Friendships that last are full of ups and downs. You might know of a few friends who’ve known each other for forever but behind the scenes you don’t realize the things they have gone through over the years.
When you look at your own circle, you probably know that feeling of wanting to break things off with someone during those rough patches in your friendship journey.
But at some point, you have to decide if you want to reconnect and maintain the bond even after mistakes.
To be honest, it’s a hard process to recover from. Still you and your friend can get through the awkward phase and start a fresh. Here is how:
1. Give each other time
When emotions are high, it’s probably best to let things cool off for a while. You should avoid talking to them too early because you’ll end up saying things that you didn’t intend to.
Also, giving each other time allows both of you to assess the situation properly instead of acting out of emotions while overlooking the real facts of what happened.
You should, therefore, give each other space for a while.
2. Talk about it
Once you’ve already calmed down and absorbed everything, you can reach out and talk to them about it. If you can, meet up with them so that you can have an honest conversation face to face. The other option would be calling them.
Avoid having this conversation over text because it doesn’t really allow you to communicate effectively.
Before reaching out, remember that you need to approach them with an open mind rather than being focused on fighting. Staying calm will get the message across better.
3. Decide to forgive
We forgive but it’s almost impossible to forget. I think that the whole point of forgiving is to shift your attitude about someone rather than struggling to erase the memory.
Regardless of what happened, it’s up to you to decide if the friendship is worth saving. If it is, then there is no other option but to forgive.
You need to accept each other’s flaws because this will set you both free.
4. Focus on a clean slate
A friendship that’s been shaken might never be the same ever again. Forcing that old connection to come back will probably backfire at this point.
What you can do, as you work to repair it, is accept a new type of bond between you which isn’t a bad thing anyways. Your friendship could evolve to something stronger and better so don’t be so focused on keeping things exactly the way they were.
5. Set new boundaries
No relationship can survive without boundaries. This goes for parent-child relationships, romantic relationships, employer-employee relationships and every different type of relationship you can think of.
Boundaries are a way of communicating your expectations and maintaining respect. Therefore, you both need to talk about what needs to change and what you won’t tolerate moving on.
The next thing would be to make sure you both respect each other to avoid finding yourselves in the same situation in future. If it happens again, the friendship will probably have no chance of survival.
6. Know when to let go
There’s a lot you can do to try and repair a friendship but you also need to learn when to let things be. You might try to meet up with them many times for the sake of reconciliation but somehow things just aren’t working out.
If the effort is only coming from your side, you should probably stop trying to mend things for now. They might need more time or they’re just not interested in the friendship anymore.
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