and work together to achieve our dreams with more confidence, clarity and direction. Let's get after it.
Speaker 1:
I might've brought this up before in the past, but I want to state the number one thing that I did not learn about adult friendships from my middle school friendships was thinking that my friends were my therapists and my friends also thought that I was their therapist. I don't know. In middle school we're all figuring it out. We barely know what a bra and a tampon are, and we were probably smoking weed out of an apple Fair to say that the elements of real life, of adult life, isn't really there when you're in middle school and you turn to your friends for everything. I mean, at one point I did have a friend call me because she got scared leaving a grocery store by a homeless person. I was like an hour away from where she was. What was I going to do in the situation? My point being is your friends are there for everything in middle school and high school and you think they're the be all, end all and you know what. You confide in them a lot. You tell them everything. They're there for you through every heartbreak, up down prom court, whatnot? All the things. Your friends are there for you and you rely on them to be your therapist and hopefully you are also using them as your therapist. However, as we become adults, we all have a lot more on our plates. Life becomes a lot more full with financial responsibilities and work responsibilities and relationships and other things you just want to prioritize your time in. I mean, it's fair to say, for multiple years of my middle school and high school life I spent two to three hours on the phone a day, texting or phone calls, being involved in my friend's life. As you get older, I hope you don't have that kind of time to be that involved in your friend's time. Nor should you feel obligated to give up your free time to act as your friend's therapist. So, fair to say, as I always freaking, do get a therapist and don't make your friends your therapist and don't be your therapist to your friends.
Speaker 1:
Because of trauma, dumping sometimes or whatever reason, adult friendships also come to an end. I mean, if I told you that the people I hung out with that first week of college turned out to be my best friends, that would be a very rare story. Very rarely do we meet people like right off the bat and realize that these people are going to be our bestest friends. I'm not kidding. I've met one of my absolute best friends at orientation for my college and I recently told her this story, so I don't feel bad repeating this. I totally wrote her off and I thought she was a dumb blonde. She turned out to be my best friend and will be standing at my wedding. So it's fair to say that it's okay for friendships to end because you don't really know who is going to be there in the long term. I mean, tons of my friendships from middle school and high school have completely fizzled out and I've been very surprised to see which ones have stuck around and it's okay for them to end. I mean those friends that I made freshman year. You know, I don't really think about them. I was lucky enough to recall their names when I was writing them into the scrapbook this past month. But whatever friendships end, now we can talk about the more dramatic version of friendships ending, which is the classic snip-snip, cut them off hard-ending friendships. These can be tough.
Speaker 1:
I've done a whole episode about toxic best friends and whatnot, or what are your friendship red flags here? And I mean it sounds so Instagram cliche, but like it is okay, like you will continue. Your heart will still beat if you cut a friend out. Yes, there's a lot of anxiety. It's an awkward conversation or situation Sometimes it's not always a conversation Just throwing that out there. It's not a fun process to go through.
Speaker 1:
But being an adult means you don't have to be friends with people. You just don't. Which brings me to the idea that the reason we were friends with so many people in school or because of soccer practice or whatnot, is, again, you're in a contained environment. These are the people that you know they are, who are in your circle. But being an adult, if you want to go to Chipotle at 1130 and make a new friend, you can go to Chipotle and make a new friend. In high school, I wasn't really about to hit the town and try to make new friends at 10 PM at night. You don't have to keep the friends you have and being an adult, that is one of the cool responsibility things we were always looking forward to having, and you're not in those contained environments anymore. So why are you keeping people you don't like?
Speaker 1:
There's this weird transition going from being younger to being an adult and having adult friendships is you kind of have to show people the way you want to be treated. Now this would be classified as our favorite word, boundaries and it can be confusing to set boundaries with old friends that you had, maybe when you didn't have as strong of boundaries. Maybe they're not used to you having those boundaries. So it is a very hard process to reset your boundaries for friends you've had for a longer time. It takes a lot of doing and not telling. But like you got to show, not tell, you just have to repeat the action multiple times.
Speaker 1:
We're talking about denying phone calls at 1 am. We're talking about saying don't say that about someone whatever. And I also do find with newer friends, setting boundaries can be awkward. For example, back in the day I was at brunch with a group of friends and a friend said something about me at like, something like to the lines of like you're so stupid, this is a good friend. And I was like you can absolutely not say that about me. And I snapped that is a boundary, you cannot treat me that way. She was joking and I was still like do not say that. So you have to repeatedly, even in newer friends, show the boundary. You're not somebody who wants to FaceTime, all right? Well then, don't pick up the calls Again.
Speaker 1:
It's a lot of doing and not telling people how you want to be treated, because nobody really like deeply takes notes on what we said about how we want to be treated. They just know. Like, for instance, I know one friend is never going to answer my FaceTime. It's very rare. I have to schedule like two to three weeks in advance letting her know, hey, at this time I'd really like to FaceTime to talk to you about X, y, z, versus. I have other friends who, like I, can call right now and they'll probably answer the phone. They'll be like hey, what's up, babe? Those are two different boundaries, two different expectations, and I know that because we are adult friends. That being said, also I think there is this idea that friend is like a blanket term. We assume every friend should be able to do everything ever, like they're your imaginary best friend and they just have superpowers to attend every event and listen to every event session and go to every party with you. And that's not true. And that is one of the reasons that maybe my circle is a little bigger than some people who are my age, who want a little tighter of a circle, is.
Speaker 1:
I like to have different friends for different things. You know, I have my absolute gal pals. We are getting brunch, we are getting drunk and we are gabbing Great Love that. Maybe consider those the party friends. I have the friends who are really emotionally there for me. You know we can have deep conversations about our mental health and you know, any time of the day, shoot a text and be like, hey, I'm not mentally feeling so well. Great, I have my emotional friends. Then I definitely have this little slew of friends. That's also definitely my networking friends. We want to hustle, we want to be somewhere in this industry and workforce.
Speaker 1:
So point being is like you can have friends for different things. You don't need your friends to cover every single category in your life. It's unrealistic to believe that somebody else is going to meet your expectations in all areas of your life. And I also think that I'm probably categorized for some people in what kind of friend I am. I'm a great listener. I love to be the I call myself the HR friend. You know I do like a good little vent session. You can call me up, I'm available. But you know I will honestly admit I'm deep in my retiring party girl phase. Like you want to go on a Thursday night. You needed to schedule that two weeks ago. So I'm not the biggest party friend, and that's okay, because you can have friends for different things, and that's okay because you can have friends for different things. That being said, you can have friends for different things, but sometimes, because you have friends for different things and you are somebody's friend for different things, sometimes you end up maybe not scoring that invite to that thing you actually wanted to go to, or there's a gal's dinner that evening and maybe you just got forgotten about.
Speaker 1:
You have to reach out to people if you want to be invited to things. I think there's like this very like naive idea that we think oh, just because I'm in someone's outer, greater circle, if they want me to come, they'll invite me. And sure, yes, maybe don't show up to somebody's wedding that you didn't get the invite to, but if you want to be hanging out with this person more, drop them a text and be like hey, I'd love to see you. They just might need to be reminded, in the 8 million things they've got going on in their life, that you are free this Friday night and would like to attend that group dinner you are hosting. I know it sounds stupid, but we get forgotten. You forget to invite people that you mean to invite to your birthday party too. It happens. So if you want to be included, reach out. It's not that big of a deal.
Speaker 1:
You know there's always this drama when invites go out that oh so-and-so would have invited me if she wanted me there. No, sally, she forgot. She's really busy. She's working eight different jobs and trying to pay rent in LA. She didn't remember. And so if you want to go to Sally's birthday, shoot her a text and be like hey, I hope you're really well. I know you have a birthday coming up. She'll probably recur it, unless you've been shitty, whole different thing. Recall you and be like oh my God, I'm having a birthday dinner. Would you like to come? Problem freaking solved, you know what.
Speaker 1:
And that being said, though, there's also going to be times where you don't score the invite. You know what it happens. Certain friends need time with other people, with you not there, and that's okay. For instance, I have this group of gal pals these are potentially what we'd call my closest gal pals and we always invited this one friend to come out with us. She never came, and so you know what? We stopped inviting her to come out with us because we were like we're tired of being rejected. So the three of us just got together and hung out and it's okay, she didn't make the invite, she was probably not going to come anyways, and that was fun.
Speaker 1:
There was another time me and one friend who don't get a lot of time with just each other one-on-one decided we were going to take a trip just the two of us, and we felt so guilty about it because there was this other friend we just weren't inviting. The point of this trip was for me and her to have one-on-one time to get out of town, just the two of us. And we were like, well, what do we say to her? Do we not say anything? Do we not acknowledge it? And you know what? It ended up coming out to her that we were going on this trip and she wasn't invited. Sure, she was a little upset, because who's not upset when they're not invited or thought of for something? But my friend was the one who had the conversation with her and she was like, hey, you know, I just don't get a lot of alone time with Marley. And she was like, yeah, that's totally fair. I can totally see that you two like want to have some time in your relationship, like I kind of have my own relationship with you two, and so, yeah, go have a good time. It's okay.
Speaker 1:
You're not always going to score an invite to everything. And that doesn't mean they hate you. I always. I mean even now, and I'm sitting here behind this podcast mic which, by the way, they give no licenses to have podcast mics sitting here and I will get left out of something and I will get sad, but at the end of the day it's just not that deep.
Speaker 1:
I have this whole other group of friends and they have a lot closer connection with all the and all the time they have group dinners and group brunches and even though I'm friends with just about every single one of them, I never make the cut. And you know what? That's okay, they have their own synergy, their own thing. Sure, if they were to invite me, I should really try to attend if I want to be included, but if not, fuck it, who cares? They're still my friends. That doesn't mean they sat around and were all like, oh, marley's the worst, they didn't gossip about me, trust me, they got other shit to gossip about than you.
Speaker 1:
So, that being said, that was kind of it and, that being said, that being said, that's actually hilarious. You got to keep that. That being said, it's fair to say adult relationships and friendships are definitely unique, you know, I hope they are rich and fulfilled and you get to live the great life being friends. I don't fucking know what to say anymore to wrap it out. Don't be a shitty friend, be a good friend. Have adult relationships Grow up. Thank you, guys, so much for listening to Confessions of a Wannabe it Girl. We'll see you next Tuesday.
Speaker 2:
Thank you so much for listening to Confessions of a Wannabe it Girl. Don't forget to rate and subscribe to the show. As always, we'll see you next Tuesday.
