Some advice and signs that you’re outgrowing a friendship
There comes a time in your life when you realize that some friendships you’ve had are becoming surface level, distant, and you feel as if you’ve outgrown the friendship you never imagined would die out. Questioning old friendships and people’s value in your life is just an ugly truth but it happens, it’s inevitable. Friendships are this weird in between because you don’t want to romanticize it as a relationship but it is a type of relationship, that you have to nature and often question if you’re still compatible with this person.
Outgrowing friendships is so prevalent in college because you start a new chapter, move away from home, and establish new friendships. Outgrowing friendships is like mooring, it’s sad but normal. It’s perfectly fine to miss an old connection or even time period in your life.
Lets touch a little more on signs that you might be outgrowing a friendship or a friend could be outgrowing you, which does not have to be this maturity battle but just a time period of change.
- If you’re dreading spending time with this person, you are annoyed or feel as if it’s an innovience to go about hanging out with this person.
- If you feel like you have pretend to be someone else or even an old version of yourself around them
- If you feel as if they don’t respect the fact that you’ve changed
- You’re in two completely different life stages
- You hide your true self around them, often holding back on things that bother you
- There’s no longer effort to make time for each other
- They dismiss how you feel
- Have nothing in common
- They’re too busy
- You don’t care if they’re in your life or not
- The only thing you have in common is the past
- Constantly complaining to other about them
- They don’t support you
- You wouldn’t be friends if you met today
- You become an expired version of yourself when you’re with them
Here is an evoking quote I found on Psychology Today, “Some people are only compatible with an expired version of you.”
If you read through this list and were checking off and thinking about all these scenarios with this person, this is probably a sign that you’ve outgrown this person. This realization does not need to be this dramatic scene, it may not even be appropriate to have a conversation. Typically if friendships are vanishing, it may be mutual so there’s not necessarily a need for an apology, or cut off conversation.
The longer it takes you to recognize or even confront that the friendship is dissolving, the longer you’ll wait to become your true authentic self. You hold back on growing when you resist a problem. Holding on to something that you no longer want can only hurt you and the other person. Staying in outgrown friendships can also affect the other person, although either way the person can be hurt, it’s just better to rip off the bandaid quickly before all the gross effects come.
As a new season comes in, take this as an opportunity to make some changes in your life.