Field Note: Adult Relationships AKA Will I Ever Hear From Them Again?!

There is something strangely painful about adult friendships and relationships.

When we are young, there is structure. School. Neighborhoods. Clubs. Lunch tables. Hallways. We see people over and over again. We know where we stand.

As adults, everything gets blurrier. Ha! As you get older, things get more confusing. The irony!

But people get busy. Busier than ever. They have jobs, children, illnesses, injuries, marriages, grief, bills, obligations, stress, exhaustion. They move away. They disappear into seasons of their own lives. As a young person, you have no idea how messy the middle really becomes.

And suddenly, someone you love can go quiet for weeks. Months. Even years.

It is disorienting.

Part of you wonders:

Did I do something wrong?
Did they stop caring?
Should I reach out?
Should I stop reaching out?
Am I bothering them?
Am I being abandoned?
Am I abandoning them?

It can make you feel a little crazy because there is often no clear answer.

Sometimes silence is hurtful. Sometimes it is avoidance. Sometimes it is selfishness. Sometimes it is grief. Sometimes it is depression. Sometimes it is illness. Sometimes it is just adulthood.

That is what makes it so difficult.

The silence can look the same from the outside, even when the reasons are very different.

And when you have lived through relationships where silence was used as punishment, withdrawal was used as control, or affection had to be earned, absence can feel especially loaded.

You may start to think:

They are mad at me.
I ruined it.
I should have been better.
I should have said more.
I should have said less.
I should reach out again.
I should stop trying.

But sometimes absence is not about you. Very often it is not. People are in their own storms.

Sometimes people are simply surviving.

Sometimes they are carrying things they do not know how to talk about.

Some of us are adults finally learning the vocabulary we never learned as children.

Sometimes they do not know how to maintain closeness while overwhelmed.

Some of us are really that burned out, our nerves are actually damaged.

Sometimes they care very deeply and still do not know how to show up well.

Love can feel like not breathing instead of a deep breath, especially for those of us where the ones we loved were sometimes our most dangerous abusers.

And sometimes, painfully, some relationships do drift.

Ordinary drift. Accidental drift. No guilt drift.

Not every friendship is meant to be daily or even yearly. Some people disappear and come back. Some become holiday-card friendships. Some become once-a-year lunch friendships. Some become people we still love quietly from afar.

That is not always failure.

Sometimes it is just life.

I think one of the hardest parts of being an adult is learning that some things remain unresolved.

You do not always get closure.
You do not always get answers.
You do not always get certainty.

Sometimes all you can do is say:

I care about them.
I hope they return.
I hope I did okay.
May it be okay.

And then, with love, you place the relationship on a shelf and continue living your life.

And your skin changes, your hair, your weight. We age. We change.

Not because the relationship the connection did not matter.

But because you matter too.

So honor the connection by staying open and taking care of yourself. Allow yourself to grieve but remember to exhale and love life as it is. Hope without punishment. Like we did as children.

Remember the lesson of the rose. As a child we pick roses for their beauty, but then we learn they fade and die and have to be thrown out. But when we throw them out, they compost. and feed the roots of the original rose bush. Then spring returns. And their are new blooms. They are blooms from the same bush. Pick them without fear. Embrace the cycle. Love without fear of the wilted rose or winter. Spring returns. Take care of the bush.