All things have to come to an end, including friendships. From your primary-school best friend to half the people you meet during Freshers week, most friends you make won’t be there for the rest of your life. But accepting this truth can feel much more difficult when it comes to friends you truly valued and loved — those you were sure you’d be close with forever. Why, then, if losing these friendships is so hard, does the possibility of rekindling them feel so terrifying?
For one, you’re both different people. If a man cannot stand in the same river twice — for it is not the same river, nor the same man — then two friends cannot have the same friendship twice. The possibility that this once-great connection may now be stilted and awkward is not a truth many of us want to face. This makes the rekindling of a friendship scary as in order to try and revive a lost connection, you have to come to terms with the fact that it might be lost forever. It’s tempting to live with the memory of how good things used to be instead of confronting that things may not be that way again.
Sending that first message can feel like a horrifying display of vulnerability. Confessing to someone who is no longer in your life that you miss them opens you up for rejection and heartache. It’s an uncomfortable position to put yourself in.
You may also feel guilty for allowing the friendship to end. This is true both for connections that splintered off dramatically and those that slowly fizzled out. These feelings of shame are difficult to confront, and can hold people back from reaching out to friends they miss.
Rekindling an old friendship is scary. That hesitation to reach out is understandable, and a reaction that the majority of us would have. However, you should not allow these feelings to paralyse you. Reconnecting with an old friend can be a wonderful thing — once that initial awkwardness is overcome, you’ll have someone that you loved back in your life. And if the friendship is not what it was; if the message is left on open, or you have both changed too much, then it is better to know, and be able to put it to bed once and for all.
Image by Charlotte Dorward (@_twostepsforward) for The Student.
