What we loose or leave behind

Something was running through my mind a lot last week, as I got a bit nostalgic while surrounded by the current crop of people I consider friends. It struck me just how many once upon a time good friends were no longer around. Not that they've died, you understand. They're just not my friends anymore.

People like A, who I was very good friends with, for example. I had known him for years, helped him get through college, holidayed with him, worked with him, even lived with him. I haven't spoken to him now in years. I know roughly where he lives, have his email address and phone number and all that, and yet I haven't had any contact with him at all. Granted, it was because we had a rather large falling out. But I'm not one to hold a grudge. A on the other hand, really is.

Now, he's just one example, but he's a good one for what I was thinking about. Our ex-friends, and how they become ex-friends. I was wondering if people are predominantly those who lose friends, or those who just leave them?

Take JW. I was best man at his wedding, was friends with both him and his wife and their families. We had an argument, of sorts, and that was that. JW and A are two examples of how I lost friends, through my own actions.

There are other friends of mine that I've just let fall by the wayside. We don't have much in common anymore. They moved away, or just fell in with a different crowd or different social scene. And at some point, I stopped making the effort to keep in touch. I don't return phone calls, or write emails, or whatever. I would classify them as friends I've left.

So, not to go all Carrie Bradshaw or anything, but are people primarily Losers or Leavers? Is it better to be one than the other?

If it was a person who was leaving job after job, as circumstances dictate, we would not think less of them. But if someone kept losing job after job, we would have to wonder if the fault wasn't with them, you know?

So if you've lost more friends than you've left, does that make you a problem friend? (Assuming of course, you can equate jobs with friends in that analogy.)


posted by Manchild at 8:27 PM