Friendships are hard, college is hard, we know this. But trying to navigate everything while staying sane can get you into some hot water with the people around us, especially the ones you care about the most. One thing that really hit me lately is the importance of apologizing. This has never been my strong suit, I can not admit when I am wrong, let alone take responsibility for it. I am pretty hard headed and it screwed me over this past weekend.
I got into a fight with my best friend and roommate. We just started living together this year, and living together definitely changes things. I don’t think our friendship has changed, however we spend a lot more time together than we previously have, and that is the challenging part. We get on each other’s nerves sometimes. It’s inevitable. Everything can’t always be perfect.
Last weekend we got in an argument, what the fight started from doesn’t even matter, it was totally irrelevant. Things escalated very quickly. My friend and I have never been in a real argument before, so this had almost three years of friendship fueled behind it. We were yelling and things got ugly quickly and carried on for the duration of the night. When we woke up the next morning and sat down, I really had no clue what to say, so I started yelling again, it’s the only thing I know how to do. My mentality ends up being, if I can talk over the other person, there’s no way I can’t be right. However I have come to realize that that approach does not work.
I have now had time to reflect on the whole process and I realized I really need to sharpen up my communication skills, and properly, sincerely apologize. An apology can really go a long way. But actions really do speak louder than words.
What I learned from this experience is to really listen to your friends and hear them out on what’s bothering them. Make the necessary changes, in some cases it really can salvage the friendship. It won’t kill you to say I’m sorry. (: