Is anyone else as depressed as I am?

[RoJoHen]

What happens when you realize your best friend isn't your best friend anymore? We still hang out from time to time, but we are nowhere near as close as we used to be, and it is almost a struggle to find time for both of us to spend together.

Lately, I've been looking at my career options, and it seems likely that I will be moving far away. I don't even seem to care that I will moving far away from my best friend.

It's really one of the most depressing things I've ever thought about. How do you maintain a best friendship when neither of you seem to care?

 

[Me-Ike]

That is something I've come to realize over the last couple of years as well. The friendship is still there, just not as deep as it used to be. What lingers is the memory of that closeness.

In the end, I think, most friendships aren't meant for eternity. Sounds depressing, at first, but that's how it is. You change, people change, your location changes, whatever; only very seldomly do you find the friendship which lasts a lifetime and even then it probably has short intervalls of little communication in it.

But, although harsh, it's not necessarily a bad thing. We make new friends, find people who we can change with the next (hopefully many) years. And what I find fascinating is that the old friend will always be important to us. You will always have the memory which will still connects you to a person decades down the road, even if the distance you might have drifted away is the size of continents, geographically or personality-wise. They will still be there for you, somehow.

All of that said, maybe your best friend is a best friend for life. Maybe this is just one of the times you don't talk much. A few months down the road all of this might change again, even if you live farther away. My mother maintained the friendship with her best friend for 30 years now, even though they live 500 miles away from each other. And even they talked sometimes more, sometimes less over the years.

 

[RoJoHen]

While I have no doubt that we will go through periods where we don't communicate as often as we used to (we lived together for 4 years, and now we don't, and we will soon live very far away), I just hope that each of us puts the effort forth to maintain as best a friendship as we can. Sadly, I'm just not sure if I trust him to put forth that effort (re: I don't know if he'll miss me as much as I miss him).

 

[Me-Ike]

Okay, that would pretty much suck then. It would be harder on you than on him, as he were the one moving on.
But who knows, maybe he'll surprise you. Maybe he just takes a little longer to come round.

 

[RJDiogenes]

Yeah, that happens. I had a great friend back in the 80s who I used to hang out with all the time, even though he lived in Connecticut and I lived in Massachusetts. In 1986, he moved to Minneapolis for a job and really started to narrow the focus of his interests. I went out there for one visit and it was all kind of lukewarm. Our communications petered out after that and we haven't talked in about 22 years. I doubt if we'd have much in common at this point.

The worst thing is, he still has a couple of my Russ Cochran EC reprints.

 

[Jadzia]

People do move on with their lives, and a friendship shouldn't become an inconvenience to that. Friendships shouldn't be a chore. If your lives are growing apart, then don't cut each other off, but do allow the friendship to wane.

What I mean by that is, you still remain friends, and are still there for each other in times of need, but the time investment is less. The doing stuff together is less. The phoning each other is less.

Think to the past, of all the happiness your friendship has given you both. Think of all the fun times you've had. Cherish those memories.


Perhaps you could mentions your feelings to your friend? He might be feeling the same way, but is unsure how to say it. Maybe in all these years you've come to know each other too well, and your time spent together has become a routine, always the same. Maybe you are both yearning for something new and different? a change of scene? or you've simply exhausted of each other?

 

[JuanBolio]

Depressed? Nope, not me. Just you.

I realized my best friend wasn't my best friend anymore a few years ago. I pulled him off of my girl, kicked his teeth in, and went on about my life. I think I ate a hot pork sandwich a little while later.

Maybe you need a hot pork sandwich.

 

[Kestra]

It's really one of the most depressing things I've ever thought about. How do you maintain a best friendship when neither of you seem to care?

You don't. You make new friends, and some people you forget, others remain important to you.

My best friend and I were inseparable in high school, then he started acting like a jerk and then he went across the country for college. We didn't even speak for several years. Then we randomly reconnected in Chicago one (really drunken) night and we've been in touch sporadically since then.

I don't see or talk to him much, we don't have much in common anymore, but we still care for one another quite a bit and I have a random moment every now and then where I miss him. He flew out here for my wedding last year and when I saw him, I realized how much it meant to me to have him there that day.

I think a lot of friendships are phases of sort. Some people you forget about the moment you stop hanging out, some mean more to you than you realize. And things change, but that doesn't mean that everything that came before was meaningless, or anything like that.

 

[Michael Chris]

This happened to me last year, although with a much different lead up. And, I have to say it was quite tough, but at the same time you can't really force it.

 

[DiSiLLUSiON]

A good friendship is strong, no matter what happens. I see my best friend only once every few months or so. But at the times we are together, it's as if we've just seen each other the day before.

 

[Danoz]

This is a time where Babylon 5 helped shape my view on friendships and relationships.

Wow that may be the nerdiest thing I have ever said. Moving on.

A friendship or relationship doesn't exist in real time, it is a process, a continuation, an amalgam of experiences. It evolves, it changes, it grows old, it fades. I've separated from people I never thought I would have to be without... but people change, they move, and in this beautiful thing we call life we learn to move on and create new relationships while remembering the good times.

As for "best," as a guy I tend to avoid hierarchical associations with my friends by default. I have a number of different, though equally fulfilling friendships and relationships with many people.

 

[RandyS]

I must be one of the lucky ones. I met my best friend when I was 11, and 28 years later, we are still close. He's like my brother, and hopefully always will be.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

For me, friends come and go with shocking regularity. Then again, I have moved around frequently: once when I was 4 and barely able to remember my nursery friends; then again at age 12 when leaving to live in another city; once again when 18 to start University; and several times since leaving Uni and starting working - twice within Scotland, then when I moved back to England in 2004, and about once more since then, in 2007.

Each time I have held onto a few select friends, some of whom I lost contact with months afterwards, some of whom I run into again after years who remember me well (I bumped into one as recently as last week in fact) or whom I meet by chance.

Maybe it's because I've been a frequent mover that I've never felt any particular sense of loss when leaving my friends behind. I feel I know that some time in the future I will meet them again under different, maybe even bizarre circumstances, and I have managed to get used to those changes. Perhaps these bonds I've made have never been strong bonds, but strong enough to form a good and memorable friendship with many, and loose enough to not feel a great sense of loss when I finally do depart. Perhaps that's why I've never had a long-term friendship - or anything closer than that - with anyone before.

On the other hand, I have found it easier than I thought I would to meet new people and start making new friends, although sometimes it is hard to fit in with a new close-knit cohort easily, as I'm always the "friendly-faced outsider" in many groups.

I am with Kestra on this one: friends come and go and it's a case of making new friends and perhaps, with time, reforging the bonds with the old friends. I will admit that this point of view has been influenced by my travelling throughout life.

 

[RoJoHen]

Remind me never to post drunk emotional posts like this anymore. I always blow things way out of proportion.

Our friendship will be fine. It's just been a little non-existent as of late due to our conflicting work schedules, and I think I'm just getting nervous because I know soon we're going to be moving on and living in different places. We both have the exact same group of friends, so it would take one us losing tough with every single one of them for us to stop hanging out.

Just need to try a little harder.

 

[An Officer]

RoJoHen, I am depressed, too.

Why not let loose every now and again? Probably better than keeping it all bottled up. Here's how I feel right now :

I recently "lost" a friend of 8 years. We kind of grew apart without realising. She turned into a career minded workaholic, whereas I slowed down to "smell the roses" as it were. That's fine, it's okay to go in different directions, but in the last couple of years especially, she had taken to comparing our lives in a negative fashion, trying to push me to become more like her (she is very successful in her field and at a young age, too). I became sick and tired of her seeming ongoing lack of respect for my choices, and spent less and less time with her. I don't really give a rats ass the size of my bank account, or the colour of my credit card - these things had become her gods. I, to the other extreme, had become more interested in working on my personal growth and general well-being of mind and body. The rat-race is not for me. She didn't understand this.

Apparently, she was happy to go on like this - in regard to her treatment of me, and showed no sign of slowing down, the criticisms continued. I treated it as a passing phase and assumed she'd get over it. She had always had bossy tendencies, but it had become out of control. Maybe because she had gotten into the role of managing people both at home and at work - she had a sick mother and two younger siblings. Thus far, we'd had a great friendship - loads of fun, no problems at all, we never even argued all those years. I was happy to ride it out for the sake of our past good history together. I thought she'd change, that maybe it was because of stress at work and at home or something, which I hoped would pass, or she'd adapt to.

Probably the last straw was when she called me "lazy" and "useless" for telling her I wasn't really in the mood to help her schmooze with her colleagues. I had joined them in the past, but I don't have to go every time she snaps her fingers! I would have accepted the invitation if she wanted to meet for lunch or dinner just the two of us, that would have been far more appealing.

Finally I told her she can't continue to behave like this, and keep thinking it's okay. I am her friend, not her personal project which needs improving and she can tell off like a four year old kid! She wasn't ready to hear this, of course, and took a lot of offense. I was in the wrong for not doing as she said, apparently.

So that's that. I was willing to accept her as she was, she was always trying to change me, in quite a rude way. That's not friendship, that's Chinese water torture. It had to come to an end. She had become almost abusive. It's a pity, she used to be a great girl: kind, thoughtful, fun. I'm sorry at the loss of what used to be a very satisfying friendship.

 

[Geckothan]

You don't know depression until you've experienced Social Anxiety Disorder and being stuck at home almost every day with nothing to do for 2 years, losing contact with all but 1-2 of your friends who live miles away, having absolutely no prospects at all and the only thing keeping you going is the hope that one day by some freak occurance you'll wake up a different, happier person

 

[An Officer]

I'm so sorry to hear that Geckothan. I hope things change for the better for you very soon. Keep trying, please.

 

[Geckothan]

I didn't mean that to sound so emo! I'm not feeling down so much, mostly just apathetic.

 

[Ruaidhri]

This topic hits me close to home.

I recently "broke up" with the best friend I've ever had. The complication was that we had feelings for each other that might have led to us really being a couple, except for some cultural stuff that got in the way. The unfulfilled tension of the deeper feelings started us down a path that had us arguing more and more, and almost every time we were together I was moody and unhappy by the time we parted. She wouldn't be in a relationship with me, but she would get possessive and jealous if I went on a date.

I've had a lot of change in my life over the last two years, and my friendship with her was becoming poisonous. We were making each other miserable. Every time I tried to talk about it with her, she wanted to ignore the issue rather than get to the root of it. And now my best friend isn't my friend at all.

I ended the friendship and I'm miserable when I think about it. But in the end I know it was the right thing for both of us.

I'm thinking of leaving the "best friend" office vacant for a while.

 

[RJDiogenes]

^^ Yeah, there's really no place in the structure of my life for a "best friend" at the moment.

You don't know depression until you've experienced Social Anxiety Disorder and being stuck at home almost every day with nothing to do for 2 years, losing contact with all but 1-2 of your friends who live miles away, having absolutely no prospects at all and the only thing keeping you going is the hope that one day by some freak occurance you'll wake up a different, happier person

It won't happen by a freak occurrence. You've got to do something about it. Social Anxiety Disorder is not uncommon and can be treated. You don't have to be unhappy.