By: Kimberly Alexander, M.S.
The saying goes, “You can’t live with them, but you can’t live without them.” These are words that couldn’t be any truer for me and my relationship with some of my friends. I don’t have a large group but for those who I hold closest to me, their loyalty and honesty are beyond valuable. However, I have found that there are a few things that I cannot stand about them! How could amazing, genuine people be so annoying? I find that lately, I ask myself, why do I have to tolerate their inconsistencies? They need to try harder to be good friends.
Just to provide a little context, I have one friend that is ALWAYS late. She will give me a time to pick her up and upon arrival, I wait in my car on average 30 minutes for her to finish getting ready. Why tell me a time to meet you if you were going to need that much more time to get ready? Another friend of mine will tell me that I need to call her more but when I have called, our conversations last 7-10 minutes in which she will interrupt our discussion with responding to others near her and then tell me she will call me back, which typically doesn’t happen.
While these people are loyal, honest people, I often become so angry at their behavior that I can go weeks without communicating with them until I find myself lonely and missing my girls! I’m sure we have all had moments in which we become upset by someone we care about and decide that the best solution is to avoid them or decrease contact with them. However, where does that get you? And how many people are you going to remove from your life? Yes, we don’t like to be uncomfortable but avoidance couldn’t possibly be the ONLY solution!
When I really thought about it, I realized that on the one hand, their lateness and flakiness are definitely annoying behaviors. However, what made me so irate was that in my head, I thought of them as intentionally being disrespectful towards me and therefore they were bad people. I believed that their behaviors were a reflection of their value of my friendship and suggested that my time meant little to them. Now this is not to say my evaluations could not be within the realm of general possibilities; however, when I examine the facts of my relationships with these individuals over the years and the current responsibilities and demands of their lives, I realize that my evaluation of their behavior could be very flawed as it would be incongruent with the loyalty and honesty they have demonstrated to me over the years.
So what’s a more reasonable solution than avoiding my friends? I went with having a talk with them about it and trying to plan meet ups or phone calls that account for their schedule. I might check in beforehand when I’m ready to meet up with my friend or I might text to check in on if my other friend thought she had time to speak. Ultimately, my goal is not to lose all my friendships over annoying behaviors that have little to do with whether or not they value my friendship. So, what I will be sure to do consistently on my end is to “check my evaluations at the door.” Because you know, people aren’t perfect… And their imperfections are not a reflection of your value or even the value they have for you.
