Interpersonal Relationships — Seasons of Friendship
Initiating, Experimenting, and Intensifying
Not all friendships are meant to last forever. They come for a season, maybe 2 or 3, when you most needed them; then suddenly, they aren’t the right fit anymore.
When Jo (this is not actually her name, but to respect her privacy, this is the filler name I will be using for her) and I first met, it was over Snapchat. We were both new at OSU. She was a freshman and I was a transfer student. It was over a Snapchat post on our OSU class group. This wasn’t something I would normally do, but I responded to her story asking friends. She was the only person I ever responded to on there. I don’t even recall what made her stand out from the rest, just that I thought she seemed safe to “experiment,” with. Through Snapchat, we both “initiated” the interaction, so there felt like less pressure. It felt like she did more of the heavy lifting though, putting herself out on the public story, not knowing who would respond. I had a leg up in this way, being able to choose who to respond to.
She came over to my house the first time that night to hang out. We clicked immediately because our communication styles, at the time, melded perfectly. I liked to listen, she liked to talk. Experimenting quickly turned into “intensifying” as she talked about her childhood, divorced parents, and ex-boyfriend. At the time, I remember feeling like this person had just put a lot of trust in me, and I didn’t want to throw it away. What I didn’t realize was this was just my perception of the interaction leading me to my own conclusions about her. Some information isn’t as guarded for some as it is others (Pearson et al.).
Integrating and Bonding
Quickly, we fell into friendship. She lived in the dorms, and I lived with my parents at the time, so she came over a lot. Oregon State University has a “Safe Ride” app, like Uber but free for students, that allowed her to book a ride to come to my house and back to her dorm. This facilitated our interactions since, without it, I was stuck driving her back and forth. While not necessarily an online interaction between each other, it was essential to our “integration.”
As our friendship extended, she started posting me on her Instagram accounts. Even though I didn’t love it all the time, but it made me feel valued that she would take photos of me at random moments, and want to share me with her close friends and family. In turn, I started doing this as well. Creating a spam account just so I could post our goofy moments and adventures. We went to a $uicideboy$ concert (even though I didn’t really like them, she loved them) where we had a photo shoot in our cute outfits before going in; we both posted our photos on our Instagram to solidify the memory. While we aren’t friends anymore, I still have this post up. I don’t want to forget the good times we had together. Jo, however, deleted hers. I only know this because she still lets my mom follow her on Instagram, even though she removed me. Some people would rather remove the person from their identity, including social media, when the relationship is over (Pearson et al.).
I am getting ahead of myself now though. The point of highlighting the increase of posting each other is to show the “bonding” stage. We attached each other to our online personas, and by extension, our identities. This was a time I could never imagine not being friends with her, and she moved into my house the next school year.
One of my photos from the photoshoot
Circumscribing, Stagnating, and Avoiding
Some relationships just fizzle out, people grow apart. In this case, that is partly true; but tale as old as time, there was a boyfriend. I perceived myself as being able to tolerant and get along with most anyone, so I endured for as long as I cold. Eventually, the toxicity of that relationship got out of hand. I wasn’t Jo’s friend anymore, I was her couple’s counselor. As her best friend, I was there for her. I let her rant about her boyfriend’s immaturity and lack of empathy, I consoled her and gave her advice, I played nice with her boyfriend (despite our differences), but then she picked him over me.
It wasn’t all at once. I started to voice my discomfort about her always talking about her boyfriend, but of course, he was a huge part of her life. I started to “circumscribe,” or avoid this topic because I knew it would lead to conflict; either in myself, or with Jo. I knew that I was giving more to the relationship that I was receiving. Because we were best friends, we had each other on Life360 so we could easily track location and timing. When we got into our first fight, where I finally voiced I didn’t feel valued, she left the Life360 group and didn’t talk to me for a week, despite now living in my house. Her leaving the Life360 was like a gut-punch, as if saying “I don’t care to you where you are, and I don’t care if you know where I am.”
We did eventually make up from this fight, and she returned to the Life360. We didn’t return to “circumscribing,” however, it felt like we went to “stagnation,” where we didn’t know how to communicate with each other anymore. Things weren’t really resolved, I compromised and allowed things to continue as they were. There was a lull where things felt “normal,” but at the same time, it felt like the beginning of the end. I knew I couldn’t put up with this dynamic anymore, and decided to talk to her again.
Terminating
It happened in a second. One exchange terminated our relationship forever —
Me: “I just think I think more about you, your emotions and what you have going on in your life, than you do me”
Jo: “Yeah, that’s probably true.”
I didn’t say anything after that. We were in the car, and I drove us in silence, stunned by her admission and the knowledge that she was never going to give as much to our relationship as I was giving. She left the Life360 for the last time, and we stayed in “avoidance” until she moved out of my house at the end of the week (luckily, it was the end of the school year), which was the more official “termination” of our relationship.
She later blocked me on Instagram and TikTok and removed all of her posts of me, another type of termination (Pearson et al.). I would rather not forget her as quickly though. A relationship is not its ending.
Works Cited
Pearson, J. C., Nelson, P. E., Titsworth, S., & Hosek, A. M. (Eds.). (2021). Human communication
(7th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.
Amelia, your story was very touching! I made a post regarding the way one of my relationships ended and then restarted years later full of life. I didn't really touch on the beginning of the entire thing. I appreciate how you were able to articulate how you started this relationship online, and the Knapp's milestones you hit along the way. It was also interesting to see how this relationship fell away with conflict, which was very unlike my own experience of the relationship entering a silent hiatus. I understand how this sort of thing can be very painful--but you're so right, a relationship is not its end. In a quote often attributed to Dr. Seuss, "Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened." Every person we love will leave a lasting mark on our lives no matter what.
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