418. How to repair a friendship

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Speaker 1: Hello everybody. I'm Jemma Spaike and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties, the podcast where we talk through the biggest changes, moments, and transitions of our twenties and what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. It is so great to have you here, back for another episode, Back for a very important episode of the Psychology of Your Twenties. You know what I always find so weird about being alive In this day and age, we have so much information and so much knowledge about literally everything. We know what stars are made of, we know how old trees are, we understand complex maths. We just sent like what was it like eight People to the Moon. Schools will teach you all these things. They will literally spend fifteen years teaching you what essentially ends up amounting to fun facts and no one will ever talk about like the crucial foundational things to do with friendships, to deal with relationships, to do with maintaining connections, like despite them being the most important parts of being alive. I was never taught how to tell if somebody is just using you. I was never taught how to deal with conflict in the family, and I was definitely never given any formal or even informal instruction on how to repair and mend a friendship, and I would bet a lot of money that neither were you. So I wanted to talk about it today and just see what was out there in terms of the best and worst ways to go about tricky situations with your friends. There's so much emphasis these days as well on building community and being the village. That is everywhere you see, everywhere you look online, somebody is posting or talking about how to make friends offline, how to be a better neighbor, and all that stuff, and I actually rarely see people talk about the less attractive parts of that, which is fighting with friends, how to handle conflict, why it's normal to be annoyed with the people you care about, and how to get through that, how to survive some of the deepest hurts coming from your friends. I feel like it is this major gap in our understanding and conversations as humans that never gets talked about. And as somebody who has had some pretty serious friendships like explosions in the past five years and in my twenties, some of which were entirely my fault, but some of which were just good old fashioned miscommunication. I just feel like this is the hard, no nonsense advice I still need, but have needed, for having awkward conversations with the people that I love who are my friends. So without further ado, let's get into our guide on how to repair a friendship. In my opinion, friendship fallouts are like a life defining pain in many ways, like falling out with your friends, arguing with your friends, having conflict can change the course of our lives at times. I also think losing a friend is a form of grief that no one wants to get into. Nobody wants to touch that, nobody talks about it enough, probably because we devalue the necessity of friendship in the modern world and we kind of see them as expendable. I really think that friendship fallouts can be even more devastating than romantic ones. When you have a romantic breakup, people around you like they know how to treat you. There's like an agreed upon grieving period. They know that like you're gonna be very sad, they know to throw ice cream at the situation. But when it's a friend, people just kind of expect you to be normal. I also think there are like unconscious rules for fighting in a relationship, right You kind of know in a relationship that you need to resolve things between like twenty four and seventy two hours. You're a lot more dependent on each other, so there's like more humility. You know. If you can't get through it, you just break up and that's it. Like you break up. You can be fighting with a friend for like months, and it can linger in a way it doesn't with a partner. You can at times never get to a resolution and just like never speak again, and eventually like you were just these two strangers who for a time loved and cared for each other, and now you just have this weird baggage you don't even really understand anymore. I think friendships we expect them to be these super steady things. We expect them to be our most dependable relationships. In many ways, they are not, And the older you get, you realize how much conflict does actually show up in friendship. I would say there are three types of friendship breakups, the fizzle, the blow up, and the mis communication. First is the slow fizzle. We have all experienced this. I'm so sure of it. Time just simply like changes the strength of a bond. A close friendship becomes less close. You kind of gently fade away from each other's lives. You see each other less, you catch up less, and it's I think personally it gets to a stage where it's like mutually understood that you're both a little bit okay with it. This might be because of distance. Classic example is like after you leave UNI, but also somebody gets into a relationship, somebody gets a partner, and that just like completely disrupts the dynamic. I think, especially in our twenties, it's just like the most major source of the fizzle, especially amongst really close friends, Like somebody gets a partner and the central relationship is replaced at the center of allbit shifts from your friends to the person you're romantically interested in, whether we like it or not, meaning you just become like less available. The friendship slowly diminishes because you're not having those opportunities for like close contact. That is the first friendship fallout that we typically see. We also can fall out with our friends because of communication. This is like a classic situation nobody is distinctly in the wrong, but both people have a hard time or are unable to understand the other person's perspective. Both people are wounded by the miscommunication and often or maybe it's just one person, but often neither person. Either one person doesn't really know what's going on, what's going on, or neither person is really willing to recognize that the other person didn't hurt them out of ill intent, Like they just are left with the wound, separate from the intention, and so it's kind of hard to be around them. Or you just kind of never get around to talking to this person, and so either you let it lie or it does end up becoming the fizzle, and then we have the full on friendship blowout. And I think this gets all the attention right. We are talking about someone or both people doing something really bad, severely violating trust, betrayal, situations that just expose deep cracks in the friendship. Somebody has done something deeply inconsiderate. Somebody has broken promises. Maybe somebody has hurt even the people that you love like family, other friends of yours, your partner in a way that you really never expected them to. These can be, These these are these not can be. These are painful and intense. I also think that of those three of the fizzle, the miscommunication, and the and the blow up, sometimes these are the easiest to recover from because a moment like that of just like such just like just like just a nuclear bomb on the friendship, you kind of know the friendship is dead. Like there's just a certainty there that other friendship fallouts don't always have. Like obviously all of them hurt. All of these situations are painful, that's definitely for sure. You're losing somebody who is like really steady, or you're losing somebody that you really care about. But I think when it comes to the major fallouts, the closure is like in the story, when it comes to the fizzle, when it comes to the miscommunication, that's where things get complicated. But I also think those are the situations that we can recover from and that we're kind of focusing on today. Moments that are really uncomfortable, moments that feel difficult, that feel let's just be real awkward, But where I think if you just put a little bit of effort into saving the relationship, it can be mended if you have the tools. So let's talk about it. How do we repair these kinds of situations. I think the first step, the major step, is understanding the psychology behind why we avoid confrontation and why we avoid admitting our mistakes. Considering how important friendship is literally there have been studies after studies showing they're the most valuable thing for our health and wellbeing in our lives, it still does always fascinate me how hard it is for us to fight for them. I'm very guilty of this myself, Like I probably don't even want to admit it to myself that I am guilty of this, but I know I am. And there's a science as to why we have this kind of avoidance. Ninety percent of it is ego, and not in their like I'm better than everybody kind of way, I'm the shit kind of way, in the self protection way, our ego. This is something I always impress on people when I talk about ego. It is not just responsible for our self esteem. It is responsible for helping us to avoid all feelings of pain, all feelings of rejection or disappointment that may on counter to our internal sense of stability. That means that it can often cause us to act in very irrational ways just so that we feel safe in our idea of ourselves and in our idea and our concept of the world our ego. Though because of this function, it just ends up like getting in the way of being able to admit that you're wrong, Like it is this big our ego, is this big god that stops us from ever feeling bad about ourselves. However, that causes problems when we're trying to repair a friendship because it means that admitting that we're wrong becomes incredibly difficult and opposed to our intrinsic psychological sense of self righteousness, it makes it really hard to come to the realization that we may not be the person we think we are. We are flawed, we are sometimes impulsive, we are sometimes in the wrong, sometimes we have we are the unkind ones when we fall out with a friend right, the chaos of that emotion and the surge of emotion to defend and rationalize our actions and to protect our ego often often does the does the opposite thing to what we should be doing. It's just there to make us feel superior when we are in these situations where people are hurt. Being superior is like the last thing that we should be prioritizing, but we cannot help it. That instinct to defend an attack is incredibly strong. I think this is also exacerbated by this sunk cost feeling. When we've committed to something to a point of view, to us being right, it becomes harder for us to leave that behind. We become very entrenched in it. Obviously, this can happen in so many situations. It happens with relationships, it happens with jobs, and then of course it does have been with our experiences, and it happens without arguments, and it happens with our feelings, and it causes this strange situation where deep down we know we need to amend our perspective, We know there are things that we need to admit to, but this deeper, unconscious part of us keeps blocking us from doing so. This is like an interesting tibit and interesting sidebar. Studies have shown that young women in particular stay angry towards their female friends for longer because of this mechanism, especially compared to men. And what they think it is is because social standing and the thread of social rejection is a lot stronger for women. They feel a deeper sense that they need to protect themselves. A study from twenty fourteen had students role play a real conflict scenario from their own lives. They recorded the male up responses the female responses, and again they found that women reported their anger dissipated a lot less quickly, and it took them longer to reconcile. Their heart rate was also higher. Social conflict impacted them on a more psychological and emotional level than it did for men. And I don't want you to take these results out of context and be like women are emotional, women are insecure, women are just these like pea brain bod but whatever. It's just that they often stick with their first intuition for longer, which is an interesting fact about the role of the ego and the gender differences. I think the second reason we find it hard to admit our mistakes or really get into the core of a friendship fallout is because of avoidance, and the fact that avoidance feels a lot like control in a situation that is beyond our control, especially if you're an anxious person, especially if you are somebody who is a very socially anxious person, just as we might avoid I don't know, going to the dentist afraid to get a needle or have a feeling. Just as we avoid those things, we also avoid someone we are disagreeing with. We avoid having what we know is a much needed conversation because we don't want to feel uncomfortable emotions. Emotions like disappointment, anger, sadness, guilt disrupt our emotional center and it feels it makes us feel very out of depth as well to confront somebody else's emotions that are similar to us, like their confusion and their anger. Again, this is not because we are cruel or uncaring. If you are in the situation now where you're like, I know I need to have this conversation, I cannot do it. It's all because you are trying to maintain emotional control. When we avoid things, we control our emotional world by avoiding disrupting it with short term disruptions and short term anxiety and emotional chaos. But the thing is that's not a real short term avoidance. You know that can lead and often does lead and will lead to long term resentment, to disappointment, to irreversible harm and feelings of hurt that most importantly increasingly diminish the likelihood that things will ever be fixed. I think that was a double negative. But yeah, increasingly diminished, Like they just continue to diminish the chances that things are going to get better. I also think my final reason why I think that we avoid these kind of situations is because oftentimes we're waiting for a clarity about the situation that we think only comes from distance, right, Like, we probably don't know how to feel about the friendship. We're kind of a bit confused about what we want from the friendship because things are so like have changed so quickly, because we don't have all the information, and so we like we delude ourselves into thinking in that state of ambiguity. The more we think about the situation, the more we get others' opinions, The more we let the dust settle, the more clearly we will start to see things as they are. But in my experience, this is just putting off, putting off the like the ability to really tackle the core emotion. And I don't think that time ever makes things more clear after a certain point. Obviously, there's immense value in calming down, like after an initial dispute or after a fight or after a disagreement. That's like emotional regulation one oh one. But when you keep thinking that an answer will come from talking about it over and over again, especially with people who are not that person or the person you have a problem with, that's avoidance. And speaking from direct personal experience, I think that deep down you probably know what you need to do, and I think you know, oh what outcome or what apology or what answer you want. And this applies in all directions, by the way, whether you feel like you're the one responsible for the rift or you're the one who was hurt, you know, and I think repairing a friendship. What this is all telling us is that it's really just an ego exercise at the end of the day, because it means and requires, like the psychological necessity Number one is that at some point you will have to admit your fault as a friend, even if you were one hundred percent right in that situation, even if your only fault is that now you're avoiding saying what you're feeling. It is an ego exercise. It's going to cause you to have to really examine how you may be messed up. So with that in mind, we're going to take a short break and we're just going to get right into it, step by step, no nonsense guide. How are we going to approach this person, what text message are we going to send them, how are we going to have the conversation. We're going to talk about it after the short break, So stay with us. Let me say I do think some of what we're about to talk about is going to be fairly obvious to you, especially if you're like a very emotionally intelligent, switched on person. That doesn't mean that we're applying it though. Just because you know it doesn't mean that you're putting it into practice. I think this is a common issue with being a very self aware individual, Like you can have all the information and number of the execution. So whatever situation you're in right now, I want you to really picture your situation in this context and just consider in every point, like how would I go about this? How am I going to apply this understanding. There's also a big question lingering here as well, which is like, is my friendship worth saving? Is this friendship best left in the past? I think yes, some are. Some friendships are best left they're done right, the hurt goes too deep, the situation is too unbearable, you don't want to be friends with them anymore. That's just sometimes the outcome. But I think that you're listening to this episode for a reason, and I think when you feel that tug and that lingering sense of like I miss them, I still care about them, there's something left there, then it's worth repairing. So the first thing that you're going to do if you want to repair the friendship is just reflect on why you want to mend it, Like what do you seek to gain? There's no point mending a friendship if you don't know why you value the friendship, if you don't know what you want to change, if you don't actually see a future with that person. Just really dig in deep, what is it about this person? Like, honestly, it's also a great humanizing exercise. What is it about this person that you miss? What are your regrets to do with this person? Do you with this situation, Like do you feel like there's a misunderstanding you could overcome? Do you feel like there are ways that you could both learn from each other? Do you want to mend the friendship to make things less uncomfortable for an upcoming event? Like what is your intention? Because they are going to be different, right, maybe your intention is like you feel guilty and like you feel like you owe them an apology. Everybody's motivation is going to be very, very different. Try and identify what it is that yours is and the difference between a friendship that you actively want to continue and a situation that you just think deserves closure but not necessarily the continuation of the relationship. I think both of those situations are equally worthwhile, and they're both very worthwhile options, right compared to the alternative of leaving the situation just like open in festering and like never with any closure. But they're going to necessitate a different approach, right. They're both worthwhile, but you're going to have to go about it alone little bit differently, because wanting a friendship to repair means that you're going to have to do a couple of extra steps. Wanting a friendship to just have closure and understanding kind of means that you know there doesn't really need to be behavioral change for the other person, So it's more about like the conversation and it probably could be resolved by a couple of hours of just real deep talking. So just knowing that is very very valuable. Secondly, Once you've kind of identified your motivation, you have that increased self awareness around your intentions. I think then the time comes to admit to yourself what you did wrong or what you could have done better. This might be controversial. If you want to repair a friendship, you need to humble yourself, even if they played a role as well, even if they played the main role. I know, I know people won't agree with this. This is an ego exercise though, and obviously this is probably a miscommunication. This is a physicle. It's not a crazy breakdown. You going in guns blazing, ready to defend yourself and ready to defend your position to the death, unable to make any concessions. This is not going to be productive, right. Humbling yourself, admitting what you have done wrong, even if it's just one or two things, is important for this for this goal, which is to repair the friendship, because it's not about scoring points. It's about restoring psychological safety. It's about restoring trust. And when you're unwilling to acknowledge your role even a small part, I think it signals defensiveness. And I think and I know studies show us that defensiveness is the thing that's going to immediately activate the other person's threat response. They're immediately going to go on the defensiveness. Like the defensive, They're going to feel unheard, invalidated. They're going to become more entrenched in their own position because that's where they feel safest. Again, this is closely tied to our eager des mechanisms. We want to protect ourselves. We don't want to feel like we are a bad person. But it also shows that we're probably going in with some cognitive dissonance where we're resisting some information that challenges our sense of being the good one, information or facts that may actually be there. And I think beyond that, just by humbling yourself, you will allow yourself to be more present, and you allow yourself to have more empathy for them. You will you lower the emotional stakes, you model accountability. And researchers have also seen that it creates what we call a reciprocity of vulnerability. Basically, when one person softens and one person says I'm sorry for this sets the emotional tone of openness, says I'm willing to learn, the other person is far more likely to follow, so it's a lot more fruitful. I just think that it makes it. It just shifts the dynamic and the tone from adversarial to collaborative. And guess what, even if the other person doesn't do this as well, even if this person is unwilling to humble themselves, it's still effective. And it still means that you get to walk out with more clarity because you'll be able to say, like, I stepped into their shoes, I got the bird's eye view, I was willing to take accountability. This part of my job is done. The next step for repairing a friendship is probably the hardest one. But somebody needs to reach out first, right, like or if you're still in that awkward state of like we both know something's wrong, but neither of us really wants to touch it. If you're in that situation, one of you needs to initiate that, Like we need to talk protocol, and I think it should be you and I can totally. I feel like I can sense that you rolled your eyes, You've grown, you took a deep breath. I know it sucks, but I think you know I'm right as well. You're the one who's listening to this, You're the one who knows something's wrong. You're the one who has the intention of repairing the friendship. So you're going to have to be the bigger person. I'm going to talk you through exactly what you're going to say, what you're going to send. Don't worry, you won't be alone. But it has to be you when you go to send the text, because I think it's worth preparing somebody that you want to have the conversation rather than just like being like boob, we're going to talk about it. Firstly, don't send the message late at night, and don't send it from a place of hostility. I had a friendship broke up when I was like twenty where a friend of mine texted me probably one of the meanest messages I have ever received in my life, at like two am in the morning, essentially being like, we need to figure this out, but by the way, you're in the wrong. That was the day of my grandfather's funeral. Two am, the day of my grandfather's funeral, he sent me that message. Any hope of us repairing that friendship was like gone. In that second. I knew I had serious things to apologize for. I knew that I'd messed up, but I was just like, this is so emotionally unsettling, and it's so clear to me that you don't like you just want to yell at me, and there's not going to be any collaboration here that it was just like, that's it's, it's done. If your intentions are to get somewhere from this five pm, six pm after work, they have time to sit with it. State your intentions clearly over text, So like, do you want to apologize? Do you want to talk? Do you want to figure out what happened? Do you want to find a way through highlight the situation you are talking about, Like and tell your friend what the ideal outcome is in your text message. Remember in this episode we are talking about how to repair a friendship. This is like the best way you can go about it to get that outcome. This is like a make your own adventure text message, right, But you can use this structure for everything, you know. I'll give an example, like there's a different between I want to talk about what happened at the wedding intention so that we can be amicable for the next wedding outcome and talk like intention action outcome versus something like I want to apologize for what I said to our mutual friend because I think that we can get through this again intention outcome action and then like another one just for fun, Like I felt hurt by your actions a few weeks back, I want to clear the air so that we can reach a mutual understanding and move forward like that structure works always. I think it probably would even work for it for a real breakup, but that's for another time. I think it's really scary to be the one to acknowledge that there's a problem, but by saying it out loud, I think you're one step closer to being able to just move on. There's this amazing book by Claire Cohen called The Truth about Female Friendship, and great book, by the way, but she talks a lot in her book about how until somebody takes that first step, the situation only exists in each other's heads. And when it sits in your head, it's mutated over and over again by you replaying and you adding assumptions, and you having conversations with other people, and it's adding all these these ingredients in until it becomes this like nuclear version of what it once was. Like keeping it aside is like keeping it in like a toxic incubator until the conflict ends up representing something that it never was to begin with. The easiest way to kill this kind of beast and to stop this from developing, it's just like just straight up be like, let's just freaking tear it open and talk about it. Even if it turns out nothing will change their mind, even if they don't want to talk to you. That is still closure in its own form. As I just mentioned, like, there is that alternative, that alternative, and that outcome is always possible. They may say no, they might ghost you, and at that stage, as much as I said fight for your friends, just leave it, like you did what you thought was right and best for you, they're gonna do the same thing. It goes without saying that. You know, you shouldn't force the other person to engage with you if they don't want to. And trust me, I get it. I understand just how hurtful it can be for you to like really put your heart on the line and to be like really vulnerable and reaching out in the first place, and for them to just be like no, Like it hurts basically a form of social rejection, but so much more like vulnerable. But I still think that's an answer, like, I know, it's probably harder than if you had had the conversation because there's this ambiguous loss and it's obvious they have some very strong opinions that they'll that you'll never hear and they'll never share with you, and that means that you have to close the story. But sometimes that's just life, right, that's a lesson. In other ways, that's a lesson not in humility, but in acceptance. And that's just the risk of ever being close to anybody. Sometimes they don't see the importance of fighting for friendship. Sometimes they don't see the importance of repairing. Sometimes you have done things that you don't realize were immensely hurt like harmful, that they don't want to talk about, and that's just the way things are. Don't go digging, don't go pushing. There is again a lesson in creating our own closure. I actually found it helpful. I went through a situation like this where I was like, I really have probably screwed up. I want to talk about it. I also didn't really know what had happened, and she didn't want to talk to me. And I made this list because I was like obsessing over it, and I made this huge list of life, everything I loved about this person, everything I wanted, like everything I wanted for her, how happy I wanted to see her. And I also just kept saying, like, this is the only way it could have gone. The role we played in each other's lives is over, but the role we played was important. Nonetheless, this is just had it just had to be this way, like this is just the state of our friendship. And I actually saw her walking in London recently, walking down my street in a different country with her partner, and I was a bit of a coward I crossed the road, but I kind of like looked back at home, just like I don't know, we never got the closure, but she looked really happy, and she just seemed really happy. And maybe if we tried to fix things at that time, and if she had reached out and accepted my like want, my desire to like talk about it, or we wouldn't be in the situations we were now, where we were happier, not as friends, Like I just feel like that made sense to me in that moment, that like the future we needed meant that we couldn't be friends anymore. And look at us both in these futures, very very happy, and that was worth more to me than the closure conversation and figuring out what went wrong and why and rehashing details. Not to say that's every situation, but I think sometimes that is the situation, and now me having the hindsight of being through that situation and like six years later being like, wow, just like a breakup, it all works out the way it should be, Like, it's just something I kind of want to I don't know impart on you, I guess, But back to the chat, back to how we're going to approach when somebody says yes, I think we do need to discuss rather than the worst case scenario of nothing, prepare for the awkwardness and prepared to possibly feel deeply misunderstood. I just part you're coming to this like the reason you're in this situation is because somebody was misunderstood and things were confusing, and that's going to be like ripping off a band aid, Like it's going to be deeply uncomfortable, and then you're going to find such relief that it's just the ambiguity is slowly disappearing. I also want you to trust that you're an adult. They're an adult. You can handle conflict, you can handle being uncomfortable, and in part, friction is an important and is a necessity for growth and becoming a better person. Seeing the friend in person as well will also help you with this. Remembering that they are flesh and blood, remembering that they deserve empathy is so much more valuable than like having an argument over text or even over the phone. It's harder, it's worth it. And just give yourself a lot of time, like if you're going to have this conversation, prepare to feel awkward. Also prepare like a couple of hours, like, prepare a couple hours to really hash things out. And I think if you give yourself that space, I don't know anybody who has ever regretted having a conversation like this with a friend, even if it was awkward to begin with, even if the outcome was less than ideal, because I think putting yourself in what is going to be an awkward situation first gives you answers. Secondly, probably will repair your friendship. And it's also just really self affirming in a way, even if it doesn't go right. I don't know if this makes sense, but I think being willing to put yourself in uncomfortable situations proves that you are a person that fights for your friends, proves that you are somebody who endures uncomfortable things for those they love, proves that you are honest, proves that you can embrace raw human emotion, and that you are the person that you say you are. Like I can't, even if it doesn't go your way, even if it makes you really anxious, you can always leave that situation being like, at least I tried. At least I thought, and here is proof that I live out my values. I say I'm a good person. I say I'm somebody who has hard conversations. I say I'm a good friend. Here is the evidence. Like, I endured this discomfort. I did the thing that was not the easiest thing for somebody that I cared about, and that in itself is I think. I don't know which. I think just good for our self esteem and good for our future capacity as a friend. Okay, let's take one more short break here before we talk about a few other things that you can prepare for and what happens after the hard conversation is over. Stay with us when it comes to having hard conversations with people you love about situations you really don't love. One of the best pieces of advice I've ever received came from a mentor I had at my corporate job who told me, in any conflict situation, prepare to be more silent than you'd like to be. Basically, let the other person speak. This is a time for listening, not debating. And I think about that at least once a week. I always think about that phrase that's like we have two in one mouth, Like, try to use that ratio when you are having a tough conversation. I think the reason this is such a valuable rule is not because you shouldn't say what you want to say, and it's not because you don't have a right to speak up, but it just goes directly against your brain's instinct in moments of social tension to just jump in there, defend, be loud, say your piece. When a conversation feels threatening, your nervous system shifts into basically a mild version of fight or flight. You're not just talking like you are subconsciously trying to protect yourself because you feel like you're kind of in danger. And that's when people end up saying doing communicating things in ways they don't want to. So it's not about speaking less, it's about giving yourself space to say what you actually want to say. They over explain, they interrupt, they defend. You are going to miss what's actually being said underneath. All you're hearing is what you want to hear. You're not listening to their explanation. You're not listening to their point of view. You're not listening to their words or their motivations. You're just listening to the context and what you think applies to your feelings. There is also a concept in psychology called reactance. This is our human tendency to push back harder when we feel like someone is trying to persuade or correct us, or trying to force us into something we don't want to or we don't want to do, or you force us into an apology, force us into a perspective. And they've done studies on this that reveal that when people do feel like they're forced to apologize or show empathy before they truly have enough information or they've said what they want to say, it just creates more tension and conflict down the line. Obviously, stand up for yourself. Obviously, be truthful, turn over the stones that you want to turn over. But if you're feeling overwhelmed by what this is going to bring up, remember you can always just be silent whilst you process. Like you don't immediately have to say something in response to whatever it is they choose to say and not to It's not a game. Obviously, it's not a tit for tat competition, but I think it will probably give you an advantage in many ways, at least in terms of emotional control. Part of repairing a friendship is also knowing that you don't have to accept the first apology. And then again, it's not advantageous for the future of your friendship if you just if you just sweep things under the rug and just take whatever the first thing that comes to you is a way to placate your feelings, and then you move forward. You may have to come back to this a few times. You're allowed to say I don't accept your apology, but I still want to work it out, or I still don't see it that way, or I still don't know if you see things from my perspect instead of just thank you or i'm sorry to I just think this is such like practical advice, be silent, don't accept the first apology if you don't want to. It takes so much vulnerability and strength to come to the table and to outwardly admit things are damaged and things are not what they should be. It also takes a lot of courage to say I want to fix them. And you're already in this uncomfortable space, like you did the hardest thing of all, which was to enter the conversation. So push on, stay in the space until you get what you need or you both sincerely feel better about the situation. I feel like I personally see this a lot. People have the hard chat or the confrontation and an apology is given or an excuse is given because and it's just so awkward. They're like, let's just get it over with and there's no actual depth of understanding. And I think there's nothing worse than coming out of one of these conversations, having done the hard thing, telling everyone like, yeah, we're all good, things are back to normal, and then hearing later on that like they're still angry or there's still a problem. So like, communicate, communicate, communicate, keep pushing, keep uncovering. If you feel like there is things left unsaid, you know, you may as well like you're here now, like you've done the hard thing. I also think checking at the end with what the other person is feeling. For instance, like again, you don't want that discrepancy, Like you don't want there to be them to walk away and be like we're totally fine and you're like, no, we're not, or them to walk away and be like they blamed me for everything, and you'd be like, oh, I really see their perspective, like, really have a clear idea of what each other's point of view is and what you want to change and what they want to change. If the other person wants to go away and think about some of the things they've said then come back to you, you need to respect that too. You might need to do that as well, Like you might feel a little bit confused us. Obviously. I know I said like keep like you may have to come back, or that you should keep pushing the conversation, But it's also fair to be like, no, I need more time to think about it. What I'm really saying is like, don't just get to this point and be like cool, we've done it, we've done the hard thing, We've done the situation, we've talked, let's move on, and like you're still hurt or they're still hurt, Like, don't again. I think what this is what it all comes down to, the easiest situation is often not the best situation for the longeviedy of your friendship. So if it's not fine, if you are still struggling, if you if they clearly haven't moved on, like it's okay to come back. I also think in the days after you have a conversation, you're gonna feel a little bit raw. Things may have been said that you're like, oh, like I really had to like confront some things about myself. Just take some time to breathe. Like, you don't have to text them straight afterwards. You don't have to like immediately jump back into how you were before. But definitely like leave the door open and definitely like if you said that you'd reach out and you would make plans do it. If they asked the changes to behavior or they asked for you to tell them what you needed, tell them, show them. If you still have more thoughts, obviously tell them again. This is the final snag for our friendship full outs. We get so far, so far, so far, We jump over all the hurdles, we jump over other people's opinions, we jump over how freakin' awkward it is sometimes to just like talk about things that sting our ego and then hear the ego comes in again and swoops in at the last moment and like prevents us from actually changing anything or decides that it's too hard. So I think when you get to that point, really be like, okay, if it keeps going this way, Like am I going to be happy if it just goes back to what it was before? Like what actually needs to change? Because you don't want to be here again in six months time having the same conversation, or you don't want to have had this conversation for nothing because neither of the things that either of you said actually got through. And you know what, I think, ninety percent of the time, I think it's fine. Like I do think it does get better without needing the follow up. And most people are susceptible to change, and most people you included probably just need a twenty minute chat to clear the air. I also think for long term friendships, like eventually these conversations become funny or they become sentimental, you know, they become iconic in a weird way, like the fight that nearly ended things, the disagreement that felt significant at the time, and we made it through. And in many cases, that is a bonding thing. Like I wish we saw fighting with our friends as a bonding exercise. When you're arguing, even when you're disagreeing, it's still a valuable shared experience, and that's like the whole basis of friendship. Anyways. A hell I will die on is that you don't truly know your friend until you've had a fight with them and you've gotten through it. It's like the thing that opens up like a whole new depth of like communication and shared values and resilience. And like it's gonna sound corny, like love, it makes you love your friends more. Obviously you love each other like you both collectively wanted to make it through this, And that's like really reaffirming because you don't do that for every friendship. Some people don't even do that for like relationships they've been in for years. And I think that is a sign of dedication. And I think if you guys are able to make it through this, You're gonna look back and both of you are going to be like, Wow, that person really loves me. And there's I also think it says his precedent where a lot of friendships operate this like are you mad at me? Are you not mad at me? And they never actually ask, and there's a lot of anxiety and tension in that. You guys won't have that again, Like you will have the freedom now having done this, having practiced this, so that like meaning that any future conflict or disagreement or miscommunication will be handled in like a similar way and will be handled like appropriately, because now you have the blueprint for like how you're going to go about these conversations. So I think that's really like the beginnings of how you repair a friendship. Obviously I can't talk to your specific situation about like what maybe does need to change in your friendship, but I think if you leave a conversation like this being like this is what needs to change, you're both clear on it, and you kind of have a check in, either individually or collectively like a couple months down the line, or you can kind of do that on your own and be like, yeah, everything's good or everything's bad, but I kind of give it a chance or I want to give it another chance, like you are on the right path. Like I said, obviously just speaking from personal experience and other people's experience as well, because I don't know. Sometimes I don't fully know if my experience is everybody's. But I think ninety percent of the time, a friendship is not destroyed by a hard conversation. A friendship is actually strengthened by a hard conversation. And like I just said, you are doing a service to this other person. You are doing a service to the strength of your bond by saying that wasn't okay. I'm not okay. This whole situation isn't okay. And I love you enough that I want I want to say something, and I love you enough that I want to be honest with you and you be honest with me, and we're gonna work through it. And I think that intention and that motivation is like the biggest indicator that the friendship that you have with this person is worth repairing, especially when it's reciprocated. So I think that's all I have time for. When it comes to this episode, I will say I'm going through like kind of a situation like this at the moment, and I need to take my own advice. I think half the reason why I made this episode was because I just kind of need to I don't know, I need to woman up. I need to get some strength in me and approach a situation that was like that's just become very complex, and sometimes when you lay it out like this, it just makes a lot more sense and there is a reassurance there that, like, it is going to be okay. And I spoke to so many of my other friends and like even some like relationship experts for this episode who were like, the biggest predictor of success in a relationship, in a friendship, in families is how people manage conflict. And again this sign that if you are willing to the relationship most of the time does survive. So that's the kickup the butt that I need, hopefully, and it's helpful to you as well. I want to thank our researcher Lucy Davidson for helping us with this episode. If you have made it this far you're listening on Spotify, Hello, Hi, thank you for being a loyal listener and making it to the end. Leave a little emoji down below, leave the little friendship emoji, the little dancing girl emoji. So I know you have made it this far and you are part of the Elique club of like five percent of people who make it to the boring stuff at the end, where I talk about how you can follow us on Instagram and how you can watch us on Netflix, and how you can read transcripts of the episodes on substack. Substack especially, I feel like is really helpful for this episode. If you want to save this guide for the future, if you want to send it to somebody, or you're somebody who processes this stuff over and over again through reading. It's all going to be in the description. But I just hope it's helpful. I hope it takes the stress and anxiety out of what I'm sure is a very stressful and anxious situation. I know you can do it, and I'm wishing you luck. But until next time, be safe, be kind, be gentle with yourself. We will talk very very soon.