The Transience of Friendship
or, How Friends Always Seem To “Outgrow” Us: an INTJ’s perspective.
Everyone loses friends. People change and drift apart, or violently shove each other away, or one party or the other ceases to exist. It is a fact of life. People change…
INTJs are a strange people. We are so quick to adapt new evidence and change our stances on almost anything immediately if we see we were wrong. However, we are overall a fairly rigid people. Our opinions change, but do we? For as romantic and passionate and caring as we can be, we remain clinical, practical. When we see something we like in somebody, we continue to like it. We can admire our enemies and respect people with beliefs that completely contradict our own.
We make friends. Tentatively, carefully. We don’t generally have many friends, so we cherish what we have, and tend to our friendships like a gardener, carefully nourishing and pruning until we have something we see as beautiful. Not every friendship is a flower. Some are more quiet and relaxed- a fern. Some are hardy and need little care to flourish- a cactus. Some are high maintenance, but rewarding to invest time in. These can be the most beautiful of all- orchids, perhaps?
But friendships can wither and die, no matter how hard we try to keep them alive. Did we water too much, or not enough, or maybe not enough sunlight? What did we do wrong?
I think it is most painful, though, when the friendship no longer needs tending, when you become extraneous and the vines can grow and thrive and be all they ever aspired to be without you in their life.
Friends outgrow us. As I said, we are a fairly unchanging people. We are what we are. We may not go through the phases and partying and endless hookups and breakups, choosing a more steady course. We remain predictable and reliable, but is this a bad thing? We make a friend, and at that point in our lives all is well, but soon enough, they change while we remain the same, and they find newer, better friends.
Are we just a stepping stone? A crutch to lean on when others feel like they can’t find “better,” more exciting friends? Are we doomed to be temporary? Are all people just temporary? Are humans so interchangeable that you can trade one friend in for a newer model without a second thought?
My brain knows that all relationships are inherently selfish. Biology declares it, experience backs it up. Everything we do, for others, for the world, is for ourselves. It makes perfect sense that friends are disposed of when they no longer cater to what we want in our lives. My heart just wishes that the whims of others were not so fickle.
2087
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