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OT: Lack of Friends and Encouragement
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Amama – you sound a lot like me. I’m to the point and no thrills. I am cautious unless you say “now tell me the truth” at which I let it go. I know that I push people away, too.
I am grateful for my dh. He is my best friend and I couldn’t imagine life without him. I am repeating “God I trust in You” every time I think on our past friendship. When I start to cry, I ask that someone out there reads my post and is offering up a prayer to help me heal and get past. You know it’s working. Life will move on. I will be ok and God has a plan for me and even though I don’t see it, or understand it, I know it will be amazing if I just let Him take the lead. Thanks for the prayers and love Misty
I wanted to thank everyone for there encouragement and prayers. I did request and have started to read the Lisa Whelch book. I feel like me and her would make great friends we are so alike in many areas. I could have writen some of it. Also, I am loving the quotes in the book and will have to look into more of those once through.
I’m feeling ok now about this. I know it’s over completely. But I am prayerful that if God feels ever there is a time we may some day become friends again that He will mend each of our hearts. Also, that he would bring another christian friend who I can share the Lord with into my life, in His perfect timing.
Thanks again everyone. Friendless and I’m ok with that!
I’m glad you’ve found peace with where you’re at, Misty. I just want to encourage you that having peace with your current situation doesn’t mean you should be ok with being friendless. God created us to need relationships and friends. That’s why it hurts so badly when we lose a close friendship–because God put the need in our hearts to begin with.
I challenge you to put yourself out there. Start talking to women at your church or homeschool group or even in the grocery store! It takes work to form and sustain relationships, and I challenge you to be the initiator of your new friendship(s). I’ll be praying for you! I know how difficult it is to be without friends, and I would never wish to go back to that point in my life. I was so thankful for my husband as my best friend, and he continues to be; but that didn’t replace the longing in my heart for a woman friend with whom I could talk about raising children or cooking or whatever.
Perhaps you can find a couple who wants to be friends with you both? Invite a couple over for Sunday lunch or dinner one evening. You may hit it off right away or there may not be much friend “chemistry” there. Either way, you made the effort and took a risk.
Blessings to you today,
Lindsey
I am right there with you. I ended a friendship with a good friend a few months ago because I had struggled for a couple of years with a lot of negative feelings towards her, partially due to differences in personality that really bothered me, and partially due to her constantly cancelling, usually just blowing off playdates because she scheduled something else at the same time. I did mention that the playdate cancelling bothered me and her response was basically, “Sorry, I do this to everyone.” I pretty much just stopped talking to her, which was kind of awkward since we see each other at church and other events at least twice a week. I thought about writing her a letter about some of the things that bothered me and trying to salvage the friendship, but I ran the idea past a few people and was basically told that the things I had problems with were just her personality and I shouldn’t try to change her but either accept her as she was or move on. So I moved on. She probably does wonder what happened, but she’ll never ask.
I have pretty much given up on having friendships. I have a few long-distance friends, which I am thankful for, but seeing or talking to someone for an hour 2-3x/year just isn’t enough. I put a ton of effort into trying to build relationships at our church when we started going there 6 years ago, and people just aren’t interested, or they’re too busy. I’ve tried to build friendships with a few ladies I’ve met various places and everybody is just too busy. I don’t have the heart to keep trying.
I would love to have someone to get together with occasionally, even better someone I could share my heart with, but I don’t see that happening. DH and I don’t get along all that well so I don’t even have that. When I feel lonely or sad about not having friends, I just pray that God will take away the feelings and help me not to desire to have friends.
caedmyn-I’m so sorry HUGS. I know how you feel. I am without a ‘good’ friend now also. They are hard to find as we are older I think. Also, I really only have a few ‘friends’ who once or twice a year we’ll meet for coffee. My dh has been so good to me lately though letting me go have some quiet time between him coming home from work and dinner. It is enough for me right now to just recharge after a long day with the kids. It doesn’t take the place of having that someone to chat with (which I could really really use this morning) but it is what it is and I must except it and keep moving on. God will decide if and when we’ll have friends again. Peace to you.
Ladies – I wanted to ask for some help. I got an email the 1st one in over a month. I had moved on. I hope you know I think of this amazing woman almost daily still, but I had realized she had let go and for that I was at peace. Then this is what I got in part:
You are on my heart everyday, and this note is long overdue. I have hesitated to write. My email was not supposed to be a relationship-ender, but I think you thought it was. I’m sorry that you are hurt. My intention was to let you know that my focus had to shift, and in that, I know and realize I completely suck at being a friend. You are a beautiful person who has so much love to give. You do it effortlessly (or so it seems to me). I see that now, and I know I don’t have that gift. I still count you as my friend and hope you accept my apology for hurting you.
I don’t know what to say, how to respond. My dh and I talked about it last night and he doesn’t want to see me hurt by this friend, cause this was the 3rd time she’s pushed me away and now the 3rd time she says, she’s sorry. I know the Lord tells us to forgive 70 times 7. Forgiving isn’t the issue, it’s how to start over this time. I don’t know what she wants, she said things that I need to understand to know if I can give this friendship more of my time, but how do I ask her? Her focus had to shift to the point of no contact at all, that’s not a shift thats again ” u sit here till I have time for you” (again she’s done this before).
What would you do? I feel like I need to talk with her, but email doesn’t seem the way to do it. But I don’t know if I am up to sitting face to face with her, or if she even would to talk this out. My emotions are so torn. Can I say roller coaster ride!
Misty, first of all I hate that you are going through this…friendships with other women can be confusing and hard because a lot of the time we don’t say what is really on our minds. It sounds like both you and your friend are sincerely being open about the issues and that maybe this is a season where she is feeling overwhelmed and stressed and just needs to refocus. I have been on both sides (backing away from a friendship and having someone back away from me). I have found that as long as you are open and respectful and continue to refuse to be offended, God’s grace can cover the situation and eventually (given time) it will heal.
The Lord set us a good example in that he had followers (thousands), he had friends (the 12) and then he had his inner circle (Peter, James and John). You can absolutely keep this person as a friend, but considering the past I would think it would be wise not to make her your inner circle friend. It doesn’t mean you hold anything against her – just that she can’t be the person who you count on when the going gets rough. Those people are few and far between and it is better that you know it now so that you aren’t depending on the wrong relationships when you really need them. I hope you are able to pursue some new friendships and open your heart to an inner circle friend. Release this friend to be who she needs to be right now, and devote the energy you would have put towards that relationship to finding a new friend. Just my 2 cents :-).
I have a friend who is like this. She’s just stopped returning phone calls before or stopped answering texts or emails or FB messages, for months. And then she’ll start responding again with no explanation. We’ve known each other since preschool age, and I realized a while back that in the entire history of our friendship, it’s been on-again, off-again, and it’s always been her who’s been off and on, not me. When I realized this I choose to simply accept it as is, and occasionally I try to contact her, with no expectation of a response, and if she does respond, then we chat a bit. When I’m in town (she lives in my hometown where my parents still live) I try to get together with her, and usually she doesn’t respond, but occasionally she’s interested and we get together and have a nice chat. I might not be as accepting with someone else, but she had a really rough time for several years with an abusive husband so I give her some grace, and just accept that most of the time she’s going to be “off” and I don’t take it personally. I don’t put much effort into the friendship at all though.
I think in your shoes I would be inclined to say (whether in person, letter, whatever works for you) something along the lines of…while I really enjoy our friendship, this is the third time this has happened and at this point it is really difficult for me to open up to you or feel close to you because, whatever the reason, you have shown a pattern of abruptly dumping me and then wanting to apologize and make up like nothing has happened. Let her know that she has hurt you and it is going to have a negative effect on your feelings towards her as a friend. And then decide if the friendship is valuable enough to you for you to be willing to continue it, but understanding that if you do there’s going to be a barrier between you for a time, probably a long time, because you don’t fully trust her.
With the friendship that I ended recently something happened a few years ago that really hurt me, and it took almost a year for me to be willing to have much contact with her again, and longer to start to trust her again…and still eventually due to various issues I decided the friendship wasn’t valuable enough to continue.
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