Not all long friendships are good friends

Things that you thought were drowning you, were they teaching you how to swim? Is it better to cut your losses and move forward alone? Can the one comforting you also be stabbing you when you hug? There is not failure it is either success of a lesson... what have you learned from your long friendships?

Transcript

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And hello. Oh, welcome. I am Angie Clemens. I am the host of the Can I Borrow Your Skin podcast. And as you saw, we are sitting out on my deck under a giant umbrella under my apple tree. And we are gonna do this nice, beautiful outside of studio uh episode because I want to talk about a few things that we don't need a studio to talk about. So instead of sipping my tea, I'm gonna sip this 18-year double O Glenn Fiddlet. And we are gonna talk about two topics I think that marry together very, very well. I'm gonna apologize now because it is July, we are outside, so you are going to see me hot. Um, one of the biggest things, and um actually put it on my social media today. So if you follow my social media, you've probably already seen this, and you may be discussing it in your own circles, but it's the idea that long friendships are not necessarily good friendships, and we tend to confuse that. I know for me personally, I had probably one of the longest friendships I've had in my entire uh life, and it made me take an inventory of my friendships that are friendships, my friendships that are family ships, and my family that is our friendships because you know we have friends within our family, we have family within our friend groups, and obviously you have friends within your friend group, and I sat down and I looked at all of those relationships, and there are some that are very one-sided, and as you probably remember from some of my January episodes, I am a very, very giving person, and there are some relationships in my life where people are in my life because I am a giver, and you know, it it suits them very well, but it's not something that actually suits me very well, and the topic I actually came out here to discuss is this whole idea that you know people get into these friendships and into these relationships, and it's the thought that when you thought you were drowning, you were actually being taught to swim, and there's this whole swim school idea that because puppies automatically know how to swim when they are born, um, once they can actually walk, they can swim, and so people feel like, well, you know, a baby can float, it floats in the womb in its own waste products, and so a baby naturally knows how to float, and so maybe a baby can naturally swim, and this was an old school idea, and so there were some swim schools. I don't know if there still is because I don't have any children, I never taught a child to swim. But if you throw a child in the water, it may not know how to swim, but it can float, and that's kind of where this comes from. That you know, sometimes when you're so overwhelmed and you're so like struggling and underwater, it's not actually you drowning, it's you swimming. And I know in my grief episode I talk about the whole drowning analogy quite a bit. Sorry, I'm gonna puff more than normal because this is a really nice Nicaragua cigar, but it's not rolled as well and packed to allow really good airflow, so you actually have to put this one in your mouth uh more frequently than you would like a Dominican, and that's to prevent it from going out. Um, you won't see me holding it a lot because uh shout out to my mother-in-law, she actually got me these glasses which have a cigar holder on them, so shout out to her. Um, but because I talk with my hands, like my husband is Italian and he talks with his hands a lot, and uh I do as well, but I think it's more to be expressive than it is an Italian trait, but he's both very expressive and very Italian, so anyway. Um, the the idea that you know with extreme adversity comes extreme growth and extreme change and extreme metamorphosis, and it's that idea, and as people change over time, and this is what ties in the whole idea that all long friendships are not good friendships. As we age, we grow, at least you should be growing as you age, and if your friendship is not growing and changing as you are aging, then you tend to lose that friendship, or you have to um wear this mask around that friend. Going back to some of the contents in the can I borrow your skin book. You you put on a persona, you are a version of yourself, you're not your true self, and that is one of the reasons why not all old friendships are good friendships, and why you know you when you feel like you're drowning, you may not be, you might just be changing and metamorphosizing into a better version of yourself. Ah, took too long, um, and so and that that is one of the things that is interesting to me because as someone who has in the past trauma bonded with people, I don't like that concept because you can be growing, but in a negative way, you may have this forward progress and a lot of forward progress, and that's because you're running from something that you should be resolving. Sometimes sitting in that moment, figuring out what's wrong, what's right, and coming up with a plan and developing from that plan might be better for you than forward moving, forward progress, move, move, move, move, move. And you can trauma bond in platonic friendships. You can trauma bond in situationships. I learned what that was, by the way. Um, you you can trauma bond in relationships, you can both dislike the same thing, the same person, the same situation, and therefore you decide to hate it together, and you are in this trauma bond that you feel is a very strong relationship, but the only thing that's strong about it is the fact that this bad thing happened to both of you, and so let's unpack that, let's talk about that for a minute. And I'm gonna do a hypothetical. I I have some you know things from my personal life I can talk about, but I don't know y'all like that yet to that share. I be sharing a lot, but I'm not sharing some of my emotional drama. So, say Billy and Jane were both abused as children, and they were abused in a physical manner. Billy and Jane meet each other after they got out of this abusive relationship, and it could be with a parent, it could be with a spouse, it doesn't matter. They both got out of this abusive relationship, and uh before some very immature idiocy pops up in my um comments. Yes, men are physically abused, and it could be a big dude and a little woman. Some men fight back, some men don't, some men just walk away, some men stay, just like in physically abusive relationships with women, people do stay, and and there are some people who, because of their past, feels like well, if they're giving me this attention, even if it's negative, then they care about me. That's the way they show love because that's the way they thought love looked like, so that's the way that they seek love. So, okay, Billy and Jane. They have learned that you know this abuse is wrong, they have learned they've gone through some therapy, and they've learned okay, this is bad, and you know, this is not what love feels like, and so they start going through this self-care journey, and it's a journey, there's no such thing as ever being, at least in my opinion, and this is 100% my opinion, so you know, like an asshole, it is out there, it is what I think, and I am not coming to you as any kind of professional saying that this is you know accurate, correct. I I believe there are some journal articles that support what I'm saying. I may have gotten it from that journal article, but that does not mean that it is correct. I I want to make that very clear. So they feel like they are healed, and like I said, I don't believe that there's any such thing, so they find something good, and sometimes it's love bombing. Love bombing is actually very, very popular in persons who were abused, they feel like, well, the opposite abuse is showing love all the time, even if I don't necessarily feel this level of love for this person, I'm going to tell them I do, and I'm gonna try to affectionately show that I do because I wanted this level of affection at one point in time, I didn't get it, so I'm gonna show it to this person, and if they've actually shared about their lives, they know that this person didn't feel that either, so they're gonna give them what they feel they they lacked or missed or want to see because that's how you build a relationship. So we got Billy and Jane out here love bombing each other. Some of it is authentic, some of it is not, and so they become attached to the love bombing. And as Billy and Jane are going through this this this relationship, and you know love bombing one another, you know, there's maybe some some genuine relationship within that, then they they start to develop over time, and it's really bad if if Billy and Jane has known each other for a while, and so they feel like there's actually this foundation of friendship behind this love bombing. And Billy and Jane are in this relationship, they're love bombing one another, and they feel like, oh my god, this person really loves me. I I have this history with this person, this is gonna be great, and they see their struggles as them fighting the world, they're together, they're fighting the world. We are we're we're doing this, you know, it's our love against the world, you know. We we are here for each other, we're going to demonstrate our love for one another by staying with each other through thick and thin. We're not drowning, we're learning to swim, we're doing it, we're doing it together. And instead of learning, you know what, this is unhealthy, all they see is this person demonstrating love because they're staying with them through the band, and that's where you get into the not all old relationships, not all seemingly strong relationships are good relationships, and that's where you have to look at yourself and ask yourself, does this actually feel right? Am I being triggered? Because your body will still go through stress responses, even if you've convinced yourself mentally and emotionally this is good, it's not physical abuse, and since it's not physical abuse, I'm not being abused, but your body is still stuck in this fight or flight mode or fawn, and a lot of people don't realize that when you get that adrenaline rush, it's not just oh my god, I need to you know fight my way through this or I need to run away. You also get this fawn response where you just completely go into yourself, hover in a corner, and you just do whatever you can to appease that person, and so you are in fawn and you are convincing yourself that this person loves me, and because this person loves me, I've known this person, they know my heart, they know what I've been through. There's no way that they will hurt me. This person loves me. You you stay in this fawn, and you know, they love bomb you, and then they do something deceptive, they love bomb you, and they say something that hurts you, they love bomb you, and then they do something deliberately that they know will hurt, and so you you're going back and forth, and you're in your fawn, but then they show you love, and you're like, Why am I fawning? This is great, this person loves me, blah blah blah blah blah, and you're you're going through this emotion and through this this situation that is absolutely horrible for you, but you're staying in it because well they tell me they love me, they showed me that they love me, they're here for me. We went through this together. This is love, this is love, this is love, this is love, this is love. But is it all right? That's all I got on this topic. I'm not gonna bore you, but that's a great question to ask yourself. Is all long relationships good relationships? Does this truly feel like love? Do they actually love me? Am I in flight, fight, or fawn? And finally, and most importantly, am I really drowning and not fighting to swim? Alright, Angela Clemens here, you guys. I'm gonna finish my cigar, drink my uh my beverage, and enjoy this beautiful weather out in the sun on my deck. Thank you, like, subscribe, bye!