Keeping your friends close and your enemies closer is a great quote to live by if you’re a slightly dramatized and comically villainized type of person.
The fallout of a friend group can hit hard. It can feel career-ending and sorrowful, but most of all, it can feel anxiety-inducing after the fact: Will I see them out? Should I say hello? In many ways, it hits the same as running into an ex.
The Freshman Year Fallout
It happens to all of us. Whether it’s an entire friend group’s foundation destroyed by the standing pillars breaking up, or, to put it more plainly, someone getting with someone they shouldn’t have. Maybe your roommate simply cut you off while you’re still living in the same room, or you rejected your friend’s friend and he didn’t take it well. Someone might have even randomly turned against you. The Freshman Fallout has happened to all of us.
Getting ditched by friends is dramatic and heartbreaking. It’s something that makes you feel lost and like it’s time to go home for a weekend. But coping with the fallout doesn’t have to be any of these things. I’d call it one of the most character-building events in everyone’s college career because even though it may not feel like it at first, you’ll always walk away stronger after the fact.
Upon feeling like you’ve lost or are losing your support system, comes the greatest reward and greatest challenge of life: affirming yourself.
When in Doubt, Reach Out
The best strategy for combating the anxiety-inducing moments of silence between friends is to break the silence. Be the one to text if they haven’t texted you. If you’re worried about a conversation you just had or a hangout that just passed, let them know you loved the chat or that you had a great time seeing them.
If you’re true to yourself, reaching out to someone should never be a burden, but a good practice of who you are. Instead of sitting in silence or overthinking who they think you are, just act and be!
If they don’t respond or see you again, then don’t take it personally because…
Old friends make new friendly faces
Not every friend you find is going to be at your wedding or continually share their deepest confessions. The best and longest-lasting friendships are the ones that come without pressure and are rooted in understanding.
The best way to be understanding of someone is to be less involved in their life while being overly involved in your own. If you’re sitting around doing nothing, of course you’re going to be thinking about all those friends who are out doing their own things. But concern yourself with only yourself and suddenly you’re running into someone you haven’t thought about or stressed over in a week, and boy are you glad to see them.
Have good faith in those you meet. Live and let live, and hold on to those who care. It takes a village, but you can’t be expected to talk to each villager every day of your life. The best you can do is be kind to those you encounter, and eliminate any self-destructive doubt.
Keeping your peace
Now, some friends don’t deserve a hello (shoutout to the only ex-best friend I’ve ever enacted a strict no-hello policy with, you suck).
Keeping your peace with people who have hurt you can look like no contact or simply choosing not to care about events of the past. But do keep a strict value for yourself: there’s a difference between disrespect and distance.
On the bright side, if it does get to the point of moving on from an entire group of people, there’s something actually really freeing about not running the same circle twice. Not to mention something luxurious and private about not hooking up with your friend’s ex, or even your friends’ friends.
New Friends
College is an amazing place to meet people, find connections, introduce mutuals and adopt class friends and their friends too, if you’re open and inviting enough to the idea. College is also a great place to experience growing relationships on your own without the help of the same 20 people you know.
Large group dynamics get confusing, dramatic and overwhelming. When in doubt, single someone out, make a new class friend or talk to that friendly face you always see around.
At the end of the day, everyone is in the same boat, and most of the time, everyone is willing to have a short chat. To talk to someone is to see someone, and to be seen is always a beautiful thing.