It’s not you. It’s not them, It's the season.
At some point in your life you will probably experience a season of disconnection or loneliness. Getting older comes with different seasons in life which may impact your schedule, priorities, needs, energy, mental health and more. This ultimately affects our relationships and how they shift over time. It’s common with the changes to feel isolated, lonely, envious, or even rejected.
As a therapist, I often hear my client’s internalizing the changes in friendships as a fault of their own. And to be completely honest, I’m guilty of doing it myself as well. During the more disconnected and lonelier seasons of my life, I found myself putting in effort trying to make time to foster relationships that for one reason or another didn’t work out. I then started trying to make sense of the disconnect and blamed myself by asking questions like: Did I say “no” to plans one too many times? Am I not the kind of person they thought I was? Am I not a girl’s girl? They must rather just spend time with other people. And if I couldn’t solely place the blame on myself as of why I couldn’t maintain relationships then I looked for a way to blame them too.
Reality is, it wasn’t my fault and it wasn’t their fault either. I hope you hear this if you’re currently going through a similar season- It’s not your fault and it’s not their fault either. Relationships in life are supposed to change. There is beauty in the growth and changes coexisting alongside the ways relationships can also grow distant. Finding acceptance in the ways relationships change can help you embrace the parts that feel good and tolerate the parts that don’t.
Here are a few things you can ask yourself to make sure you are being intentional about fostering relationships and controlling the parts you can control.
Are you aware of what your own needs are for friendships, relationships, and connection?
Are you actively putting together plans to spend time together and reaching out?
Have you told them how you currently feel about the relationship and how you would like it to change?
Are you aware of their needs, current life season, and giving them grace for that as well?
If you're doing your part in fostering the relationships and it’s still not working, ask yourself: Are you now just trying to control something that is not in your control? You can’t make your family show up and you can’t make your friends include you in every detail of their life like they used to do. Reality is our friends aren’t supposed to meet all of our needs and we aren’t supposed to meet all of theirs. But still, I understand sitting in the changes of the relationships can bring up feelings of loneliness, disconnectedness, not belonging, and feelings of isolation.
Instead of looking at the loneliness and lack of connection and asking “why me?”, try focusing on what you need to have a sense of self-connection to help tolerate the feelings of disconnection with others. At the end of the day you can only control how you show up and meet your own needs. Explore how you can become more connected to yourself as you accept, tolerate, and wait out the current season of relationships with others.