You Are Going to Lose Friends When You Get Serious About Life, and That's Ok

You’re going to lose friends, and that’s alright. In fact, it’s probably for the best!

Emma and I talked about this the other day, and I’ve also talked about it with other friends, but have you ever noticed that people either have big or small circles? And if you pay close attention, people with smaller circles tend to be more successful. Keep your circles small.

That does not mean isolating yourself. For example, I have over three hundred people in my contact lists. That’s not a small group of people by any means. But, the difference between my circle of ten or so and the other 290+ contacts is how well they know me.

My circle of ten knows everything about me. They know what I like, who I’m dating, what I’m doing this weekend, what my goals are, my plans, by business pursuits are. What the other 290 people know is only what I allow them to know after making my moves in life.

Why? Because I know many of those 290 people are not genuinely happy for my success, and many of them want to see me fail. Why wouldn’t they? For many of them, that means they make more money, or their company grows more. My failure is their success. I keep them around because there is a mutual benefit to having them around, and they provide me something just like how I offer them something they are after. But I don’t look at my friends that way. And I think it stems closely from Emma’s piece about burning bridges. I am not one for burning bridges, I might not repair them when they are damaged, but I don’t burn them. That is a very distinct difference between her and me, and that is perfectly fine. We have two different personalities and different life experiences that have to lead to that.

For me, friendships fade, and you lose friends, but you should never lose contacts unless something goes terribly wrong. Friendship stop over time. You either fight, or you grow apart, or you realize they aren’t good for you anymore.

I noticed that when you get serious about your life, that is when your circle gets smaller, and we should embrace that. When you quit drinking and doing drugs, you will see those people fade out of your life. When you stop partying, those people are going to fade out also. When you stop messing around, those people are gone too. And that does not mean you can’t form new relationships to take the place of those.

When I stopped partying and smoking weed, and I got my life together during my senior year of high school, I noticed the people I spent my first three years with started to filter our, and when I went to college, we never spoke again. That doesn’t mean we hate each other or have bad blood. It’s just that we went two separate ways in life, and our paths didn’t cross anymore.

You are going to start shedding the people and habits of your old lifestyle when you start taking your new one seriously, and that is ok. It will be hard at first, and you might be lonely some night, but new relationships that will be stronger and push you to be a better person will start to form. Those are the friendships you want to keep close to your chest and hold tight to.

As you grow up, you are going to lose friends because others are not ready for you to be serious about your life, and you can’t let them hold you back.

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Parting is such sweet sorrow, but until we meet again.

With love,

Richard V.