Almost 10 years ago, my first article ever published went viral.
A part of me didn’t know how to feel because it was about a falling out with my best friend, someone I shared a 15-year friendship with.
I was going through a hard breakup at the time, and felt like she was choosing my ex over our friendship. Even though a part of me knew it was immature, I decided to distance myself from anyone that was even remotely associated in the same circle. I couldn’t handle even the thought of holding onto anyone who reminded me of the pain I was trying to move past.
We make the choices we do when we’re in pain to protect ourselves, even if we can’t understand the reasoning behind those choices. For me, my pain felt so deeply embedded that I didn’t know how to separate the two, resulting in me cutting off the friendship altogether.
Even though I’ve experienced some ups and downs with my friendships, I remember wondering if our friendship was beyond repair or if we could ever reconnect. A couple of years later, I had a dream that we were back in each other’s lives, which felt far from reality at the time. While we ended up rebuilding our friendship in the end, it was something that took a lot of time, along with hard and honest conversations.
Whether you and your friend stopped talking because of a disagreement, life changes, or simply grew apart, here’s how to reconnect with a friend after a falling out:
Make Sure You’ve Both Had Time To Heal
When we force ourselves to move on from the past before we’ve had time to process our pain, we’re more likely to carry over unresolved emotions, feelings, or resentment from what happened.
In my situation, I knew for a long time that I wasn’t even open to the possibility of us being friends again. I was still carrying the pain and hurt with me, focusing solely on that instead of moving forward and rebuilding. Until I was able to heal from everything I was holding onto, it was hard to reconnect with anybody who reminded me of what I went through. But after a significant amount of time passed, I was able to let go and reopen the door to the possibility of us being able to reconnect and become friends again.
While neither of us forgot what happened or the reason for the falling out, we also knew that time allowed us to heal and start over fresh. If you aren’t giving yourself and your friend time to process your pain, you’ll carry over resentment and unresolved feelings, putting you right back where you started. There’s a time for everything, and one of the best things you can do for rekindling a friendship is making sure you’ve had time to heal.
Forgive Them And Yourself
One of the reasons we stay stuck in the past for so long and get caught up in what somebody else did to us, is because we hold onto feelings of not knowing how to forgive.
I wasn’t allowing myself to move on from what happened, because I was harboring feelings of resentment and bitterness. I was expecting my friend to act a certain way, and when she didn’t, I felt like I had no choice but to cut her off because I was trying to spare myself from experiencing even more pain.
Our actions are based on our perspective. I automatically thought she was in the wrong, yet I never gave her an opportunity to explain her side or where she was coming from. It’s easy to jump to conclusions without context, but sometimes if we were to step outside how we feel for a moment, we’d realize there’s more to a situation than just how we perceive it.
You might not automatically feel different after you choose to forgive the other person, but it’ll help the healing process in the long run. If we can’t put the things that hurt behind us, we’ll always remain in the same place. Life is too short to not forgive others and ourselves, especially since time is something we can never get back.
If you want to reconnect with a friend after a falling out, ask yourself if you’ve fully forgiven this person and/or yourself for what happened. You can’t change the past, but you can decide how you’re going to move forward.
Don’t Be Afraid To Reach Out When The Time Is Right
Just as it takes time to heal, it also takes the right amount of time to reach out and connect after a falling out.
I’ll never forget when my friend reached out after a few years of having zero communication. I was apprehensive at first, but I also knew that enough time passed, and I deeply missed this person in my life.
Our life circumstances can change in a moment, and even though we may feel a certain way about a situation, it doesn’t mean that we’ll always feel that way. I was once in the position of never being able to picture myself moving on from the situation to agreeing to meet up after she reached out.
If you want to reach out and reconnect, try to approach it without expectations or defensiveness. When we aren’t receptive to a conversation or how the other person feels, then it shows we aren’t really over it or ready to confront it like we thought we were.
Even if you’re ready to move on from the situation, it doesn’t always mean that the other person is in the same place as you are. We can’t expect other people to heal the same way we do, especially since everyone moves on at their own pace and processes pain differently.
Encourage Honest Communication And Hard Conversations
One of the most important parts about learning how to move on from something that hurt both of you is encouraging honest and open communication, including having the hard conversations about what happened.
Rebuilding trust takes time, and it’s not something that’ll happen right away just because you’re starting to reconnect. Your friendship might never be like it once was. But more often than not, you won’t want it to be because it’ll end up being stronger than it was before.
The hard conversations aren’t easy, but when you feel deeply hurt, it’s hard to learn how to move past that without a genuine, honest conversation. There were hard truths about myself that I had trouble admitting (insecurity, fear of abandonment, etc.), but I knew until I dug those out and dealt with them, I would never be able to move on.
I can say without a doubt that my friendship with who I had a falling out with is stronger than ever because we came back together after something that almost broke our relationship completely. Encourage honest and open communication by addressing the issue and deciding how you’re going to work through it if you want to rekindle the friendship.
Deciding whether to reconnect with a friend after a falling out means figuring out if you’re both willing to move past the issues for the sake of the friendship, or if it’s time to let go and move on altogether.
Sometimes people are only meant to be in your life for a season, while others are meant to be there for a lifetime. No matter how much time is lost, if somebody is meant to be in your life, you’ll always find a way back to each other.
