Friends With Zero Benefits (Part 2)
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📞 Hello? Hi. It’s me, Jen Glantz. Welcome to the Bridesmaid for Hire Hotline. A place where real stories are shared and your best advice is given.
This week: Carol wrote in last week about how she was a bridesmaid for a ton of friends but has lost most of them over the years - except for a few who crawl out of the woodwork when their lives are falling apart and they need a happy hour bestie for the night. Some of you shared intense, raw, and really good advice. I’m recapping that in this email.👇
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😔Friends With Zero Benefits (Part 2)
If you have felt like Carol before, you can honestly admit that it’s a really crappy way to feel. You spent years making friends just for them to go off, live their lives, and leave you behind.
TLDR: Carol wrote in last week about how she was there as a bridesmaid and wedding guest for all of her friends in her 20’s but shortly after the weddings, the friendship faded. She’s single, has a great career, but doesn’t feel like she has close friends anymore. She’s pissed because all her married friends ghost her until they need her. When they reach out for a happy hour vent session, she always shows up, listens to the drama, picks up the bill, but then doesn’t hear from them again. They also rarely ask more than one question about her.
The comment section was 🔥 last week with advice for Carol. I’m sharing snippets of it here and lessons about friendship that perhaps we all need, no matter our age, relationship status, or priorities in life.
1. Be a Heavy Lifter — even if you’re not.
Meg wrote: Here to validate you that it SUCKS to be the friend who does most of the heavy lifting—aka the friend who reaches out, organizes the get togethers, puts in more of the effort. You deserve to have friends who equally pour into you and make you feel valued, appreciated, and loved.
Friendship “heavy lifting” is never a perfect balance. Some people are just better at propising plans, reaching out, and putting in ongoing effort. I’ll admit, I am not a natural heavy lifter in friendship. I’m shy, conscious, and often think nobody really loves me (I need serious therapy 🥴). One thing that’s helped me is:
Once a week, I put a note on my calendar to block off 15-minutes. During that time, I do heavy lifting with my friendships. I check-in on some people, make plans with others, send handwritten letters in the mail as a special pick-me-up to those going through life stuff, and etc. It keeps me active in my friendships, especially during a busy season of my life.
2. Talk About Yourself — even if you don’t like to
Michele wrote: Invite her out and YOU take the lead. Talk about you, wins, issues and ask for advice
Brittany said: A true friend ship is never one sided and you deserve better.
Friendship convos are also sometimes off-balanced. If you’re a shy person or someone who doesn’t open up easily, you might be really good at keeping chats going by asking questions. After an hour call, you might not have shared anything about yourself. Maybe it’s also because the other person is really good at dominating the conversation and doesn’t ask you anything about you — which is really not cool.
Before completely ditching the friendship or writing it off, make attempts to take the lead, to share what’s up with you, to lean on your friend for advice. If they are bothered by that or not willing to be a decent friend back, it’s a clear sign that you’re not in a friendship, you’re just being used as their therapist.
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3. Meet the Person Where They are
Alesha shared: Once they get married and have kids, you're not the priority anymore. The friendship dynamics changes. I learned not to take it personal. I meet people where they at.
Gina said: We sometimes just send a simple text to one another say "I love you". It basically means I am busy these days, but I do think of you every now and then.
Tree said:Female relationships are painful when they change. We as women tend to be all in 💯 and it’s hard when we don’t feel supported as we support.
So much changes about friendships and one of the biggest changes centers around how people show up for each other and even what they do together. One of my best friends and I lived down the street from each other for the first three years of our friendship. We saw each other every day for a workout, to go shopping, or to grab coffee and go for a walk. But then she moved to another state and I had a baby. Everything about the dynamic of our friendship changed. Were we supposed to stop being friends? No. But that would have happened if we didn’t figure out how to meet each other where we were at.
When the dynamic changes, ask how you can support the person or just try to support them in a new way. That friend I saw every day became the person I had a 1-hour phone call with once a week. I was a new mom working full-time and she was adjusting to living in a new city. The best way for us to stay close was to plan a time for that one-hour weekly chat. Sure, the dynamic is different, but we’re staying close through a solution that’s practical for both of our lives right now.
4. Friendships Flow in Seasons
Keisha said: Let's face it, as we get older, we start to figure out who our real friends are and who won't be there for the next chapter in our lives.
Sassy shared: Embrace the fact that not everyone is meant to be in your life forever. Go make some new friends and forge ahead.
One of the hardest lessons in friendship is that most won’t last forever, or even a decade. That is okay. Most relationships aren’t supposed to linger. They are supposed to ignite joy in our lives for a length of time and stick in our memories for as long as possible. When I make a new friend and find myself getting closer to them, I stay present about how grateful I am to have them in my life, knowing that one day that might not be the case, but for now, it is. Lean into how lucky you are for the relationships you have today. When they start to change or fade, fix them. If they aren’t meant to be fixed or if they are fading fast, loosen your grip too. See how it feels because it might feel right, especially for right now .
Any other friendship lessons to share? Drop them:
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Keisha great response. Still so sad
Why am I now just seeing this golden nugget part 2? :D
#1. I went to an eye doctor recently. I'm getting my eyes checked because I don't know what I saw in them.
#2. All jokes aside, I think the biggest mistakes I made in my earlier 20's is not letting more boats sink sooner. The signs were there, but some of the people I come across didn't want to be friends with me like I wanted to be friends with them. There were quite a few lovely girls that I hit it off with amazing friendships. But others were one sided. Female friendships sometimes can be a difficult terrain to figure out, especially when you are trying to be kind and you don't get the same kindness in return. I'm a giver and poured into too many cups. I had genuine intentions and wanted to learn how to trust. I simply got tired of doing all the reaching out, texting for birthdays, snapchatting for Merry Christmases and more. One day I stopped reaching out. I woke up and smelled the coffee and realized they didn't care, so why should I? I was low key wondering this: instead of saying they were too busy, why don't they say I'm not priority? I may not been someone they wanted to be friends with, and that's ok. I'm not everyone's cup of tea, but I rather be someone's shot of tequila anyways.
Nowadays, my absence is apparently felt. I've pulled back and became less available. As a giver, I had to learn to set limits because the takers rarely do. I changed my boundaries. I even stopped posting on my social media as much. And I'm focused on me, my happiness, my self care and my purposes. And all of sudden after keeping my distance from people from my past? Some people from my past all of sudden are interested in reconnecting which I find to be odd. I've been getting out of the blue phone calls which is very strange to me, why haven't they blocked me or deleted my number lol? These people wasn't interested in working on a friendship while I was in their lives. Now that we are not friends anymore, they are looking on my socials, asking mutual acquaintances what I'm up to, and seeking me out. My chapter in their book is closed. I hope they move on from me like I did them, and this includes not looking on someone's socials, especially when you don't like them!
Lesson here.
Walk away from your past. Don't bring back people from your past who hurt you. No matter if it's mentally, emotionally, financially or physically. Walk away from those who stabbed you in the back and caused you distress. If someone did something really awful to hurt you. And they didn't care about you or about your feelings? Don't let them back in your life because they will never respect you. The longer you keep holding on to people that's not meant for you, the longer you postpone the people that's meant for you. At the end of the day we got to stop allowing a lot of stuff and we teach people how to treat us. If you don't set boundaries you'll keep attracting people who are toxic.