Chap 10: Friends will change and that's okay

Friendship is really one of the most interesting relationships because it is so non-exclusive and be applied to anyone, in any situation, at anytime.  Because I can be very social at times, I have found that I am one of those people that really likes befriending other people and can become acquainted with people very quickly.  In terms of the five necessary elements of friendship I guess you could say I am better at fulfilling the first three requirements (willingness to invest, emotional connection through dialogue, and acceptance of the other's thoughts and feelings) than I am the last two (trust or the ability to be confident that the other person will be dependable and do what they say they will do, and support or the willingness to be available and listen to each other's problems).  When I was younger, I had incidences in the past when a few friends betrayed my trust so ever since then I feel like I've always been a bit wary at getting very close or self-disclosing much to people. It's easy for me to be the average "Oh hi! I met you the other day didn't I? How are you doing?" acquaintance to people who are friends with me, but it is sometimes very difficult for me to become close friends to people because I don't like self-disclosing much information.  However, in high school, I actually did end up having three or four very close friends and so I think having the length of time that we did over the four years was what really brought us together and allowed me to self disclose more to them, to trust them, and support them.  And vice versa I was able to gain their trust and support whenever I was going through difficult times during high school.  However now in college, I can definitely see the friendships I had in high school undergoing external sources of tension- especially when none of us can find time to meet up during winter break because universities in the north have such different schedules and everybody comes back home at a different time or has different family vacation plans, new jobs, and more! As we went over in class, these competing demands of family vacations, new jobs, new universities, new friends and more, as well as the geographic distance of their schools, all cost a certain amount of time investment and have definitely caused us to drift apart in these last two years.  However, because we all unknowingly drifted apart over the years as we got more involved in our own immediate college lives, I think it wasn't a bad "waning friendship" but more of an unconscious agreement and change between all of us as our life circumstances changed.