The friendships we never make

July 2, 2014
Day 63

We all have friends in our lives who we can't remember meeting.  We might be able to give you a general time period, or a person who introduced us, but beyond that, the details are fuzzy.  We just know that at some point, we became friends with them.

But what about all the people we never clicked with, or even those whom we did click with, but not enough to keep us connected?  These are the friendships that just never happened. 

They could have, they might have, but for whatever reason, they just didn't.  Maybe we exchanged phone numbers or e-mail addresses.  Maybe we even "became friends" on a social network.  Yet none of this means we really took the next step.  We didn't make the friendship really happen.

It's kind of a depressing thought if you let it be, but it's also just a fact of life.  Things happen.  People come, people go, and some people?  They never come by at all!

At what point can we do any more about it?  We can certainly try to make a friendship happen, but if the other person doesn't want it to, it just won't ever be.  And that's...okay.  In many cases, people will wander through our personal space, shake our hands or hug us, and then they'll be gone.  They'll decide they don't want more.  And that's also...okay.

But what about the ones we want to keep?  What about the friends we wish didn't get away from us?  Where are they now, and what might we have done differently to emotionally attract them to ourselves?  Well, the truth is, in most cases, you probably did whatever you could have. 

Maybe you're like me, and you often reach too far in an attempt to make a new friend.  Or maybe you're like many others I know who don't try much beyond a simple, polite hello.  Or maybe you're somewhere in the middle.  It doesn't matter, because life just happens as it does. 

If you put yourself out there though, if you really, really show your interest in a person in a friendly, non-creepy way, anything's possible.  In all things, just be kind, be respectful, and be open.  We all crave our three feet of emotional space as much as our three feet of actual space.  Respect that.  Honor that space, and that person's right to that space.  And maybe, just maybe, the friendship will happen.  But if it doesn't, move on!

We can't spend days or even hours sitting in a swamp of regret.  The friendship that might have been...often just isn't.  All we can do is live and react...and proact...as we will in the moments as they come.  Maybe those prospective friends will join our posse, or maybe they won't.  Maybe they'll see us as a potential new friend, or maybe they won't.  And whether we like it or not, that's...okay.