Sometimes we make “friends for a season”. And that’s okay.
Every Friday I like to leave you with one thought for the weekend. And today it’s simply this: If you’re lonely, it’s okay to go out and make friends with people that aren’t necessarily kindred spirits. We need each other. Sometimes those relationships aren’t perfect, but they can be a lifesaver anyway.
Sheila’s Musings: Why We Need “Friends for a Season”
When my children were really young we were living in downtown Toronto. I didn’t live close to anyone who went to my church. We lived in an odd neighbourhood, and it wasn’t exactly my natural kind of place. It was just convenient to Keith’s work.
Everybody lived in condos or apartments, and so nobody had a yard. I needed to get out of the apartment everyday, so I ended up attending a playgroup at a local public school. There I met about eight other moms with young kids, and we became friends.
These were not women I would have normally chosen as friends. We didn’t have much in common except our children’s ages. But they were a lifesaver to me. They were only friends for a season; when I moved away I hardly contacted any of them, and I think they knew it would be like that.
They, like me, were just making friends for a season, too.
One was a 19-year-old girl who got pregnant by accident. She met someone else who raised her child as his own, and they had another one together. One was 41 with her first daughter, married to a domineering man ten years older. Another was from Brazil, the wife of a doctor up here on residency training. Another seemed normal, but shortly after I left I heard she had a nervous breakdown and ran off and got temporary amnesia. It was a very eclectic group, but they were a lot of fun!
I think sometimes we need to make the best of what we have.
I don’t think that’s a cop out to say I had fun with these women that I was not too sad to say good-bye to. I always dreamed of finding a kindred spirit, and I have in Belleville where we have put down roots. But in university, in high school, and in that playgroup, I frequently made friends for a season. I needed people to talk to on a regular basis, people to share my frustrations and joys with, but I knew they weren’t people that I would carry with me the rest of my life.
In Belleville we live right next to Trenton, which is home to Canada’s largest air base. I know lots of military people. And frequently they say the same thing. When you’re stationed somewhere for two years, you know you’re going to leave friends behind. So you don’t try to make lasting relationships. You just try to find “filler friends”, who will help you pass the time.
Occasionally you may meet a kindred spirit anyway, and that’s an added bonus.
But sometimes you just don’t. And it’s important to make do with the women God has placed in your path.
I don’t mean to sound snobbish, but I hope you all know what I mean. We women are social. We need friends. But sometimes the perfect friend just isn’t there, especially when you’re living somewhere temporarily. You can’t hibernate, though. You have to get out of the house and reach out to someone. So you find those people that you fit best with, and you make do.
And in the end, you can look back and thank God that He brought them into your life, even if it was only for a season.
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Sheila Wray Gregoire has been married for 29 years and happily married for 24! She loves traveling around North America with her hubby in their RV, giving her signature "Girl Talk" about sex and marriage. And she's written 7 books. About sex and marriage. See a theme here? Plus she knits. Even in line at the grocery store.
This is SO TRUE! I wish for more friends, even if just for a season. Sometimes we are blessed with a lifelong friendship, but the everyday kind can be just as important.
I call them “Forever Friends” and “Geographic Friends”.
The forever friends are the people you can always count on. They are the people who phone you even though you’ve been out of touch for a while, just to catch up – and you pick up right where you left off.
Geographic friends are the ones who you’re hanging out with and enjoying because you’re in the same place at the same time for a while. They can be great fun – but they aren’t the ones I turn to in a crisis.
Absolutely! I moved often as a kid/teen. I often had friends that I never heard from again. The funny thing is that I’m totally fine with that now.
I’m a reader. An avid reader. And female characters in books not only have perfect and hot marriages (or they cheat-there seems to be no in between lol) but also have soul mate best friends that they regularly spend time with who know them and love them. It’s just not reality. Life is messy. Sometimes even the person you thought would be your forever bestest friend….it just doesn’t work out.
So true! I only have one ‘forever friend’, and it is a funny story, because the first time I met her I didn’t think I would like her AT ALL. But over the next year of working on a project together, and emailing a LOT, she became a really good friend. When we both moved to different places, and into different roles in life, we did lose contact, and I thought we maybe we’re only ‘friends for a season’, but I always had this niggly feeling to get back in touch, so at the beginning of last year, I did. That really felt like a God given friendship, as within a few weeks of me making contact with my friend again, she moved relatively nearby, so as well as emailing, we were able to catch up face to face. I was able to support her through a difficult time, and even though we aren’t in as close contact as we were way back when we became friends, we now have the kind of deep friendship where we can be real with each other and we don’t hide our ‘bad bits’. This deep, authentic friendship has been an answer to prayer for me.
I really long for a solid group of Christian friends to share my walk with, but that is not possible in my current situation. I am leaving that to God and just trying to be aware of pursuing any opportunities that may lead to such friendships. In the meantime, I comment on blogs (lol)!
Yes! I have friends I am committed to – we stay in touch and we’re “there for each other”. And I have other friends that are… catch-and-release. We get along. We have something (maybe not much) in common. And eventually we move on. There’s no big friend “malfunction”, we just move on. I totally get that.
This is very true. I think my friend illustrated it best when she got married. She had one “forever friend” to be a bridesmaid from each season of her life (I was one, yeay).
I have also found that sometimes motherhood can end the season of friendship as well as start it. I was friends with a woman 10 years my senior for most of my life. We had relatives who were married (my relative has now passed away) so she had been in my life since I was 8.
We conceived our first children around the same time and our due dates were only 2 days apart. We even both had boys. I thought all of this would make us more like sisters, but it actually drove a huge wedge in our friendship. I think it’s because we’re very different mothers, with different ideas of what it takes to be a mother. That didn’t bother me, but from the minute we both announced our pregnancies it bothered her and she slowly cut me out. It used to really hurt, but now that I have made a wider circle of season friends and a good group of Christian friends, I see that although our season of friendship was long; it was a “single girls” friendship, not a forever friendship.
Great writing as usual Sheila!
I get this, but honestly I’m tired of seasonal friends. After 10 years of marriage and 3 kids it would be nice to find a forever friend. I hate that my friends keep moving after only a year or two. And I’ve yet to sustain a friendship after a move, not for lack of trying. I guess for now I’ll just keep plugging along through the seasons.
Oh, I’m sorry! I know it does get really emotionally tired, doesn’t it?
“It happened sometimes: friends come in and out of your life like bus boys in a restaraunt” . From the movie “Stand by me”
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I really agree w/ your post, and it’s a good lesson to learn! Sometimes it’s obvious in advance, but it can be hard to realize that you friend is just a seasonal friend, or worse: you thought she was a kindred spirit, but you were *her* seasonal friend (and now that season is ending). Situations change, and people do as well. Be loyal, be kind, but hold w/ a soft grip.