FRIENDLESS OR FRIENDFULL? THAT IS THE QUESTION

If you were a fly on the wall of my house, you would hear me making countless jokes about me not having any friends. Whenever a friend texts me, I like to announce it to John as though it is breaking news. I often meet a new person I’d like to befriend and then immediately have a conversation with myself about not getting my hopes up because it will never happen. I routinely fantasize about a world in which I have a close, great group of friends and finally feel accepted. The problem with all this is that I already have a great group of friends who do accept me. I just really struggle to see and believe it.

It’s strange to me that I have such a hard time trusting the friendships in my life considering I don’t have similar hang-ups in my romantic relationship. My ex-fiancé straight up walked out on me but I no longer bring that baggage into my current relationship. I don’t worry every day that John is going to leave. Yet I somehow still struggle to feel safe in friendships that have, in some cases, lasted over ten years. I worry about texting too much. I assume I am a bother. I feel a nervous energy of “I hope this goes well” even when it’s gone well countless times before. And I continue to assume new people won’t want to be my “real” friend even if we hit it off.

Lately I’ve tried to examine where this self-doubt is coming from. I started by looking at the evidence of my current situation. And while I certainly have some friends who aren’t the best at keeping in touch or replying to texts, pretty much every person who is important to me checked in on me after my knee surgery. Most of them have even made the trek across town to come visit in person, with one friend driving in rush hour to pick me up from physical therapy when John couldn’t. My friends consistently show up for me and yet there remains a barrier that prevents me from falling all the way into their metaphorical (and sometimes literal) arms.

But I think I finally figured out what that barrier is! I have a flawed friendship schema. And if that admission isn’t noteworthy to you because you don’t know what a schema is, let me explain. A schema is a term used in psychology that explains how we often use a framework to interpret information so it makes sense to us. We have schemas for all sorts of things and those schemas influence how we perceive things. For example, if you have a schema that views strangers as dangerous, you might think the person looking at you on the subway wants to murder you. But if you have a schema that views strangers as intriguing, you might view that same person as a potential friend or even a date! And what I’ve realized is that my schema around friendship is detrimentally negative. I assume that no one wants to be or stay friends with me, so I interpret everything through that lens. That’s why all the evidence that my friends do care about me doesn’t make a difference because my friendship schema is distorting the truth.

So what do I do? I have to get to work changing my schema. I need to do a better job of challenging my negative thoughts and assumptions around my friends and instead try to view things in a different way. How would I behave if I assumed my friends wanted to hear from me more regularly? How would it feel to view things through a lens where my friends love me just as much as I love them? What would it be like to just relax into my friendships? Sounds pretty incredible. As much as I wish it would, I know this shift in my schema isn’t going to happen overnight. But there is one thing that needs to change right away if I have any hope of changing and that’s no longer vocalizing that I don’t have any friends.

They say there is a bit of truth in every joke, and I find this to be especially true of the self-deprecating variety. I’m not going to be able to work through my issues and sensitivity around friendship if I’m constantly talking about how no one likes me and I don’t have any friends. These jokes just serve as reinforcement to my flawed schema, and if I have any hope of altering it, I need to change the way I speak as well as the way I think. Is it a bit of fake it till I make it? Definitely! But I also think talking positively about friendship is going to be more in line with my actual reality than whatever I was doing before.

I also realized that my friendship schema wasn’t allowing me to appreciate the friendship I have with John. I routinely found myself craving the closeness that I’ve had with female friends in the past where we talk all day and tell each other everything. It didn’t occur to me that that is the exact kind of friendship I now have with John. I don’t think your partner should be your only friend, but I wasn’t giving enough credit to the role his friendship plays in my life. The same is true with my relationship with my parents. Even though they have dual roles in my life, they happen to be two of my closest friends. Once I allowed myself to broaden what friendship could look like, I realized I was surrounded by it. (And if I allow myself to count my dogs as friends, I’m pretty freaking popular!)

Changing your schemas around certain things isn’t an easy task but it’s also not impossible when you know what to look for. I could tell that my perception about this area of my life didn’t seem to fit with my actual experiences, so I took a deeper look. We all have a variety of skewed perceptions, but some hurt us more than others. I’m learning it’s worth taking the time to challenge the ones that aren’t serving us. Sure, there’s a chance that my initial schema was right, all my friendships are going to end and my friends find me annoying, but until they say that to my face, I am going to do my darndest to believe otherwise. Because that’s what’s best for me and the wonderful people I call my friends.

xoxo,

Allison