When a Friendship No Longer Feels Right - (Ep #5 - Relationship Series)

Friendships change as we grow - and that doesn’t mean anything went wrong.

In this episode of the Relationship Series, I’m exploring how friendships naturally evolve when you reconnect more deeply with yourself. Sometimes friendships fade slowly, sometimes they shift shape, and sometimes they end - without a dramatic moment or clear closure. We talk about over-giving, unspoken resentment, grief that often goes unacknowledged, and the hesitation to open yourself up to new friendships after being hurt.

I also explore how staying connected to yourself - instead of abandoning your needs to maintain harmony - changes the way you relate to friends, friend groups, and connection as a whole. This isn’t about cutting people off or forcing outcomes. It’s about honesty, self-trust, and allowing relationships to change without making yourself wrong.

We’ll end with a card pull and reflection questions to help you gently check in with yourself.

Reflection Questions

• Where in my friendships do I notice myself shrinking, over-giving, or holding back my truth?
• Is there a friendship or group that no longer aligns with who I am now - and what emotions come up when I acknowledge that?
• What grief around friendship changes have I been minimizing or avoiding?
• What would it look like to honor both myself and the history of a friendship, without forcing it to stay the same?

You don’t need to fix anything today. Awareness, honesty, and compassion are enough to begin choosing differently.

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Stage On Friendship Change
• 4:28 Signals Of Misalignment And Overgiving
• 9:28 Naming Grief And Friendship Wounds
• 13:58 Hesitation, Nervous System, And Self-Protection
• 18:18 Letting Friendships Reshape Without Drama

Transcript

Shannon: 1:57

Welcome back to the Pure Possibilities Podcast. I'm your host, Shannon. As we continue the relationship series, I want to talk about friendships today and specifically how friendships change as we grow and evolve and reconnect more deeply with ourselves. Friendships don't always change in one dramatic moment. Sometimes it's a slow shift, almost imperceptible. And sometimes the energy fades, sometimes life circumstances change. And sometimes one person is giving more than the other for a long time, and you start to get tired. Sometimes boundaries are crossed, and sometimes there's a clear conversation about the friendship ending, and sometimes there isn't. Some friendships fade organically in the same way that they began. And sometimes you'll have people in your life you don't speak to on a regular basis anymore, but you know deep in your body and in your soul that if either of you truly needed each other, you'd be there without hesitation. Our friendships are layered, they're nuanced, they don't all fit into the same box. People are freaking busy. They have lives of their own. And at the same time, it's also important to notice when someone is pulling away because something feels off, when there's distance, resentment, or something unspoken that hasn't been addressed. All of this matters. And today I want to explore friendships through the lens of growth, self-connection, and honesty without blame, without forcing outcomes, and without making yourself wrong for changing. In the last few episodes, we've talked about reconnecting with yourself so deeply that you stop repeating the patterns that sabotage your relationships with yourself, with your life, and with the people that you love. Friendships are often one of the very first places where that reconnection shows up when you start listening to yourself more closely, when you stop overriding your needs, when you stop saying yes just to keep the peace, when you stop abandoning yourself to maintain comfort, your friendships will absolutely respond. Sometimes they're gonna deepen, sometimes it will stretch them, and sometimes it will soften them. And sometimes they simply no longer fit. And that doesn't mean that you failed. It could mean that other people within the friendship dynamic are also changing. And change is, I mean, the one constant that we can all depend on is change. There can be a lot of guilt around admitting that this particular friendship doesn't feel the way that it used to, especially when you've got history, maybe a really long history, shared memories, years of being close with one another. And we often carry the belief that friendships are supposed to last forever. And when they don't, we assume that something went wrong. But friendships are not contracts, they are living, breathing relationships. And you may have been in a very different place when that friendship began. You may have needed different things then. You may have been showing up as a version of yourself who didn't know how to speak their truth or honor their limits. And now you're different. Sometimes the conversations feel surface level. Sometimes your body will tighten up when you think about spending time with that particular person or with that friend group. And sometimes you feel drained instead of nourished. Those are not judgments, they are signals. One of the most common patterns, and one that many people don't realize that they're in, is being the one who's the giver. You give and give and give. You're the planner, the initiator, the one who holds all of the emotions for everyone, the one who keeps the connection alive. And at first, it feels loving and meaningful. But over time, if it's not reciprocated, something can shift. You start to feel tired, drained, unseen, resentful, unappreciated. And instead of naming that for what it is, many people push it down and suppress it and just keep going. And they don't honor themselves. And it's not that we have to get something out of all of our relationships, but you want to feel like the other person is in it as much as you are. Sometimes we just tell ourselves, well, it's just how friendships are. I don't want to rock the boat. I don't want to feel needy. But when you continue to ignore that feeling, you are abandoning yourself. And that friendship begins to carry the weight of all of the conversations that haven't been had. Grief when you outgrow a group that you once belonged to. Grief when you miss the version of the friendship that once existed, even if it no longer fits who you are now. That grief is often minimized. But the grief doesn't mean that you're weak. It means that that relationship and that friendship was important to you and it mattered. And allowing yourself to grieve doesn't mean you're going back into your old ways. It means you're honoring the truth of what that experience held for you and how much it meant to you. There's a deeper layer here that feels really important to me when you have been hurt deeply in a friendship. Whether it ended abruptly, quietly faded into the background, or it left you feeling unseen or abandoned, it doesn't just affect that one relationship. It can make you hesitant to open yourself up again. Just like in intimate relationships, friendship wounds can make vulnerability feel risky and scary and honestly terrifying. You might want connection, but you completely hesitate to reach out, to initiate, to trust other people, to put yourself out there again. And sometimes that hesitation is protection from your nervous system. And maybe it's just for a season that you're going through and you're moving through. And sometimes it's that avoidance that comes back up. It's avoidance dressed up as independence. And so when you notice yourself craving deeper friendships while also holding back, be gentle with yourself, be kind, be loving, be compassionate, and don't judge it because that hesitation isn't weakness, it's information. It's allowing you the opportunity to get curious with yourself and say, hey, is this something that I am open to? Am I open to expanding on this friendship? Am I wanting to deepen this friendship? There are billions of people in the world. And when we pause and hold ourselves back, just like in intimate relationships, because we're so terrified of getting hurt, when you are so deeply connected to yourself, you know that you're gonna be more than okay because you've made it through all of the difficult times in your life up until this point. And if you hold back and keep yourself from allowing yourself that opportunity to cultivate these relationships, these friendships, you might really be missing out. And so it's important to just be aware. Am I avoiding potentially being hurt again? Or am I just needing a season or a time for myself to rest? Friendships don't have to be all or nothing. Not every friendship needs this big dramatic ending. Some friendships just simply change shape. You may talk less, but you still care about them. You may share less with them, but you still respect them. You may show up differently, and that's okay. The question isn't whether the friendship looks the same as it used to. The question is whether you're staying connected to yourself within it. There's a story Simon Sinek once shared that really stuck with me. A friend of his was going through a dark time and later said that they had tried to reach out to him for support. And when Simon looked back at his message, the message he had received was something like, Hey, how are you? And at that time, he didn't realize that that was an attempt at a deeper connection because the person said, I did reach out. And afterward, when they talked about it, they decided to create a code, something that clearly meant, I'm not okay and I need support, even when it felt hard to say those exact words. And that story matters because it reminds us that sometimes people are reaching out, but the signal of why they're reaching out isn't necessarily clear. I actually had a friend reach out to me yesterday and they, you know, just said, Hey, what are you up to? And I responded and said what I was doing. And then they responded with, I just miss you. And so I called them because I was like, this is interesting because this person doesn't usually tell me that they miss me. And so it like cued me in that something deeper might be going on. And I was right, something was going on with them. And so I was glad that I took that cue because I did have the time and the space, and it's something just felt off. And so, again, when you're connecting with your body, you you know, like I knew that something was a little bit off with them. So just remember that sometimes people are reaching out, but the signal isn't necessarily clear. And sometimes we expect other people to read between the lines, and sometimes we don't know how to ask for help when we need it. But it's important to pay attention to those things. Like this was a person that I don't talk to on a super regular basis, but it's another one of those friends that if they needed me, I would totally be there for them. Our healthy friendships grow through clarity and not mind reading. However, you do want to listen to your body, and you know, you'll know. You'll know. So, as we begin to close, I want to offer kind of a recap. These aren't rules, they're just options of things that you can do. When something feels off in a friendship, you might want to have an honest conversation. You might want to just allow the friendship to naturally change. You might step back a little bit while still remaining open. You might want to allow yourself to grieve what it used to be and maybe even celebrate what it is now. Because all of the changes aren't necessarily bad. You might want to create boundaries that honor your capacity. There is no one right choice here. What matters most is that you're checking in with yourself instead of abandoning yourself to keep things comfortable. This feels like a beautiful place to pause and take a breath and to invite a little guidance into our space here. So let's go ahead and move into today's card poll. We are gonna go ahead and pull a card from the Magic of What If Card Deck Volume 2 today. The card decks are available on my website, purepossibilitiespodcast.com. Under shop. All right. And the card poll for today is what if my challenges are actually opportunities in disguise? We often experience a lot of challenges in our life. And I am gonna generalize that because I don't know anyone who goes through life without any challenges. And we can also use those as opportunities, as lessons to grow and move into that next level of ourself and learn from the challenges that we experience. And just because it's a challenge doesn't mean it's a bad thing. I do truly believe that things are always happening for our highest good, even when it doesn't feel like it in that particular moment. Because when you can look back, even if you're going through a hard time in this moment, when you look back once you've moved through it, more often than not, when you look at it from the perspective of how did I grow? How did this invite me into a stronger version of myself? When you look at it from that lens, you can see and feel the growth that you might have experienced. And although it might have been horrible or horrific or frustrating at the time, there is an opportunity on the other side of that. We don't always love what's happening in our life, but when we can view it from a different perspective, in how did this allow me to move my life forward? How did it allow me to stretch myself or expand myself? Just notice how that message lands in your body without overthinking it. Okay, we're gonna move into the reflection questions. They're gonna be posted in the show description so you can come back to them at a later time if you don't have the time, the space, or the capacity in this moment. So if it feels comfortable and safe to do so, go ahead and take a deep breath and release and allow these questions to land. Where in my friendships do I feel myself shrinking or overgiving? Is there a friendship or group that no longer aligns with who I am now? And what emotions come up when I acknowledge that? What grief around friendship changes have I been minimizing or avoiding? What would it look like to honor both myself and the history of a friendship without forcing it to stay the same? Friendships don't fail because you grow. They change because you do, and they change because other people change. And when you reconnect with yourself deeply enough to choose differently, your relationships will reflect that, sometimes tenderly, sometimes painfully, and often with surprising relief. When you start to show up as the version of you that is honoring and loving yourself and your relationships, people do respect that. Or the relationship ends. And it's allowing those relationships to flow and be what they are and what they're meant to be. And maybe that's honoring the end, and maybe it's allowing it to become a deeper friendship. Thank you for being here. Thank you for honoring your growth. And thank you for choosing to stay connected to yourself as you move forward. I hope you have a beautiful, beautiful day and an amazing week. Much love.