Everyone is getting married. Everyone is having babies. Everyone is landing their dream career.
It can certainly feel that way at times. This is the point in our lives where it seems as though everyone is going through a major life change. We’re just trying not get whiplash while trying to keep up.
Anxiety and doubt creep in when we watch another one of our friends get married, but we’re still hitting up Tinder. Those same feelings can creep in if you’re 5 years into your ideal career and your friend is just starting grad school. Or, your friends are all newly engaged and you’re on your third baby.
As life goes on, most of us begin embarking on different paths. Some of us will never get married while others will go through three marriages. Some of us will never have babies while others will have all the babies. Some of us will climb dream careers while others will never work a traditional job. Some of us will move to a different country while others will stay in our hometown.
This isn’t anything to be down and out about. It’s a normal part of life. While different life stages usually come with new friends, that doesn’t mean you have to leave your beloved old friends behind. There are many ways to continue this life journey side-by-side.
I’m walking you through several ways you can celebrate and be a good friend, even when you’re both at different places in your lives.
Invite them in to new activities.
Consistently invite your friend to be part of your life in new ways. If you’ve just gotten married, but they’re still single, offer to host a fun girls’ brunch. If you’re still in school and your friend just got her first huge job promotion, offer to go out and celebrate.
While being in different places in life may make it difficult to relate on some levels, that doesn’t mean what made you friends in the first place goes out the window. Often what’s brought people together is laughter and joy, which is still possible through every season.
Stay current and interested in their life.
Yes, you might have babies now, but that doesn’t mean to tune out when your friend starts talking about her dating life. You were there once, too. Or, maybe you’re in the reverse position where you’re single and your friend is married with kids. While it can be draining to listen to another story where a baby does a mundane baby thing, it’s important to ask those questions.
So much of staying in-touch and keeping your friendship strong during these times is staying curious, kind, and compassionate about the other person’s situation. Otherwise, you start to enter into territory of a miserable one-sided friendship.
While different life stages usually come with new friends, that doesn't mean you have to leave your beloved old friends behind. There are many ways to continue this life journey side-by-side. Click To TweetSet aside negative emotions.
Look, we’re all human. We have a wide range of emotions we go through daily.
Sometimes, that means your gut reaction is jealousy when your friend lands a dream job while you’re still living off ramen and barely scraping by your college classes.
Other times, it means you’re feeling bitter when your attending your friend’s gorgeous wedding and you just got dumped by a guy you thought was “the one”.
It can mean that you feel anger and sadness when your friend is on her third “oops” baby and you’ve been trying to get pregnant for the past four years.
The difficult part at being in different life stages is that it’s easy to look at our friend’s life and be envious of a certain aspect of it. However, focus on taking those feelings of jealousy and letting them go. Holding onto the jealousy will only create more negative feelings of bitterness, resentment, and sadness.
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Hold a place for them in your life.
If you’re really struggling to gain that friendship connection, it’s okay to take space and make space. When we’re in different life stages and seasons, it can get messy and muddled because things don’t flow as congruently as when we were all on the same page.
More often than not, it’s a jumble of mismatched schedules, missed coffee dates, and phone calls that get cut short. That’s okay. Find a way to hold a place for them in your life.
No matter how much time passes, pick up where you left off. No matter how short that phone call was, still send texts, even if there’s days between responses. By offering to be more forgiving of availability and what each of you are capable of moment to moment, you give the friendship (and each other) the kindness and compassion it deserves.
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