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Hi, my friends and readers! I’m excited to introduce to you a new segment of the Normal Newsletter. Dear Normal.
Dear normal will answer questions from subscribers about what is normal. For example, is it normal to have drinking dreams after quitting alcohol? What’s a normal amount of screen time? It is normal to feel anxious in a group of people? Is it normal to want to leave a party as soon as you get there? Is it normal to not want children?
These are just some topics I’ve come up with, but I want to hear from you. If you have a question about whether or not something is normal, from the serious to the silly, bring it here. Ask your question in the comments. Send me a DM on Instagram.
I want to hear from you. I will answer your Dear Normal questions in this space every other Sunday. Of course, I’m no expert on what’s normal and for most of my life felt very much the opposite of normal. But isn’t that normal? Not feeling normal? Are any of us actually normal?
Today’s Dear Normal question comes to us from New York.
Our reader asks, “Is it normal to lose friendships in adulthood? I had a friend that wasn’t showing up for me and was actually making things more difficult when we would work together. They recently unfollowed me on social and that kind of hurt my feelings but then I was wondering if they were actually just doing me a favor? Is it normal to feel that way?”
Dear Normal in New York,
I recently experienced something similar. I had met a new friend and the connection was fast and easy. We had a lot of fun together and were living our lives in similar ways. I’m an older adult now. Not a young girl like I once was where friendships came from bathroom lines at the bar. I don’t drink anymore either so I don’t make friends through booze bonds. Making friends in adulthood can be difficult.
For one, we are all busy. Everyone is working on surviving and especially after the past two years in pandemic isolation. All of us are behind zoom cameras and computer keyboards. On our phones. Actually, some of my longest-running female friendships are with women I only know through social media and have never met in person.
There are tragically funny memes about how adult friendships are just asking to meet up for coffee in three months and then never following through.
Many of us don’t live in the places where we grew up. I haven’t lived in my hometown for twenty years. I haven’t lived in a place where I recognize someone from high school at the grocery store for all of my adult life. I also move a lot. I dig change and I love a fresh start but moving means meeting new people and starting over. Where I live now most of my relationships with people are only a year or two old. It’s hard to really get to know someone or be known in that amount of time.
Having met a woman that I really connected with felt awesome and was briefly very fulfilling. However, in adulthood, I think especially in our new friendships there is this threshold for bullshit. A threshold for mistreatment or misalignment. As an older woman, I don’t have the capacity for relationships that don’t fill me up.
It sounds cliche but letting go of someone can mean a greater friendship with yourself. It can mean opening up the door for people that want to love you the way you want to be loved. It can mean asking to be seen, truly seen for who you are. For years and years, I let my people-pleasing behaviors run my relationships. I compromised much of who I was and what I believed in order to make sure the other person was happy.
And that’s just cheating people out of knowing the real you. That’s cheating others out of getting to experience, YOU.
I think it’s very normal to feel hurt when someone unfollows us on social media. Social media follows and friendships are validating to our existence. A kind and encouraging word and a like from a friend on your photo provide a release of dopamine. Dopamine is the happy chemical. So, naturally, an unfollow from a friend would produce the opposite effect. It’s disappointing and hurtful.
When you asked if your previous friend had done you a favor by unfollowing you and ending the friendship, dear reader, I think the answer was in the question. When someone is quick to let us go, uninterested in our lives, and even no longer wants to interact with us in a friendly way, then yes, that person has done the hard part for you. The letting go part.
The other hard part is making sure our side of the street is clean. Do we owe an apology? Can we accept that we may have been responsible for a part of the demise of that relationship? Can we make amends either directly or indirectly by not committing the same harmful mistake in future relationships?
Accept that it hurts to be rejected or for a friendship to not pan out. It’s normal to feel all the feelings of loss and pain or even a sharp blow to the ego. It’s normal to harbor a bit of resentment over the social unfollow. And yes, my reader friend, it is normal to lose friendships in adulthood. Maybe even more so than in youth. In adulthood, we hopefully know who we are and are solid in the kind of love and reciprocal relationships we want.
It’s also normal to recognize that we aren’t going to be loved and liked by everyone, and that’s okay. Find your people. Show up for them. Let it be mutual. Let your friendships inspire and feel supported. Let the others go and wish them well.
xo Dear Normal