Friendship is a fragile thing. You wouldn't think it would be, but it is. So often when friendships fall apart we hear people say, "maybe you weren't really friends." We have this idea that true friendship is an unbreakable bond. Yet when something happens so that the friendship breaks apart, we claim that the friendship fell apart because we weren't really friends with that person. The problem is that friendships, even great ones, are still fragile.
We can all agree that there are things you don't do in a friendship. You don't sleep with your best friend's girlfriend. You don't steal your friend's laptop. You don't slash your friend's tires. We can chalk this all up to fake friends, however, just because fake friends exist doesn't mean that all broken friendships weren't true. Sometimes we do things that fracture our relationships. We see this happen in families all the time but that doesn't mean that they weren't truly family. Relationships are just hard, and we need to take better care of them.
There are things we can do as people that are inexcusable. While everything can be forgiven, not everything can be forgotten. Just like our parents used to tell us, saying "sorry" doesn't always make things better. We can do wrong and apologize, and while the other person may forgive us in the long run, it doesn't mean that there is no fracture in the relationship.
I have seen many relationships fractured in both my family and my friend groups. I have seen people do and say terrible things to each other. Yet when everything falls apart we say that it's because they weren't truly our friend. Maybe we wouldn't have as many fractured relationships if we accepted that fact that relationships are hard. We hear that romantic relationships are hard, but we expect platonic relationships to be easy. The truth of the matter is that nothing comes easy.
We have to work at our friendships if we want to keep them alive. We have to be honest without being spiteful. We need to be assertive without being aggressive. We need to accept the fact that sometimes we are the instigator of our own problems. Our friends and family will always do things that hurt us. Whether it's intentional or not, it will happen. We are all human and we all make mistakes. But we can't let the fact that we all make mistakes justify us when we do something wrong. We need to own up to what we did to fracture the relationship.
We need to accept when we do something wrong. We also need to accept that no one is perfect and sometimes it's the people closest to you that hurt you the most. We need to refocus our attention on maintaining relationships rather than expecting them to come easily. At the end of the day, we need to remember that some relationships can be fractured beyond repair. Sometimes we cannot fully mend the wounds we create. We need to remember that true friendships can also be ruined. Maybe we'd change for the better if we stop asking others to put more effort into a relationship than we are willing to put in ourselves. Maybe we'd change for the better if we realized that we have the capability to hurt people.
