98. The Truth About Friendship Loss and Changing Social Circles in Midlife

The Friendship Question In Midlife

Cheryl Fischer 0:00

How many of you are still hanging out with the same friends that you were hanging out with 10 years ago or 15 years ago? If you are great. If not, do you ever wonder why, or do you struggle with should I try harder? Should I reconnect? Should I not? I'm not sure. Let's talk about it. Welcome to Mind Your Midlife, your go-to resource for confidence and success, one thought at a time. Unlike most advice out there, we believe that simply telling you to believe in yourself or change your habits isn't enough to wake up excited about life or feel truly confident in your body. Each week, you'll gain actionable strategies and, oh my goodness, powerful insights to stop feeling stuck and start loving your midlife. This is the Mind Your Midlife podcast.

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Cheryl Fischer 0:57

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Why Friendships Change With Kids

Cheryl Fischer 1:33

Changes in friendships is something that I don't think anybody really talks about enough for this midlife stage. Because there are a lot of things going on, as we always say, change in all aspects of life, potentially going on. And that's true for them too, right? So what the heck is going on in our 40s and 50s with friendships? Well, let's let's list it out because I'm guessing you're making a list in your head right now. So let's kind of put it out there. It's possible that you were friends with a lot of your kids' friends' parents. I always feel like I'm saying that in the wrong order. The parents of your kids' friends became your friends. And that's great. And that was true for me so much. My kids did activities and sports, and they played with the neighborhood kids. And so when you spend a lot of time with people, if they're nice, cool people, which these friends' parents generally were, then you end up becoming friends with them, right? So now where are your kids? Maybe they're in high school, and so maybe you're seeing their friends' parents still, you know, some I suspect not as much, because maybe everybody's driving themselves now. You're not organizing carpool, maybe you're not doing so many PTA things. That was what it was for me. Or maybe they're in college, in which case everything potentially is different, especially if your child is living on campus or at least, you know, away from you while they're in college, or maybe they're out of college like mine are. It's still a bit mind-boggling to me, but even my younger has been out of college for a couple of years. Mind-blowing, mind-blowing. So you're seeing these friends that were your kids, friends, parents less often. And maybe you have less in common with them now. And that's just normal. It's okay. That might be one of the things that's really impacting how you're sort of feeling confused about friendships. You're potentially just doing different things.

COVID And Moving Disrupt Connections

Cheryl Fischer 3:59

And I think we have to sort of talk about the complication here, COVID. So interestingly, my story, I don't know how common this is. I'm curious to know if anyone else did this, but we moved during COVID. And it was kind of a good thing in hindsight for us because it was this huge project that we had to work on. And so that was a distraction from sitting in our house feeling nervous about what in the world was going on in the world. We were downsizing our choice, and it it sort of all came about kind of quickly. So moving from one dream house to the other, and the other was smaller, and that was a big production of cleaning out and giving away and how you do that during COVID. And so for us, it was like a really busy time. But I'm sort of digressing because the point is your friendships may have changed just because all of a sudden you weren't going and hanging out with people in person in the same way. And maybe you weren't doing that for a few years. Maybe you weren't, maybe it was a shorter period, maybe it was a longer, but it really changed for a lot of us the focus of how friendships work. And I remember I did Zoom happy hours with some friends, and that could be friends anywhere, right? And it could be friends from any part of life. I even did a Zoom wine tasting birthday party because I had a big birthday during that time, but it was change. And so coming out of that, now we're adding on, right? We have kids in different scenarios. We aren't seeing people as often because of those kids in different scenarios, because of that year or two-year period of COVID concerns. Interestingly, for me, I started reconnecting with college friends. And uh my one of my college friends lived lives here and has lived here for a long time. And so I always have seen her all the time. But then we discovered another college friend, actually lived here. I didn't even know this. So then we started getting together. So it sort of changed to spending time with people that I knew from different parts of life. I have new neighbors in this new place that I live, which by the way is a couple miles from where I used to live. So it's not like I can't still see those people, but I I gradually started losing touch with them. I felt sad about it for a while. I used to host every year for like 14 years. In the previous house, I hosted a holiday cookie exchange in December. And so we tried to get someone else to host it, but then COVID, it all fell apart. It was a weird change. But it was just convenience to a certain extent. You're seeing different neighbors, you're spending time with different people. And so those things could happen at any age.

Hormones And The Zero Tolerance Shift

Cheryl Fischer 7:12

There's also changes going on inside us, biologically, physically. You are, if you're listening to this, I assume you're navigating perimenopause, menopause, postmenopause, you're somewhere in there. And interestingly, as levels of estrogen in our bodies drop, so typically do levels of oxytocin, which I saw one article that called it the tend and befriend hormone, oxytocin. Now, if you're doing hormone replacement therapy, then maybe your estrogen isn't dropping quite as much. However, as my doctor reminds me, our estrogen still is dropping. If we're doing hormone therapy, it's bringing it up from the basement, but it's not bringing it up all the way to when we were 20 years younger. So this still applies. As those levels of hormones drop, and this hormone that helps us to tend relationships and befriend people, maybe we aren't inclined to nurture friend relationships in the same way. Or maybe it's just not as many. Maybe we're gonna focus in on a smaller number of friend relationships, and we're gonna not nurture the others. Physiologically, that is a real thing that happens. Now, psychologically, in let's say your 50s, midlife, you are starting to realize, let's say we're right in the middle of a hundred-year life. You are starting to realize, no matter what the lifespan you're gonna have, is that your time and your energy are resources that you need to be smart about. And I read a therapist calling this the developmental milestone of zero tolerance. So we're hitting this milestone in our mental development where we're not gonna tolerate the stuff that we used to tolerate because we don't have unlimited time and energy. And we are busy trying to figure out how this part of our life is gonna look, because we see we're on a time limit. Now, you may not actively think that way, but I thought it was an interesting theory. So if you are finding yourself in friendships where you're thinking, I just don't think I have, I just don't have the patience, or I just don't have the bandwidth, or I just don't feel good about this. It may be that you were kind of shrinking a little bit, shrinking yourself in that friendship. It may be that you were the one who was doing everything, all the nurturing. There was an imbalance of some sort. And let me just say that we're not talking about real toxic friendships. Uh let's kind of put that off the table because there's there's different things that we would want to say. If we're talking about a friend relationship that is dangerous in some way, you're being mistreated or hurt in some way. That's what I mean by a toxic friendship. We're not talking about that. We're talking about typical friendships, but there still could be an imbalance. You were making yourself kind of smaller or different to fit in. You were the one who was doing everything. You were the one who was always smoothing everything over. All those things potentially could be happening. And we, when we are having this sort of mental math going on where we're like, I got limited energy, I got limited time. Sometimes we just start to question that. And that's okay. And even if you've been friends for a long time, it's okay if it changes. Because the other thing that I've heard a few coaching clients say to me is, well, we've been friends or we've been colleagues or whatever for 20 years or 15 years or 30 years. I mean, that could actually be true. I can't walk away. Well, you can because life changes and situations change, and you're doing different activities, and your kids are in different stages, and you're in a different stage, and all the things. It's okay if change happens. It's not your fault. So let's just kind of put that out there as a base to work from. There

Trying To Fit In As A Mom

Cheryl Fischer 11:55

was a period of time, and I'm trying to think how old I probably was. I'm thinking late 30s, maybe early 40s. There was a period of time where I found myself really trying to. I'm really, if you're not watching the video, we're gonna air quote a lot of this, fit in with the popular crowd. And it's it's so odd to me to say that about like moms, but if you know, you know. It's true. So I was volunteering, mind you, I was a full-time high school teacher at this point, and I had two kids. I still have two kids. I was volunteering for the PTA. I was the team parent for this and that. I was working in the snack bar. I was, I don't even remember, all the things. I was all the things. And I was kind of getting myself into the sort of in crowd, running, again, I'm air quoting the heck out of this, running the show at the school or at the sports or whatever. And I wanted to be there. And there was a point where I realized a couple things. Number one, I didn't really have time for all of that. I was running myself ragged. Number two, I wasn't in the popular crowd in high school. I think we had kind of a middle-of-the-road crowd if you're talking clicks in high school, but not the popular crowd. So it was almost like I was trying to sort of try again and like get in this different group, if that makes sense. And it's all ridiculous because any of the people that I was friends with and doing these things with at the time, they may or may not have thought that way at all. Right? This is all stuff in my head that I'm making up. So I say that to hopefully help you learn from my silliness. And so I started to evaluate, and this was back when I was first learning how powerful mindset was as well.

The Before During After Feelings Test

Cheryl Fischer 14:03

I started to evaluate when I've been with this person, how have I felt afterwards? And I I just want to pause and stick on this for a minute. When you've spent time with a friend, how do you feel during that time? Oh, let's even go back. How do you feel beforehand when you know you have the plans? How do you feel during? How do you feel afterwards? And we're gonna ask ourselves this with no judgment, just curiosity. Curiosity. How do you feel before you go and meet that person? How are you feeling during? How are you feeling after? Because I started to realize that I had a couple of friends where beforehand I would look forward to seeing them and during I would have fun, but after I felt kind of down on myself. And I wondered maybe I wore the wrong thing, or I don't know, you know, little stuff like that. And again, this was me. I I'm thinking of one person in particular. I don't think it was coming from her at all. It was coming from me, but there was something about that relationship that was not making me feel good. And so I started to pull back a little bit from a couple of different relationships as I realized that because some of the goals of having friends are to have a community, which is really important, even more as we get older, to have fun things to do, to have people to lean on when you need help, and to be able to help other people who are who are important in your life. And if those relationships make you feel bad, that's not part of the goal. So in this one particular example I'm thinking about, I I just kind of went, you know what? I don't know what's making me feel kind of like a loser, if I'm being honest, after we're together, I can't pinpoint anything. There's nothing that has been said, there's nothing we've done, there's nothing, but I feel it. So I said, you know what? I'm going to just kind of lay low. And I didn't reach out to make plans for a while. And we had still back and forth communication. We saw each other, chit-chat, nothing, but I didn't actively try to make plans. And in this particular relationship, that meant we didn't make any plans. And so that was enlightening for me as well. Because I guess I was the only one making the plans, and she was either just used to that, and that was fine, or she had no interest in trying to see me, but was happy to when I reached out. Whatever, I don't know her mind, that there was an imbalance. And in every friendship, there are the plan makers and the followers. I'm a very independent person, but I'm not the best at making advanced plans. I own it, I can live with it. I have a friend who's very good at making advanced plans. She absolutely ends up making more plans than I do. But we do try, both of us, to keep a balance. In this particular case, I'm thinking of, though, it just we just stopped doing things. And I felt better. And I have no animosity towards her. I don't know that she even did anything that was wrong in any way, but that friend relationship was not healthy for me. And so I let it become a we see each other when we see each other type of relationship. And I felt better. And that is okay. And because you're having so many changes right now and you're seeing potentially different people and you're doing different things, you may have some relationships like that. And

Space Or Over Signs Of Imbalance

Cheryl Fischer 18:22

maybe there wasn't this issue of not of feeling bad after you've seen them, although I do want you to kind of pay attention to that. Maybe it's just you're not getting around to it. They're not getting around to it. Maybe that's okay. Maybe it's okay to only see each other occasionally because neither of you get around to making the plan except for now and then. I have a couple friends that I hardly ever see now. However, when we do get together, we have so much fun. It's just going to be the thing that we don't do it that often. Maybe you end up not seeing them. I have some friends that have kind of really fallen by the wayside, and I still think of them kindly, but neither of us made an effort anymore. And that's okay too. So one thing you can think about is is it a situation where you're feeling like maybe this friendship isn't healthy for me? I'm not feeling great about it. Is it a situation where you just need a bit of space for a little time? You need kind of like a timeout, a break from that friendship, or the friendship is really over. And again, we're not talking about real toxic situations, we're talking about normal, typical friendships. And I would say, do you just need a bit of space for a period of time, or is it really over? It's a question of whether it's circumstances or whether it's this emotional drain that I was talking about. So maybe you have circumstances coming up. Maybe one of you is taking care of an aging parent and it's just scooping up all your energy and or your time. Maybe one of you is going through a divorce or some sort of relationship change. Maybe one of you is going through a career crisis. Maybe one of your kids is really struggling, even if they are adult kids. There's maybe there's something going on for one or both of you that makes the friendship, the connection different for a period. That's okay. Maybe you want to make sure to still offer support, or ideally they would offer it to you. But but it's okay if you can't connect as much and you're sort of taking a breather. When you do connect afterwards, if you're still feeling seen, if you're still feeling that this is balanced and this is healthy for you, great. It's okay to have a little season that was different. When a friendship is really over, is what I was talking about about how you feel. And I hate to use the words good and bad. I feel good, I feel bad. I felt just judged, small, uncool, I don't know, something along those lines. Maybe you start to notice there's a bit of a competitive thing going on. Maybe every conversation becomes this like one-up thing with each other. That's not healthy. Maybe you are starting to catch some passive-aggressive stuff. Maybe you're always providing everything: support, help, making the plans, checking in, and they're not doing any of it. Or maybe they're doing that and you're not doing any of it, right? We could be on either side. In particular, if you sort of make a boundary where you say, I don't want to talk about that anymore, but I would love to go, you know, do this fun thing with you or whatever, and it becomes weird. Anger, guilt trips, passive aggressive stuff. If any of that is going on, then it probably is time to move on from that friendship.

Fade Out Or Have The Talk

Cheryl Fischer 22:12

And how do you do that? How do you move on from a friendship? Do we need to break up? Like what does this mean? Okay, so I don't particularly love confrontation. And so my MO is to just sort of let it go. That may or may not be the best choice, I'll admit. I'll I'll take it. But what I mean by let it go is just kind of let it fade. And there's nothing wrong with that. Because maybe there's no animosity, but that's the friendship's out of steam. You're living different lives. Or maybe you were the one who was doing everything, which was kind of the case in the story I was telling you earlier. Then kind of a fade out is okay. It is okay to just stop making plans. It is okay to just stop reaching out. And in fact, I know someone who's been going through this this year, where she was really realizing she was being taken advantage of a lot. It was very imbalanced. It had worsened from how it used to be, which is sad. You know, it's sad. It's sad to take a friendship that has been around many, many years and to realize that this other person is changing. And honestly, we're both probably changing, right? You probably changing and they're changing. But this person was changing so much that my friend was feeling really taken advantage of all the time and not supported and not feeling like her friend was interested in her at all. And she just kind of let it go. And so if her friend reaches out to her, she will be kind, but she's not going to do it anymore. And it's okay to do that. It's okay that circumstances change. Now, where you have to sort of have the conversation, even me being like averse to confrontation, sometimes we have to we have to do the right thing. If this is a really deep long-term friendship and you're kind of pulling back and you're not making plans so much and all of that, and the other person is really reaching out and seeming confused, then you need to have a conversation because we don't want to cause other people to feel the way I'm talking about us not wanting to feel, right? We don't want to be the cause of that. So maybe you say something, oh this is hard, right? Like I feel it being hard as I'm as these words are coming out of my mouth. Maybe you say something like, I, and saying I statements is is kind of a smart way to do it, but I've been thinking about where my energy is going. I just think I need to kind of pull back a little bit and focus on whatever, something else. I mean, that's a little bit still vague, but it's kind. You could say this isn't about blaming you in any way. It's about just what I can handle in my life right now. It's okay to have that conversation. And you don't have to have that conversation. It's okay to let it fade out. I don't there's a quote that people come into our lives for a season and a reason. And that's really true. I have friends that were friends during one phase of life, and the friendship gradually faded into the next phase of life. Again, friendship gradually faded. I have some friends, even a couple of friends that I hardly ever see because of distance, that we get together and it's as if all these years haven't passed. Every friendship is different. So you're evaluating how the friendship is making you feel, how the interactions are making you feel, and you're checking in on your mental wellness related to this friendship.

Guilt And Disenfranchised Grief

Cheryl Fischer 26:31

And you are not, not, not, not giving yourself any guilt trips about it. Because there's a lot of guilt when we walk away from a friendship. And there's loss too. If you're dealing with loss of friendship, there's something called disenfranchised grief, which is grieving something that society doesn't really recognize. We don't go to a ceremony for like we do for a funeral when we've lost someone who has passed away. Divorce, loss of friendship, struggles between family members, or estrangement. It's a little bit harder to grieve those things, but give yourself time, allow yourself to be sad and to mourn, in our case, that friendship. And gradually try to focus on. Thank goodness for that friendship at that time. It was fabulous at that time. And we've lost touch, and that's okay. Because both things can be true. You can miss the friendship that you had then, and you can know that that friendship is not the right fit for you now. Both those things can be true right now. Another thing

Group Friends And Warm Detachment

Cheryl Fischer 28:11

that can be tricky here, and I'm just gonna touch on it because there's a whole lot of a whole lot more we could talk about this. If this is a group friendship situation and you have realized that one person in the group is is making you feel bad or making you feel some kind of way, and you're kind of distancing yourself from that friendship a little bit, it can get a little tricky with mutual friends. So what can you do? It's okay to hang back from the group chat a little bit. You can mute it, you can stay in it. It's okay not to be in the middle of every conversation. You can keep up with people individually, but it's also okay if your mutual friends are asking you about it, to say, just kind of taking some space, and here's why, in a kind way. What do you do if you run into them or if you're in a group thing? Well, again, we're not assuming this is a toxic relationship. We're just assuming you're taking some space, the friendship has run its course. Either you've decided that, or it's just kind of you're doing different things. You can be kind, you can smile, you can say hello, and you can keep it brief and keep moving, or you can be talking to somebody else. All of that is okay. Therapists call that warm detachment. You can keep it surface level, you can keep moving, you can focus on someone else. It's okay. And maybe that's my biggest message for myself and for you. It's okay to change your friendships. It's okay to let some of them go. It's okay to be the one who lets it go. That's okay. You have a lot going on in midlife, and if this is not a fit for you right now, it's okay. We're not gonna have the guilt. And maybe, and this is what happened to me when I was talking about this earlier, maybe you're gonna have more space for other things in your life. Maybe you're gonna feel better. Maybe you're gonna recognize some other people in your life that you'd like to have stronger friend relationships with, and you didn't have the bandwidth, the energy for them before because this other thing, this other person, this other relationship was dragging you down. That's okay. And maybe you're taking up a new hobby like Mahjong, and I'm gonna put the Mahjong Changemakers episode in the comments because we talked about this a lot, and you're finding a new community. And maybe it's a sport, maybe it's a game, maybe it's a hobby. Now you have the energy and the bandwidth to do that, and that's a really good thing. It's good to evolve, it's good to be able to have room to be happy.

Making Room For Better Community

Cheryl Fischer 31:18

So the one thing I want you to take away from this is that sort of mental check with yourself about your friendships. When you're making plans with someone, I want you to ask yourself Am I really excited about this? Do I feel energized? Do I feel seen? After spending time with someone, I want you to ask yourself, do I feel seen, energized, or do I feel kind of depleted, anxious, small, wrong in some way? Because your feelings are valid and trusting your instinct, trusting your gut feeling with these relationships is powerful. Friends are in our lives for a really important reason in midlife. It's community, it's mentally propping each other up, it's emotionally propping each other up, and we absolutely don't want it to be doing the opposite of that.

Coaching Invite And Closing Notes

Cheryl Fischer 32:20

Now, if this is something that you're really struggling with and have been struggling with, then maybe the midlife recharge that I do might be an answer for you. What we do in this recharge is an assessment with the being profile to find out what emotions are kind of running you, how you're interacting with others in your life and with yourself. Then we create a plan to figure out what changes you want to make in the areas that we might have noticed. Find out more, set up a free call with me, or just let's go, let's do it, get yourself on my schedule, CherylPFischer.com slash recharge. And make sure you hit follow. Because next week's episode, we're going to be talking with an expert in helping you heal the underlying issues behind alcohol and drinking without having to go cold turkey. I'm looking forward to that one. And of course, remember if your brand or your business is looking for ways to reach savvy midlife women, there are some sponsorship slots available in the upcoming months on Mind Your Midlife. Go to CherylpFischer.com slash M Y M sponsor info and take a look. The link will be in the show notes. And until next time, keep remembering, midlife is your time to take just a little bit better care of yourself. On the outside and on the inside, a little bit better care makes a huge difference.