Contents
Why do I like my friends even if they are my friends?
Psychology
Many times we find ourselves in toxic friendships from which we do not know how to get out
Hannah, Jessa, Shoshanna, and Marnie couldn’t stand it, but they were still friends. See these girls, the protagonists of «Girls»Throughout the episodes of the series maintaining a friendship was sometimes almost laughable. Why did those girls in their twenties, who lived in New York, have an entertaining life and knew countless people, they insisted on being together if they clearly didn’t like each other? And it is that, letting go of the people with whom we have had a friendship is not easy at all.
Friendships are relationships that we establish at an early age, a precedent of our romantic relationships and, therefore, a pillar of our life. It is these friendships that shape us from a young age. Nadia del Real, a psychologist at the TAP Center, comments that our friends are “almost” our first way of relating to the world, and that thanks to them we begin to appreciate the importance of commitment, loyalty, trust, secrets or affinity .
We should not then underestimate the importance of friendships, since many times we weave relationships much more lasting, stable and comforting than romantic ones. «Friends even influence the creation of our own identity and how we build ourselves to become the person we are today ”, says the professional.
Toxic friendship
But, as happens with our partners, or sometimes our relatives, there comes a time when friendships can deteriorate, until they become toxic relationships. What happens when you realize that you don’t like your friendsWhat happened to the protagonists of “Girls”? They weren’t capable of ending their “toxic” relationship, and the same thing can happen to us.
The psychologist Francisco Arenas, a Doctoralia professional, says that this disability may come from habit, or from fear of feeling alone. How expensive it can be to reconnect with our loneliness can lead us to endure friendships that hurt us and do not make us feel comfortable, but that “at least they are.” “A patient once told me, ‘I know my relationship is rubbish, but it is my rubbish.’ We can summarize it like this », says the psychologist.
At first, it can even be difficult for us to recognize the “toxicity” of a friendship, since it is not only complicated, but we tend to belittle the importance of our friendships and relegate them to the background to give prominence to romantic relationships. Even just with friends, many people endure behaviors and even abuse, which cause them sadness and stress. “Many express the feeling that they give more than they receive, that when they are with certain friends they are in a continuous voltage state, and these relationships must be cut, “says Francisco Arenas.
Addressing the break
Once we are able to identify the damage that this relationship does to us, it can be difficult for us to end it, just as it is difficult to break up with a partner. On the one hand, Arenas points out that there are cases in which it is not necessary to communicate this discomfortRather, “it is only necessary to let time pass.” Explain that it is not necessary to antagonize any person whose company we are not interested in. “A resource as simple as showing a certain indifference, saying that we already have a commitment when it comes to staying and we don’t feel like it, may be enough,” says the professional. For her part, Nadia del Real says that in these cases “it is essential to take the time to reflect” and in case you want to cut the relationship, you have to put in place communication and problem-solving mechanisms.
There may be another situation, one in which, it is not that we no longer support someone, but that we have a friend who has been part of our life for many years and we feel affection, but with the passage of time we have realized that already we barely have things in common. “Reaching this conclusion is not easy and yet it is the fundamental part of the process,” says Nadia del Real, who also emphasizes the importance of, if at any time we have this feeling or thought, not to classify ourselves as “bad friends” when perceive that our interests and ways of seeing life are distant and from there, wanting to change the relationship with a person. The psychologist reinforces the idea that, although a friend is no longer part of our daily lives, there can always be the certainty that you “have” that person if you really need them, because the years and affection will prevail.
Complicated like romance
The “breakup” with a friend can be complicated and painful, sometimes just as much as the breakup with a romantic partner can be. This is what Nadia del Real says, who also explains that there are many variants that can come into play in these cases: «Feelings can vary depending on who is the person who decides to end it, the causes for which it is done, the way of approaching this rupture, if it was due to a complete problem or the result of wear and tear… ». All this generates some expectations or others and therefore, the Recovery time it will be higher or lower.
Francisco Arenas explains that there are people we cannot easily do without, since they are people who are given to us: our relatives, our work environment or our neighbors. Instead, even though there are millions of people in the world, we end up having a relatively small circle of people whom we consider good friends. It is precisely those few friends who it will really hurt to lose, in case things don’t go well.
In one of the last chapters of “Girls” the four girls ended up locked in a bathroom together during a party. They can no longer hide that they have distanced themselves and that they have less and less things in common. It has become clear that, although there is love, there is nothing more than one. That’s when, after acknowledging out loud that they are no longer friends, the four of them feel relieved. They finish the chapter, their relationship, the series, dancing together in the same room and without any expectations. Now that they have stopped martyrdom, of forcing themselves to form a group, a friendship that does not exist, they feel free.