the friendship issue

When I started writing this article, I discovered another draft from August on a similar topic. I am glad I left it unfinished and returned to it now, at a time when I feel at peace with the state of my relationships. I feel that I am on the other side of some of the turbulences I experienced over the past few years and it feels easier to share from this place.

I will start with the conclusion. Nowadays, I don’t expect that much from relationships. I am grateful when a friend takes the time to call or write and ask how I am, but I am not frustrated when she doesn’t. I take things more lightly and go with the flow, knowing that there is always someone there when I need this kind of connection. I don’t expect things to be a certain way. I understand my needs better and get them met by whoever is available. I think my attachment style in friendships has loosened and I am less dependent on things being in a particular way.

I have always been the kind of person with more than one friend. There are times when a relationship becomes closer, for different reasons that I will talk about later.

My relationships with men have been few and long-term, while my circle of girlfriends has been larger. I was tempted to say that these friendships were “easier to handle,” perhaps in comparison to those with men, but then I remembered that a couple of these friendships ended dramatically, with the two of us not speaking for a long time.
Of course, every relationship involves two people and I can acknowledge my own contribution to the drama. It is difficult to simplify things, but for the sake of a conclusion, I would say that my part was a lack of clear boundaries. I used to be a people-pleaser and an over-giver. For the sake of keeping a relationship intact I found it difficult to say when something didn’t feel right. Over time, things built up until they exploded and there was no going back.
My deep need for connection was at the root of this boundaryless merging with others, a need for total fusion that sometimes ended badly as it set expectations in relationships very high and unrealistic.

I have always considered myself a good friend, easygoing and socially fluent. Making friends was never difficult for me; on the contrary, it felt easy and natural and relationships tended to grow stronger over time.

My closest friends from high school went abroad to study and ended up staying there. During the first years, we wrote to each other a lot, handwritten letters, but later, life took over and with the distance it became difficult for me to maintain the same level of closeness. Nowadays, when we meet it feels as if we parted just yesterday and we reconnect effortlessly, but we are not in touch on a regular basis.

The longest friendship in which I am still in weekly contact began after I finished university. I can’t really remember how we first connected, but we have been part of each other’s lives for a very long time. We both had children very young and for many years this kept us close. We also worked together for a couple of years and although at some moment life took us in different directions, we somehow managed to stay in touch. We don’t see each other often, even though we live in the same city, but we talk on the phone every week for about an hour and she is someone I rely on completely.

Then there are the friends I made at work. I have more than two friendships that have remained close for the past 25 years. Each workplace brought at least one new friend into my life, some workplaces even more. What is interesting is how these relationships continued after we no longer worked together.

I love working in partnership. Even my personal brand is called ZWEI. I originally wanted to call it ZUSAMMEN (“together” in German), but it wasn’t a good name, too long and too difficult to understand. Still, togetherness has always been one of my core values. Not above love but alongside it, the two go hand in hand.
(When I was in high school, after the Revolution in ‘89, our school elected not one but two principals. That memory stayed with me over the years and I still think it is a good model especially for management roles, but also for project-based work.)

Coming back to friendships, the period after working together often brought a new stage to our relationships. The dynamics changed. I was no longer the manager; that role had added an extra layer to the relationship, one that required more care from my part. Being both a leader and a friend brings specific challenges to a relationship. When the role of colleagues ended, a new phase appeared and I needed time to adjust. For a long time I haven’t been aware of the new dynamic, but nowadays I am looking more attentively to the way I feel.
Some transitions and relationships were easy and smooth. We continued to meet regularly and stayed in touch. We even got more closer afterwards. Other friendships needed more time to adapt to the new rhythm and brought more frustration, but all of them survived the change and we are still in contact in a way or another.

One of my closest friends for the past 28 years used to be my boss. We clicked from the very beginning. She later became my wedding godmother and then the godmother of my daughter. We have been through so much together and lately we have been going to group therapy together, which has become our weekly way of spending time with one another.

I am usually the more active person in relationships, often driven by a fear of losing the connection. I used to over-give and sometimes I still do. The difference now is that I am aware of it. Even if I don’t always notice it in the moment, I can recognize the behaviour afterwards.

The lesson I keep coming back to is the one about the oxygen mask on an airplane: you put it on yourself first and only then on your child. I would say the same rule applies here. We can give to others only when we are in a good place, when we have enough ourselves. Otherwise, it is better to work on bringing ourselves back into balance before offering attention, love, care and everything else. When we give from a place of lack, or out of fear of losing someone it often turns into frustration.

I don’t have a whatsapp group with all my friends. Some of them don’t even know each other, they come from different periods of my life and have never met. It would be nice to bring them all together someday.
I feel more comfortable in one-to-one relationships than in larger groups. In a group, it is difficult for me to stay focused and to connect in a deep, intimate way. I find it hard to offer and receive the kind of attention I feel is needed to truly be present with one another.

With each of my friends, I share a different history. We are connected through memories from a specific period in our lives, from the time when our friendship first began and the things we lived and shared together.

One friend in particular comes to mind: we became close shortly before she got pregnant with her first child. Since then, there hasn’t been much time just for the two of us, as she now has two small children. I mention her here because I value immensely the way she has made space for me in her life despite having so much on her plate. Even with two young children and all that life brings she always finds time to check in on me and I am deeply grateful to have her in my life.

Then there is another close friend of mine who traveled a lot during the last years but we managed to stay in so close contact during these years, talking weekly, growing older and wiser together and sharing so many things. She feels like a sister to me.

I was contemplating what has brought us together in all my friendships and it has always been, for sure, common values. That is, we liked the same things, shared the same interests at a certain moment in time and connected through similar sensibilities. At the same time, we were often very different and those differences required us to learn from each other and discover new parts of ourselves.

I have a good friend with whom I share a birthday. We are very alike in many ways, yet also different in countless ways. Despite this we mirror each other with grace and delicacy. It is a lovely relationship and we have been through many very different periods of our lives together.

There are friends who were initially acquaintances, and then a difficult period in our lives brought us closer. We supported each other through that time and I value that deeply, being together through hardships.
Years ago, when I was very ill, my boyfriend said to me “we will go through this together.” He couldn’t have said anything more suitable or soothing. This is how I want to show up for my friends as well.
There are times when one of us needs total support from the other.
But if a relationship settles into a pattern where only one person gives and the other only receives, I have learned to observe, stop and change the dynamic, if possible, or step away. A healthy relationship involves a flow of give and take.

It is not easy to be truly present when someone is in need and be there the way the person really needs it and not the way you think she needs. Over the past few years, I have learned this lesson the hard way. With the help of therapy and my personal development journey I am becoming better at it. However, there was a dear friendship that ended because I didn’t provide support in the exact way she needed during a difficult time. She expected me to be as supportive as a therapist, but the triggers were too big for me and I had to pull back.
Another friendship ended years ago and I remember her saying that I shouldn’t judge people by my own standards or expect them to behave as I would. That is a longer story, not ready to share here about it.

This year, my business partner became one of my closest friends. We have worked together for the past ten years, but this year we grew closer than ever through the turbulence of our work environment. This closeness allowed us to share the ups and downs of daily life in a deeply intimate way.

And then there are some new friendships I’ve made over the past year, and they are so different from all my others. I shared before that I started this school at the beginning of the year. One of the girls from my therapy group is joining me on this journey and it feels so good not to be doing it alone. We become close by sharing this experience together. Even if we are not connected in our daily life - I feel we have an invisible thread that keeps us connected because we are on the same path, doing the same work.
I also have a weekly practice in triads and I am so grateful for the other two women in my group who I meet on a regular basis and I feel seen and I learn so much from them.
Beyond that, we have created a warm and supportive community when meeting offline in Germany. There is an extraordinary woman from Mexico, who is 70 years old, and I am completely in awe of her; then there are two lovely women living in Spain, a Mexican girl living in Berlin, and another living in Copenhagen. I admire them all so much; some are in their fifties, others in their sixties.
Back in Romania, almost all my friends are younger and I have usually been the more mature one, the one going to therapy, supporting others, the “mom” type of friend. It feels good, for a change to be alongside older and wiser women, to see what life might look like in the future. They are truly an inspiration, young at heart, independent, full of energy and dedicated to learning new things and working on their personal development in so many ways.

And then there are friends I don’t meet on a regular basis, but when I think about them my heart feels soft and full of love. Although we meet only once in a while, I feel very connected to them. I often think about why we don’t grow closer. Perhaps we would need a shared project or a weekly common routine for that to happen.

This was a long sharing and not really easy to write.
Let me know if this glimpse in my intimate life helps, so I know if I make the effort another time to share.

Before I finish I want to say a few words about connection. I used to say we don’t have a connection when the relationship was not working, was ill functioning, was not satisfying, but the reality is when we don’t get along with somebody or we don’t talk to somebody the connection is still there, but it isn’t fulfilling and good and nurturing.

Merry Christmas!
🎄✨
Have a relaxing vacation full of nice and intimate get togethers.
🕊️🤍
ileana