Friendships

I just spent a few hours last night catching up with a very good friend of mine. We hung out at Dave and Busters and had an awesome time. It is so easy to get caught up with work, family, hobbies, and every other thing in our lives that takes our precious time. For me it takes a conscious effort to make time for friendships. It didn't used to be that way.

Just a few years ago friendships were my life. Pretty much everything that I did revolved around building or sustaining friendships. That was all pre-marriage, pre-career, and pre-kids. Man-o-man have things changed! The last couple years I have found myself dissolving old friendships that, to be honest, were too much work to keep going. The older I get, the more precious my time is. So I came to the hard realization that some relationships had to come to an end. I remember a Seinfeld episode where Jerry had to sit down a guy (in their standard cafe of course) and tell him that he just doesn't need any more friends. So it was a man to man break up of sorts.

A couple ways that I knew I had to end the friendships were:

1. I was putting more into it than what I was getting out of it. It's great to take an interest in what your friends are up to, what they get excited about, and what they need help with. If you are doing all those things and it isn't reciprocated it may be time to end it. Unless you have time, energy and motivation to either change them or be OK with that.

2. You turn in to who you spend the most time with. When I looked around at some friends and decided that I was different and wanted different things in life . . . I realized that it would be harder to get what I wanted if I kept those relationships.

Well, hanging out with an old friend that challenges me, is interested in me, and who is just plain fun reminded me that friendships are extremely important to have. And extremely rewarding when they are healthy ones.