Latest / The Uncommons / The Guilt Nobody Talks About When You Outgrow Your Friends | Ep 23

Transcript

The Guilt Nobody Talks About When You Outgrow Your Friends | Ep 23 · The Uncommons

• Parisa Bady: How do we know if a friendship is worth holding on to, or is it time to be courageous and let it go? As we change and grow, some of our non-romantic friends, some change and grow, and some change and grow not as fast as we do, and some just don't change. It's much easier to go back on a romantic relationship and say, well, this doesn't serve me anymore, but it's way more difficult. to move on from a friendship because we want to be loyal. Sometimes it's much easier for a friendship to end with a betrayal and it's much more difficult to end a friendship that you have just outgrown someone. I don't want to have a conversation with the person that has the ability to abandon a child. I think there's different categories of people. Some categories are easy to completely let go without any guilt. Well not for me. I always have the guilt. Hi, welcome to the Uncommons podcast, where we discuss what it really takes to build a meaningful life. I'm Parisa. Paige. And today we're going to talk about friendships. We all had friendships that ended, some on really bad terms and something painful happened, and some slowly faded. But some of us have friendships currently that are somewhere in between. We feel like Something is not right, but we're not at the point to say, I want to end it. So my question is for today, how do we know if a friendship is worth holding on to, or is it time to be courageous and let it go? How do we know if a friendship belongs to our past or it's growing into our future? Because in all honesty, ending friendships are difficult, no matter what. But when we pick friends, usually at that moment of time we have something in common and something feels right, and we meet somebody and we're like, you, I want to be friends with you, and we have something going on that we can share in that moment of time. We never sit down and say, hmm, let me see if this person has the qualities that I want ten years down the road. That's not how we for romantic relationships we do. We actually analyze the person, we analyze their family, we analyze their values, we think about if they make a good mom or dad, or five years down the road, ten years down the road, are they gonna be healthy? Are they gonna be productive? Are they gonna achieve their goals? Like we analyze the shit out of them. But then when it comes to friendships, we don't do any of that. And ironically, it's much easier to Go back on a romantic relationship and say, Well, this doesn't serve me anymore. This person doesn't belong to my future. I need to move on, but it's way more difficult to move on from a friendship because we want to be loyal. I agree. Firstly, I want to thank you very much and I want the audience to know that ⁓ for the first time ⁓ she actually sent me some prep work for this. Well, I actually consulted you about what to talk about. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's why I got a ⁓ syllabus of what ⁓ the the agenda for today is gonna be. And I'm glad you did because it got me thinking a lot. And ⁓ one of the things that I wanted to preface this entire discussion with, ⁓ at least from my point of view, is that obviously as w we change and grow, some of our non-romantic friends, some change and grow, and some change and grow not as fast as we do, and some just don't change. And they or they grow in a different direction. Or they grow in in different ways. But there is a separation. And very few are ⁓ moving at the same pace, same rate, same depth. And as our circumstances change, that also changes. How I've been thinking about it after we have kids and I'm in a in a long term relationship with you. And Thank you for playing. And things have changed. But also personally, I'm going through a transition personally that is significant. I've been really work I'm working hard on it. I'm a natural warrior, ⁓ but now I'm really moving towards the wizard mode in my life and I'm working hard at that. And I got you know, coaches and so forth. But looking at this entire discussion from my mindset that I've been thinking about for the past decade or so versus what I have going on now. That got me thinking that ⁓ the internal change as as we change aggressively within ⁓ has also a significant effect on how you think back at your relationships. And to be honest, I have a softer approach now than I did six months or a year ago about our friendships. So what is a warrior approach to friendships and what is a softer approach? My warrior approach would be like, This is not serving me. This is my past. I've moved on. Mm-hmm. And I love these people. They play a great role in who I am. And ⁓ I am here now and they don't serve me. And th th there's also been a lot of discussion of warrior style growth. Especially some of the training that I had before is that you surround yourself with the people that you look up to. So I've surrounded myself with a lot of people that are amazing. But there's always been a this like little disconnect that they might have similarities and connections that what I want to be and who I wanna be and who I aspire to be, but they're missing some components that for whatever reason didn't and doesn't sit well with me down in my gut. What do you think that is? Do you think that has to do with shared history? No. I don't think it's I mean, some of it is shared history. Of course, shared history has a h significant value in relationships, I believe. But s some of it is that I'm looking at them and the qualities that I wanna be like and have that are very warrior driven, more money, more intelligence, more spiritual training. More success. Success, you know, whatever it is. But for example, I have a few very, very, very successful people in my life. And their relationship with their children sucks. And that doesn't sit well with me. Doesn't sit with my value system. But that was my warrior thinking, this is what I want to be. Go, go, go. ⁓ you know, that's what I want to get. And I and I was so attracted to those. So it was kind of unidirectional, basically looking at it. With a lens of success future, where I want to get my immediate goals, rather than having a white view of everything that their life encompasses. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Now when I look back relatively to some of my older friendships that have legacy and history and depth and people that I've had deep connections with at one point that Do have relationships with their children and do have that loving connection and they're not successful or they're not as successful as somebody you would look up to. So I don't look up to that that portion of who they are has really kind of changed my point of view on how close do I want to be with my some of my older friends that I've chosen them back then during the mindset that I was at. So you're saying you had some old friendships? From years ago that you thought you outgrew at some point because you were a lot more successful and and growth. And internal growth. Yeah. And then at some point you kind of turned back thinking, well, they might not have the amount of internal growth or financial growth or socioeconomic growth that I would look up to, but look at these other areas of their life that they have grown in that I would actually look up to. That's right. As we grow multi-dimensionally, our spectrum and and how broad we look at things also grows. Sometimes it's much easier for a friendship to end with a betrayal or hurt or something big happening, and it's much more difficult to end a friendship that you have just outgrown someone. And a lot of that has to do with Loyalty, of course, but I think sometimes we misunderstand loyalty and guilt. I feel some guilt in outgrowing someone, even admitting, even saying it out loud that I have outgrown this person, I have outgrown this friendship, and we are not growing on the same path, even saying that brings guilt with it. Yeah. I think most of my friends or some of our friends that we've outgrown or we've moved on, they still want to continue a relationship with us. They still wanna have the same thing and we don't want it anymore. And I feel guilty for not wanting it. Who am I to think that I've grown so much and maybe they've grown in so many different ways, but at the end of the day is that they have different paths and I I think values comes in this as well. Some of our friends, your friends are friends that happen to have kids together and they got married and you know were on the same path as we are as far as moving from a single life to a married life, having kids, and they were parallel with us on that. However, the values that they've instilled in their family and how they live their life as a family and their values differ from us. Raising kids. Raising kids. Each step of the way when we grow into something else like getting married. having kids. There it's like a junction that we could go different directions. So each person can pick different set of values for that new type of life that they're living. And that's what happened with my friend that I had ten years of friendship with, which I I'm still grieving by the way. It's been more than a year. And I feel that the grief is huge. It's real. Especially 'cause I pulled away. You know, if the other person ended it, it wouldn't be as painful for me. Right. Because I chose to pull away. There is not a day that goes by that she doesn't pop in my head. Because we shared a lot. We shared a single life. Then we got married within a year from each other. Then we had kids at the same time. We became moms at the same time. We had so many conversations at 3 a.m., 4 AM, texting back and forth while feeding our babies. So we shared a lot of moments, memories that were not so easy. It wasn't just fun. moments. You know, we shared a lot of moments that required growth and we grew together. And then it got to a point that it came down to values of raising kids. And we picked different paths. And I don't think everybody who are friends should have exactly the same values and exactly the same ways of raising their kids. It just got to a point that hanging out together as families became uncomfortable for both. Parties. I felt that I'm judging more. And a lot of times we judge out of arrogance. Being judgmental can have a negative connotation, but in some ways is an indication that I have more judgment for this person and how they're now living their life than having understanding. When your values become more different and evident, and then you start judging because their value systems are different. And it wasn't just uncomfortable, it was actually argumentative. In some cases. It got to a point that it was argumentative and I just you don't have any layer of sugar coating, of course. It got to a point of I I thought it was like I know you're talking about like negligence. And it's painful for the other person too. You know, it's even more painful for them because then they feel like they're being judged, then they feel like you were the person who were my my best buddy you would understand me, you would get it. Now you the same person is judging me for the way I'm living. Right. So it's kind of a disservice to them too. The reason I backed out and I kind of pull myself back was because I thought it's more hurtful to them. If those values were not affecting the rest of your family, I think things would be different. I can use to an example of a friend of mine that We special ⁓ we had a lot of special moments. We were both single, we partied together, we traveled the world together, we had all these crazy, you know, crazy lives. He got some girl pregnant, and I got some girl pregnant, and he chose to Pay the girl off and never see the kid again in his life. And I chose the opposite. I said I brought everything back to our life. But this kid is amazing. It's the ⁓ best thing that's ever happened to me. And I cannot ⁓ for the life of me have anything to do with that person because of our value systems are so off. I don't want to have a conversation with it with a person that has the ability to abandon a child. We were having a conversation last night with another set of friends and he was talking about a friend that he's been hurt by recently multiple times. And I was asking him, to what extent would you continue that friendship? And he said, if I see that he's really doing me harm, in my opinion he has done harm. Right? In your opinion he might have But he brought up thirty years ago when he didn't have money to pay for his college and go to dental school and this guy helped him out and co-signed for him to get a loan when nobody from his family even would do that. So that's a huge thing. That's a huge moment that somebody would help you out. My relationship with the friend that I was talking about, she helped me out a lot on many, many occasions that I'm stuck with a baby. She became a mom sooner than me. She helped me so much with How to take care of a baby, I had no clue. So she helped me a lot. In difficult times, you know, through divorce, through when the time is really hard, when somebody holds your hand, I think the guilt is ten times higher to say, Well, I outgrew that person. I'm so good and they're not. I have relationships that I feel like I've outgrown them and I have. But these guys, these people are great people, they have good values, I've outgrown them. I I really don't want to spend a significant amount of Time with them, but I love them for what we had. And there's a value there. I had a friend that we had a lot of shared history. She was my childhood friend. She helped me so much when I just moved to the US. She really helped me through the process of moving here. So in very pivotal points of my life, she was there and she was more established than me here. So she really helped me out. And she couldn't come to our wedding. 'Cause she was having problems with our marriage. And she called me, she's like, I'm not coming. I cannot be happy watching you getting married and being so in love because I'm in pain. And that was really heartbreaking for for me, it was really hard that my best friend, one of my really close friends, with all this history, she's not there because she can't she can't see it. Because she was jealous. It's hard for me to call another woman jealous. But somebody that would who could not be happy for you because she's on She couldn't happy be happy for me and celebrate me because of her own pain. Yeah. Because the what I was celebrating. But I I do not to be honest with you, at least I respect that. I r ⁓ that's the respectable thing to say. Right. Well she didn't directly say it, but I kind of put the pieces together. So she couldn't celebrate something for me that she was missing at that moment. I could be forgiving and and Respect what we had in the past and be be cognizant of how people go through their ups and downs. Certain things that are very, very clear as far as disconnect on our on on value systems is to me it's much easier. Right. And the things that are more difficult, I have friends that have outgrown, like I said, but I want to maintain that relationship because of our history, because ⁓ again, our our core values are essentially the same. Right. But then at that point you do have an option to move them to another circle of friends. Like they can be a little more at distance. That's right. And the other type of relationship that I have with one of my friends who's been my childhood friend. I've known him for the longest in my life. And we move we moved apart because he's super busy. I'm super busy. He he raised kids before I raised kids. Now I gotta raise kids. I was single when he was married and had kids. So our time spent together was minimal. And I have immense respect for him. He's grown incredibly. I love him dearly. And every time we talk to each other or call each other, it seems like not a second has gone by. And it seems like that we're just so on on par. And he's you know, the the guy who's actually heading our trust. That's the level of trust I have in this guy. There are people, maybe one or two. Like not that many. But there are people that we grow up together and share a childhood and it feels like they're a part of your soul. Yeah. No matter what age you are, no matter how far apart you've been, and then close or geographically lifestyle wise. And I have level of connections with with a couple of my friends that haven't grown but they are my part of my soul. They're my soulmates. You know and one of ⁓ we even got together because we wanted to party together because we have so much fun together where there is a deep, deep connection. And trust me, there's half of this shit that I I can't stand about him. And but it doesn't matter. At the end of the day, I love him for who he is and there's this special bond. And I keep connected with him. We don't see each other as much, like we don't I don't see any of my friends as much because of you know, we're so busy. But y you're right. I think there's different categories of people. Some categories are easy to completely let go without any guilt. Like I mentioned, some of the people people that for me. I always have the guilt. The only way I wouldn't have guilt is if they've done me harm. Like if they've done clearly something that would hurt me, my family, my kids, something in that level, then I won't have any guilt. You know, I've also let go relationships that I have not outgrown because of what's happened within the relationship. You know, I had a friend of mine who was really cool guy, very successful. I looked up to my butt, but he was, I don't know if he was a drunk, but when he would drink, he was just rude. And at one and he was rude to others and I didn't like that. But when he started turning that towards me, right, I was like, that's the cutoff line. You know, it's so interesting. There was a time that I would think people's behavior, like my friend's behavior towards other people, and be like, ⁓ well, she's like that with them because of X, Y, and Z, never thinking she would do the same thing to me. Right. Never connected those dots that it could turn around and have the same treatment towards me. And it happened. It happened a few times. I had a friend that I was living with her when I got divorced. And I packed up everything in my car and drove away and I just went to her house and we started living together. And she was very helpful for me at that moment. And I would see her behavior towards other friends, that she couldn't hold a friendship, or she had did some mean stuff to other women. And I'm like, it never crossed my mind that, ⁓ she might do the same thing to me. And there was a day that I came home and he she had changed the lock. And I can't get in. I'm like, are you kidding me? So that moment was my listen that watch how they treat other people because you're no exception. In the re reverse, I have another friend of mine that helped me out when I was broke. Life of an entrepreneur. I got absolut I mean, I ⁓ w at one time I was so broke I I didn't have money for rent and I moved into my buddy's house and great man, great human being, helped me out when I needed it and I returned the favor, whatever it was. But I'll never forget that. And I'll ne and to this day we don't talk we talk maybe once a year now. But I have a very deep connection with him because of who he is. And my relationship with him wasn't as deep or whatever it is, but I have immense respect for him. Immense respect for what he did for me and how he lives his life. Yeah. And how honorable he is. I think not every relationship that ends is a failed friendship. There has been value at some point we shared something, but then l loving someone is not always the reason to keep them in our future. And I think when it comes to growth and the guilt that we were talking about, even financial growth, for me that brings a lot more guilt. Our lifestyles have changed. Yes. The way we would vacation would be different. Places we would go would be different. The means of doing things would be different. I think that has a lot more guilt for me than anything else. I wouldn't necessarily cut those friends out because ⁓ I grew financially and you didn't. That would be like I feel I would feel like a horrible person. But I think it's okay to outgrow people financially and not be able to spend as much time with them because of it. That's a little bit of a guilt point for me. I have a couple of good friends that I haven't grown financially and I've I've grown significantly more than they have. if I can help not help financially, but do things that they couldn't do normally and and not ask for anything back and feel you know, feel loving about it. And I feel a little bit of discomfort from from their end because they don't have as much to create experiences. Yeah. That we could create experiences, which I think is a huge part of life. Yeah. But I feel a little guilty. Yeah. ⁓ and that's some of the reasons that we're not as close is because of that. But never have I thought about letting them go because of our our financial equality. Yeah, but the different lifestyle creates distance to an extent. The little bit of envy that's there creates distance. Right. Because we're all humans, of course. And also there's another thing that I feel that creates distance is because not everybody who's financially wealthy is an amazing human being. Of course. But I think There is a lot of personal growth required for someone who's who money is not handed to them to grow from nothing and move up and grow financially or become more successful. And that level of personal growth that comes with it, if somebody hasn't experienced that, then that's the big disconnect too. Yeah. I think a lot of that has a level of r risk taking. I think the more risk you take the more reward you'll get and the more risk you take when you fail, the f the failures are great. Yeah, but the in order to take risks, you have to be able to face your fears and look at your deeply rooted beliefs. That's right. To be able to grow the steps. And that's thing that's the growth you're talking about. Yeah, and some of the friends that I have, they they're not willing to take any risk or whatsoever. And that that is really some of the disconnect that might separate us. in the things that we do and how we do things. Even at that I try not to separate myself from my my friends so that I have history and legacy with there is some distance, but we're keeping it alive. Where is is the absolute cutoff is that the growth is there but the values are not there. Yeah. I reserve to change everything I said a week from now. As as I changed to this other softer, less aggressive, less warrior, more wizard approach to life. But I know one thing. No matter how wizardly I become, there is no way I will minimize my value system. Because then I will no longer be me. There's an amount of loneliness that comes with that. With what? With holding on to your values so tight, especially as we grow in life. We it's just one person, then becomes two, then becomes with kids a family, then the kids grow and each step of the way there are more values that shift. That's right. And it becomes more difficult to sometimes I feel like I have a hard time letting go of older relationships, older friendships, because I don't want to be lonely. I want to have people around. I want my kids to have people around. I want them to feel that We have a community, we have a lot of people that come and go, well, 'cause we have family is one thing, but we don't live nearby family. So we need a community, right? And I get scared of the loneliness that comes with growth. Because each level of growth and each level that the life changes and our values kind of get upgraded, people fall off. Yeah. I'm absolutely resolute with that. And I'll tell you why. Because I started doing this growth stuff from the age of eighteen and it's changed who I am. I'm fifty-nine. Majority of my life has been in this growth process and education and doing this program and that program, this coach and that coach and so forth, right? And as time goes by, time is the most valuable thing we got. And if I'm spending my time with people that are value systems are different. I am giving away the most valuable thing that I got in my life. Just for company. Just for company. And I think we have an obligation to teach our kids and bring people around our kids that have value systems in their actions, in their interactions, and in their decisions. So if I want to take an extreme example of this thing, is that if you want to have some friends that smoke weed all the time and take care of their kids while they're high. Yeah, true. Even cigarette, that even bothers me when kids are around and somebody starts smoking, I'm like I had an argument with somebody that I told them either you put your cigar out or we're leaving and they're smoking cigars and it's so rude that whole smell taking up the place. But I'm okay with it, but it affects my children. There's absolutely no fucking way. Yeah. Right? It's the same thing of the values. Right. If people are okay with smoke and cigar smokes or cigarette smoke or weed around their kids, they're not the people that I wanna hang out with. Yeah. And I think that's why as we grow and we move up to other stages of life, it's harder to gain friendships 'cause then you have to like the guy and I have to like the woman and then the kids need to get along and it's just like so many layers and then we have all these standards and value system that kind of, you know. Some anomaly is okay, but when it completely crosses Yeah. There's a great therapist, we followed him, that said, you know, buy good friendships for your children. And we've done that. We've put our kid in a school that wouldn't be a regular first pick of a school for him because of his one friend that we value him as a child and the parents that are raising this child and the values that he lives that Is best friends with my boy now. And he's had such an amazing influence on this case. It's unbelievable. Right? So values and friendships and things that we we we choose to spend our time with, which I believe is the most valuable thing we got, might be a little lonely. Yeah. But it's very deep and selective as opposed to broad and whatever. Yeah. So be selective. And less guilty of letting people go. We can still love him and we can still feel grief and we can still reach out for something unknown in the future. But but but ⁓ let me let me before we go, I wanna say this I am personally absolutely grateful for all of the people that have been in my life. And even the the one guy that I have no connection with him because of his values. Right. I'm absolutely grateful because at the time and I had the most amazing experiences in my life with these people. So they've raised me on who I am. And I respect that and I value that. And I am grateful because I am who I am because of those situations and relationships and amazing times that we had. And as Sufi say, everybody is a mirror in our life. Yes. And it's not supposed to last forever. They could be the mirror for a point of time. Short, long, but they're there to point out parts of ourselves that we need to dig deep and look more into and grow from it. And some people come and serve a purpose and they leave. I don't know if any of my friends listen to this podcast. So all my friends, I love you all. Nothing against you. I love everybody and thank you, thank you, thank you for what you did. For me and back to you guys the same way, I hope. See you next time.