Everyone will have a few friends who were once good but are drifting apart. After the experience, I found that the stage of friends is the normal state of life.
Walking alone on the road of human growth, you might as well reconcile with "stage friends" and explore your own growth inward.
Recommended for you, Silent Night Thoughts.
Why do I advise you, stop the internal friction of friendship
Source: China Youth Daily Author: Huang Jing
Recently, the Silk Road season of the word-of-mouth variety show "Flowers and Youth" came to an end, and the seven people of different ages, personalities, and experiences in the show became the "Big Dipper Seven Elements" that were unusually compatible. During the trip to Iceland, guest Wang Anyu said:
"Hopefully we can be good friends in the future. ”
Many netizens expressed their feelings that it is not easy to be friends for a long time.
Regarding friends, some time ago, there was another topic on Weibo "Good friends are staged" rushed to the hot search.
In this hot search, the host He Jiong said: "Friends are all staged, even if you don't admit it, you have to accept it, everyone is different." This sentence has resonated with netizens and has been widely discussed.
How to take the compulsory course of "stage friends" is a test that life gives us.
1. Good friends are drifting apart, but there is actually a reason to be found
If you think about it, everyone will have a few friends who used to be good but drifted apart. There are three main reasons why once good friends are getting farther and farther away.
1. The "proximity" is reduced, and the emotional connection between friends is weakened.
Runtu was Lu Xun's best playmate in childhood. When he grew up, Lu Xun became a generation of writers, but Runtu had to work hard to support his family. The two met again after many years of absence, and the once intimate relationship has become cramped and strange.
Once a good friend branches at a crossroads in life, the relationship will change quietly. Why is that?
David Myers' Social Psychology states, "The best predictor of whether two people will be friends is their proximity to each other." ”
The trajectories of the two intersect, they have similar experiences and common topics, they are "close", they are interested in the lives of both parties, and they can have more emotional resonance, so as to maintain a longer connection.
The trajectory of life is bifurcated, the "proximity" of the two people in life, thoughts, values, etc. is getting weaker and weaker, the desire to share and understand is gradually decreasing, and over time, the attraction of each other becomes weaker, it will become more and more difficult to feel each other's affection, and the emotional connection between good friends is constantly weakening.
2. Emotional dedication is unequal, and friendship is difficult to last.
Lu Xun once said: "Friendship is two hearts treating each other sincerely, not one heart beating the other." ”
Long-term friendship is "sincerity for sincerity", two hearts meet and merge, and touch each other with gentle and warm power. If only one party often takes the initiative to share and care for greetings, it is like a warm fire meets a cold wind, and only ashes are left after a few blows.
According to the attraction reward theory, we like people who reciprocate us or are related to the rewards we receive.
Share your own interesting stories in the hope that your friends can receive your happy signals, talk about your troubles and expect your friends to bring emotional comfort or advice, care about your friends' current situation, and subconsciously expect that the other party can also care about you.
If your expectations are constantly disappointed, you will feel tired and think that the other person does not value you. When I gradually turn "active" into "passive", the two "passive" are like flints quietly placed on the ground, and it is difficult to collide with sparks.
3. Time and energy are limited, and there is less and less contact between friends.
A study in the Royal Society Open Science shows that many people start to scale back their friends at about the age of 25. The amount of shrinkage continues to increase with age.
This is because the weight of life consumes time and energy from contacting friends. Entering the society, the life test paper of "how to survive" is spread. When we need to do our best to stay on our feet in the whirlpool of life, we don't have much time and energy to maintain friendships.
Running a family squeezes out the time you spend with your friends. In his book Intimacy, Roland Miller argues that when people devote themselves to their spouses and children, the focus of their social activities shifts from personal friends to family and friends in common with the couple.
Busy with livelihood on weekdays and family affairs on weekends, we race against time to run our families, and we have less and less time and energy to spend with good friends, and the connection between friends decreases, and over time, the relationship with friends gradually fades.
Second, there is no feast in the world that will not be dispersed, and every encounter is cherished
The Guardian reported that a survey by pollster YouGov found that 40% of Britons aged 16 and over had lost contact with some friend.
Anthropologist Robin Dunbar proposed the "Rule of 150": the number of people whose human intelligence will allow humans to have a stable social network is about 150, and only 20 people end up in the core of the social network. "Friends forever" is a good wish in childhood, there are always some people who will gradually fade out of your social circle, and "phased friendship" is the normal state of life.
There is a saying in "Spirited Away": "Life is a train to the grave, there will be many stops on the way, and it is difficult for someone to accompany you from beginning to end." When the person accompanying you is about to get out of the car, you should be grateful, even if you are reluctant, and wave goodbye. ”
Good friends walked with us on this train, and we knew each other for a while, but when we arrived at the station, we had to learn to say goodbye calmly.
Feng Menglong mentioned in "Xing Shi Hengyan": "There is no feast in the world. "The feast will come to an end, and it is a blessing to have a lifetime meeting with friends. Throw away unnecessary regrets and sighs, enjoy every minute and second with friends, and carefully cherish the joy and happiness they bring. This is a sign of respect for a journey, and it is also the best solution for a friendship.
3. Be your own friend, and walk alone like the crowd
Psychologist Otto Ranke said that the process of growth is a process of separation, a process of autonomy, a process of self-reliance, and a process of individuation.
In the process of growing up, our former good friends waved goodbye at the crossroads of life, and we gradually established our own boundaries, clarified the boundaries between ourselves and others, and gradually grew into self-dependent, independent, and separated from others.
In "One Hundred Years of Solitude", it is said: "Life has never left loneliness and existed independently. Whether we are born, we grow, we love each other, or we succeed or fail, until the end, loneliness exists like a shadow in the corner of life. ”
Loneliness is the background color of life, and it is also the true color of life. Everyone is an island on the spiritual level, gathering and dispersing, walking and stopping, friends can only accompany us for a short distance, and only we can always be with ourselves.
Zhou Guoping gave the answer: "The bored are self-loathing, the lonely are self-pitying, and the lonely are self-sufficient." "Be your own friend, stick to what you like, explore the areas of interest, constantly improve and enrich yourself, be alone with yourself, explore yourself in a calm time and a clear mind, enrich your heart, and feel the "sitting and forgetting" of Zhuangzi.
Friends are passers-by in the turbulent crowd, and the best friend is always yourself. Walking alone on the road of human growth, you might as well reconcile with "stage friends" and explore your own growth inward.
Source: China Youth Daily