I hear people all the time talk about needing to be better about saying “no” to people – to plans they don’t want to keep, trips they don’t want to take, money they shouldn’t spend…anything you can imagine that people get roped into doing, because saying no seems rude or selfish or makes you seem like a bad friend. For me personally, learning how to say “no” to people has been the best & worst thing that’s ever happened to me.
I used to say yes to everything, all the time, with everyone, for any reason. I would go out on weekdays. I would skip class or work in order to avoid missing out on a good time. I would spend money on events and trips that I could barely manage spending because turning down an invite was just not possible. Eventually, I started realizing that the lifestyle I was living wasn’t sustainable. I was constantly tired and drained and being pulled in a million directions.
After years of being a yes man I started finally saying “no”. I just started being honest. I was tired, I was working, I was sick, or I just wanted to be alone. It took a long time for me to feel comfortable doing this. People were confused and would constantly give push back and would beg me to still come out and honestly it became really annoying. I started realizing that the person I was in my Freshman year of college wasn’t the person that I was 4-5 years after that. Blacking out three nights a week didn’t appeal to me anymore. Staying out until the sun came up didn’t interest me. Running on three hours of sleep was the worst thing I could imagine at that point. I had an adult job and adult priorities to tend to.
A lot of people didn’t understand the place that I was at in my life. They thought I was lame or boring or becoming a homebody. And to an extent they were right. I loved being at home. I loved coming home after working and just spending time by myself. I loved living my life on my own time.
Once I was finally able to make choices that had nothing to do with anyone else, EVERYONE seemed to have an opinion about it. Initially, it didn’t bother me, and I was able to laugh it off and encourage them to continue to do things without me and enjoy their time. But eventually, it seemed like people were becoming resentful of my decision to focus on myself. They would make snide comments about me being an introvert or being lame and put me on guilt trips for not doing things with them that I didn’t think were fun anymore.
As time went on, it really started to bother me. I felt like I was losing friends that I thought were going to be part of my life forever. I felt like I was losing the parts of myself that held us together. I found myself feeling guilty for not being able to maintain certain friendships because I had changed.
I remember one specific weekend I had gone back home to see my mom for the weekend instead of going out of town with my friends. I had gotten so much backlash for not going on this trip that it was blatantly obvious that I wasn’t in a good mood. I opened up to my mom about what had been going on and I told her I was worried that I was going to lose all of my friends because I had no interest in spending time with them anymore. This was such a hard conversation to have because it hurt to admit that this was happening with people who I’d spent so many years of my life with. As much as I loved my time alone and my independence, it was still scary to think about not having certain people in my life as a security blanket EVEN if they weren’t the healthiest relationships anymore.
During that conversation with my mom I remember her telling me “I don’t think you’ve changed…you’ve just grown. And maybe you’ve outgrown some of your friendships, and there’s nothing wrong with that.” At that moment, it was like all the moving pieces and frustrating feelings had shut down. What she said made complete sense.
“I don’t think you’ve changed…you’ve just grown. And maybe you’ve outgrown some of your friendships, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
I wasn’t antisocial; I wasn’t fake; I wasn’t boring…I was maturing. I was still my normal funny, charming, sociable self, I was just choosing to exert my energy differently. I started realizing that a lot of the people I spent time with were stuck in high school. They wanted to do the same things we did in high school, gossip about the same people we did in high school and continue to be the same people we were in high school. For me, that wasn’t good enough. I wanted more out of my life than to get stuck in my hometown. When I finally started seeing the truth behind those relationships, I realized that we had more differences than we did similarities.
At the end of the day, growing is hard. Maturing isn’t easy, but the pain means you’re doing something right. It’s kind of like being sore after a workout. It’s a good pain. It lets you know that you’re on the right path and it reassures you that you’ve made a step in the right direction. Accepting that you aren’t running the same race as the people you thought would be by your side until the finish line hurts. But once you’re able to shake the dead weight off and start running freely by yourself, it opens so many doors and a whole new world of freedom.
In closing, don’t be afraid to run your own race. If relationship maintenance is becoming more of a chore than a reward, it might be a good idea to take a step back and reevaluate the friendships that you’re clinging to.