When Friends Become Acquaintances

Have you ever stopped and realised that the social circle of friends you have has significantly decreased as the years have gone on?

It has become more apparent to me, especially in the past 6 months, that a lot of people who I happily called my friends have slipped to acquaintance status. We no longer spend a lot of time together, they don’t check in to see if I’m doing ok or if I want to catch up and a lot of empty promises of “soon” are thrown around.

I don’t like them any less for this and I don’t have any ill will towards them for no longer having time for me. Truth be told I am sure I too have done the same with others in the past. It’s a natural progression to sometimes not be so involved in someone’s life anymore. We all grow and change and occasionally we move on and if you really take notice, as some slip further away, others end up closer.

Queue the Lion King coz it’s the circle of life.

For some of us though, it’s harder to understand why this happens. We question what we have done to create such a distance or what happened to turn the friendship into a passing sometimes. We instantly think this person doesn’t like us or that there is something wrong. Truth is, just because someone isn’t giving you what you want right now, doesn’t mean they aren’t giving you all they can at this moment in time.

Look at it this way, I can count on one hand (ok specifically 3 fingers) how many people have checked in on me to see if I am doing alright after the debacle of last weekend and to be honest, that’s totally fine by me. I didn’t tell a lot of people what was going on to begin with so hardly anyone even knew, and when I think about it, I only told the people I consider true friends.

At the end of the day, the people you call friends are the one’s who you can call any time of day and they’ll be there for you and you can feel comfort knowing they know you inside and out and you don’t need a team of people to feel good about that.

However, the people you call acquaintances are also important. They give you variety and a chance to branch out socially from time to time but they don’t need to carry all your baggage and vice versa.

I think sometimes we invest too much in the idea that we need to be liked that we lose focus of the fact that just because someone doesn’t want to be with you 24/7, doesn’t mean they don’t like you at all. Give yourself more credit. You’re pretty awesome and a lot of people think so. But you don’t need a squad to prove your worth (and to be honest I f*cking hate that term)….you just need to believe in yourself and the people who matter will shine through and support you on your way. And whether that’s one person or three or more, whatever it is it’s all you need.

You don’t need a certain number of friends
You just need friends you can be certain of ❤

xoxo Natalie