Thursday 6 August 2009

On friendship

I've had a very secure friendship group of 5 girls since I was 16. Some I've known for longer, one of the girls since I was 5 or 6. I feel very blessed to have such a close knit group of girls who know me so well and are there for me when I need.

Since being married it has led me to think about this and how relationships grow and change. Both that with my friends and with my husband. I am the only one of my friends to be married, and whilst that doesn't change how they treat me it has changed my behaviour. The things I like doing, my priorities etc are different now. As we've grown up together we've always gone through things together, mostly at the same time so I remember it being very strange for them to not be going through marriage at the same time as me and remember seeking other people to talk to who I felt would be more able to understand what it was I was worrying about or excited about.

We've recently had a few occasions where it's been very difficult to all get together and I've missed all the girls birthday's this year, which I never normally do. It's the one thing we always make an effort for. And it's made me think, think about how things have changed. They are still my go to girls, the people I would call if something was ever wrong or I had news to announce but I now spend more time with other friends who are perhaps at a more similar stage of their lives to me.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's made me realise again how important it is to really work at all relationships you have and that although things may change in our lives the shared history we have will always hold us together.

So here's a picture of all of us at my wedding,


And I guess this is as much a post to thank them for being so amazing over the last however many years and also to share some thoughts I've been having recently about friendship and how it moves and changes.

Any thoughts you'd care to share? Let me know, I love hearing from you! x

5 comments:

Krista said...

I tried to guess your age by looking at your friends in the picture. But a couple look older and a couple look younger. (I won't say who looks what age, in case they read the blog.)

So I based my guess on what you look like (to me).

Marie said...

I think there's about 9 months between us all. But yes some do still have a more youthful glow about them :)

the un-bride said...

I love that you're considering this ... whether it creeps into our thoughts or not, it's THERE, dammit. Here's to us all finding a new way of life that sustains us -- with our partners, our friends, et. al.

Janine / Being Brazen said...

Great photo! So nice that you have a great group of girlfriends.

I think You definitely need to work on relationships. Its takes effort...strangely as you get older and life gets more hectic..it takes more effort.

Two of my best friends live overseas. One in UK and one in USA. I try keep in touch as much as I can, its hard..There is alot of skyping with my USA friend and lots of e-mails with my UK friend -But a good frienship is always worth making the effort to keep.

Rose said...

truly good friends are a wonderful thing to have in your life. You can choose your friends and not your family and I try and make the extra effort to see those people I know I want to be in my life for a long time, even it means not always doing things I might find that fun.