Why High School Friendships Don’t Last – You’ve Lost that Friendly Feelin’

By Jeanne Zonneveld

You’ve Lost that Friendly Feelin’ – Why High School Friendships Don’t Last

As someone who has gone through friends like a snake outgrowing its skin, it has taken me quite some time to figure out why it’s just so hard to keep hold of friendships from (what seems) so long ago. Naturally, the panicked thought of, “is it me?” has run across my mind every now and again. It has taken some time for me to realize that that line of thought is actually worth pursuing when investigating the untimely demise of any friendship.

With Friendships Location Does Not Matter 

If you go into any friend’s timeline on Facebook and scroll through old albums, you’ll notice faces of people you’ve never met or have even heard of. If you were to ask your friends about their high school companions, as I have mine, you’ll be oddly relieved at their mutual understanding that, besides having their school in common, a lot of friendships ended after the realization that there wasn’t much else giving substance to their relationship. When it comes down to the nitty-gritty, you realize as you get older that it isn’t the location that should be the defining matter in a friendship but the ability to keep that relationship outside of those parameters that will prove a friendship to be true.

Best Friends Since Childhood...

Friendships for the Sake of Convenience 

Whether we like to admit it or not, we do not often seek out the right friends, but rather, we prefer to turn to the right-now friends who fill our need for social convenience. Whether it be at school, or work, or anything that continuously keeps you at a certain place for a decent amount of time, you will find that friend who you classify as “[insert place] friend” to the people you tell everything to. Because you both know that your social contact doesn’t exceed out of that confined space, but it doesn’t (usually) provide any issues, because both of you know that you have that support system elsewhere, waiting to hear from you while they’re with their flings of friends, too. 

Friendships & Self-Discovery Process 

Now that we’ve established location’s part of a friendship, the next important piece in the puzzle is, of course, your role in it. Besides our need for social interaction, we are constantly driven towards finding out who we really are through our daily experiences, good or bad. The interactions we engaged ourselves in are a huge part in that self-discovery process, as you are willingly sharing the best and worst qualities you have with another person, and seeing what theirs offers you in return. Once you realize another’s traits aren’t working for you, or that being around that specific person is when you feel most comfortable, you’ve successfully opened another door to the maze that is you.

So the next time you go into class, or work, or wherever it may be, think about the people you speak with the most often. If you find something resonating with one person over all of the others, you may have just picked out the beginning of a beautiful friendship. If not, then at least you know that, when it comes time to leave, you still have other people and places to go to that are just as good as home.