Friendships, Fallouts, and the roll of Feedback

I recently completed another lap of the sun, and I celebrated with a group of girlfriends in Whistler, Canada. I have shared long friendships with two of the six girls, the others were friends of my friend, some whom I was meeting for the first time on this weekend away, and another was a new friend who I met when I moved to the United States.

I can easily say it was one of the best birthdays I have had in a long time. Surrounded by amazing people in a lovely location, sipping mimosas in a hot tub watching as it tried to snow on the mountain. I felt truly grateful and content spending quality time with great people.

Afternoon mimosas overlooking the mountains in Whistler

One of the things we discussed was how it was so easy for us all to get along. Everyone clicked straight away! We were mostly all Australian (plus a few Europeans), similar age, many were in a similar relationship status (single and trying to mingle), similar cultural norms, communication styles, shared or similar experiences, and similar values. So perhaps it made sense we all clicked.

As humans we are all naturally drawn to being part of a group, a tribe, a community. Its hard wired from our evolutionary history. Nicholas Christakis talks about social clustering mechanisms in his TED talk “The hidden influence of social networks” where he discusses the formation of social clusters (e.g. friendships) based on: induction, or natural spread, homophily, i.e. birds of a feather stick together, or confounding, a shared common exposure. Our group of girls definitely experienced aspects of this network building as we made new friends on our weekend away.

Source: Nicholas Christakis “The hidden influence of social networks” TED Talk

Since moving to the US, I have had a lot of time to reflect on friendships. I’ve had to make an effort to create new ones in a small city, which is hard!

My partner and I are opposites when it comes to how much we need to socialise, so I haven’t been able to expand my network too much via him. He is someone that likes to have a few, close friends, who really look out for each other, the type of friendships which survive all the random things life throws at you. He isn't as interested in having a lot of friendships which are “fair-weather” in the sense that the person is fun to hang out with but you're unlikely to have a deep and meaningful conversation with them, or feel that they wouldn't go out of their way to help you. I, on the other hand, don’t mind engaging in friendships which may be short lived, but for that time they are quite close (e.g. long term travelling you meet some people in one city who you might do everything with for a few days then hardly ever speak again once you move on, or workplace colleagues who are close friends while you work together then don't see once one of you leaves the company). This has led to us discussing how much time and effort to invest in friendships, and what is the desired outcome of that relationship.

For a few days in Lagos, Portugal, our group from the hostel spent every minute together

There is no right or wrong answer as to whether a few close friends are better than a lot of friends. Its personal preference.

Friendships shouldn’t come with a feeling of obligation or exertion. Whether it’s someone you have only just met but really click with, or your old school friends who you may not see that often but when you do it’s as if it was yesterday when you last hung out. Friendship should make you feel happy and appreciated.

Relationships will naturally grow and change over time as social circles and life priorities change, be it work, family, location, and that’s fine! We’ll naturally grow close to some people over time as other friendships may fade. Many of us feel like it gets harder to maintain friendships as we get older because life gets busy (and look how many memes there are describing this!)

I think we have all laughed at memes like this before - they are funny because they are true

When a friendship fades or there is a conflict, what happens? There is so much focus on good communication in our romantic relationships, families and workplaces relationships, but it is equally important in our friendships. Unfortunately, I’ve had some close friendships break down around the time I moved to the US and it was a new experience for me to lose friends in such a way. Over the last six months I've been reflecting, trying to understand what happened.

I've found that often with friendships between girls, or the ones I have had, we are great at providing positive feedback and support, but we've really struggled with providing feedback when we're annoyed at our friend. I'm not sure whether it's just that we don't want to have a potentially uncomfortable conversation, or a lot of us were raised in a time where it was important to be liked and avoid conflict, so you avoided behaviours or situations which could risk that.

Often instead of have a conversation with our friend directly, we talk to our other friends about it (e.g. as a vent to blow off steam, hopefully not bitching, but it can be perceived that way). Sometimes that helps, but if starts to build up then chances are the strategy isn’t sustainable if you want to maintain the friendship over the long term.

I recall one time when I had unknowingly annoyed a friend (the friend who I mentioned above as experiencing a break down in the relationship). It wasn’t her that told me she didn’t appreciate what I said, it was our other friend. I felt a little confused why it had to be a third party give me feedback. Here is where I admit that I used to always avoid conflict and so giving honest or constructive feedback is something I have also struggled with.

When our friendship broke down last year, I actually wasn’t aware for a long time. I was sent some memes about letting people into your circle and choosing friends wisely (which we had been doing for most of the year, sharing inspirational or personal growth style quotes and memes) and then nothing. I sent the odd meme and general message here and there, and then wondered if I was imagining that maybe she was pissed off at me because she wasn’t replying. After another friend who was having a similar experience confronted her and it turned into a big argument, I felt I had my answer. I wanted to talk about it but living overseas made it difficult, and this wasn’t a conversation to have via messages, it needed to be face to face. We haven’t talked in six months. I racked my brain for anything I might have said or done to annoy them, but I couldn’t distinctly think of anything.

Had I been given some early, or direct feedback on what I had done, we could have had a conversation about it. There are two sides to every story, and constructive feedback is always useful! I’m focusing on ownership and accountability this year, so I’d actually love to know what I did so that I can understand and change my behaviour so that I don’t do that again.

Feedback can help you grow and not repeat mistakes

I also think the bond between friends can dramatically improve with that level of vulnerability, and trust building that can come out of difficult conversations. Feedback can be tough, but it's all about the delivery, a non-threatening tone of voice is a great start, and also an open mind from the receiver.

If you aren't following Emily McDowell - do so! Link to website in the pic

There is a meme I saw which I quite liked, and it's here below. Its self-explanatory, but I am keeping it in mind with respect to those friendships which collapsed. Sometimes it's not helpful to defend yourself or try and prove that you are in the right (sometimes you aren't!). We are the narrator to our own story, and so we can choose to be a victim, to hit them with a plot twist, change characters, change point of view, or keep it the same (another great TED talk by Lori Gottlieb on "How changing your story can change your life" describes this beautifully).

Going back to Nicholas Christakis’ talk, he also discussed how emotions can change and travel across and over social networks, and that networks have a structure, where your structural location can influence your life and your emotions. A particular point of interest is that when mapping out happiness across the network, obvious clusters of happy and sad people emerged. You can have a positive or negative impact on your friends and other close networks, and a break down in one friendship can spread through the network.

Source: Nicholas Christakis “The hidden influence of social networks” TED Talk

2020 will be a year of changing networks and locations for me. I will have to start the making friends process all over again when we move back to Australia. I know personally I like to be centred in the network structure, i.e. more connected than on the outside.

I’m so very grateful for the amazing people in my life. I am still learning, as we all are when it comes to relationships (and communication, and leadership), and I am striving to become a better listener. I don’t believe there is a magical point where you know enough about relationships that you don’t have anything more to learn. They are dynamic, changing, and sometimes require some attention and effort to ensure they remain strong. This is an emerging and changing topic for me as I process losing friends and making new ones, and it's been quite difficult to write. I’m open to feedback on this topic (as long as it is constructive!) and I’m sure as I learn more, I will write about it again.

Thanks for reading.

Amy xx