By Patrick Hardeman – In and Out of Darkness

We throw the word friend around pretty loosely. Somebody knows us for twenty years and suddenly that time served is supposed to qualify them for a lifetime immunity from accountability. Apparently friendship works like tenure. Once you’ve been around long enough, you can say, encourage, or participate in damn near anything and somebody will defend it with, “But that’s my friend.” Okay, but what kind of friend? Because the amount of time someone has known you doesn’t automatically determine the quality of their presence in your life. Sometimes the people who have known us the longest are wonderful contributors to our growth. Other times, they’ve simply had a front-row seat to our dysfunction for longer than everyone else.

Real friends don’t hold you back from your growth. The concept isn’t complicated. If I tell you I’m trying to stop drinking, don’t encourage another round when you know I’m already tipsy and have responsibilities; including the fairly important responsibility of staying alive. If I tell you I’m trying to save money, stop pressuring me to spend it. “Come on, man, you only live once” isn’t particularly inspiring when I’m trying to make sure I can afford the one life I have. friendship should never require someone to repeatedly abandon their goals just so everybody else can remain entertained and comfortable.

The same principle applies to the smaller things we often laugh away. if your friend tells you they’re starting a business, don’t make your first question about what you can get for free or how much of a discount you’re receiving. If you can afford to support their business, support it. Everybody wants to see their friend become successful until the invoice arrives. If your brother says he’s trying to get healthier, don’t clown him at the restaurant because he ordered grilled chicken while everybody else is tearing through hot wings. Let that man eat his sad little chicken breast in peace. He has a goal, and somebody who genuinely cares about him should want to protect that goal rather than make him feel ridiculous for pursuing it.

When someone we care about says, “I’m trying to get my life together,” our response shouldn’t be an invitation back into everything they’re trying to escape. Real friendship sometimes sounds incredibly simple: Go handle your business. You don’t need to come out tonight. Save your money. Go study. Go home to your partner. Keep going. I’m proud of you. Sometimes genuine love even requires us to say, “Don’t come back down here just to make me comfortable in my misery. Keep climbing, brother. Keep climbing, sister.” I don’t need you failing beside me to prove we’re friends.

Unfortunately, misery really does love company, and not everyone who interferes with our growth is going to announce themselves as an enemy. Sometimes our progress simply forces people close to us to examine their own lack of movement. You stopped drinking while they didn’t. You started saving while they’re still spending. You started working out while they’re still promising themselves they’ll begin Monday; which apparently is a mysterious Monday scheduled sometime in 2047. You started protecting your relationship, pursuing an education, building a business, or simply protecting your peace, and suddenly somebody tells you that you’ve changed. Of course I changed. That was the point. Growth that leaves everything exactly the same isn’t much of a transformation.

The problem becomes more serious when someone needs you to remain a lesser version of yourself so the relationship between you can remain comfortable. If I have to watch you become less of yourself to keep you close to me, I don’t love you properly. If I encourage you to do things that are clearly contrary to building or maintaining a healthy relationship, I’m not supporting you. If I encourage behavior that repeatedly makes you look less like the man or woman you’re trying to become, I’m not helping you. And if I invite you into my misery or roadblock your happiness because I don’t possess happiness of my own, that’s not friendship. That’s selfishness wearing a friendship jersey.

This is especially important because closeness should actually create more accountability, not less. Being my brother, sister, cousin, childhood friend, military brother/sister, best friend, mother or father doesn’t provide unlimited forgiveness for repeatedly helping place me in bad, dangerous, destructive, or unbecoming situations. In fact, the longer you’ve known me, the more accountable you should feel for how you treat me because you possess information strangers don’t have. You know my weaknesses. You know what I’ve survived. You know what I’m trying to build. You know what I’m trying to leave behind. If you know all of that, why would you keep handing me directions back there?

We also have to stop allowing titles and history to excuse behavior we wouldn’t accept from anybody else. “That’s my boy.” “She’s been my friend forever.” “That’s family.” “We’ve been through everything together.” “She gave birth to me.” All of those statements may be true, but none answers the more important question: Are they helping you become better , or are they helping you stay stuck, where you always have been? Time known doesn’t automatically equal love. History doesn’t automatically equal loyalty, and forgiveness doesn’t require giving someone unlimited opportunities to sabotage your progress. The title someone holds in your life should establish a higher standard for how they treat you, not become the reason they are continually excused for treating you poorly.

There is also a difference between somebody missing you and somebody missing the version of you that made their own dysfunction more comfortable. Some people genuinely miss your presence. Others miss having someone available to participate in the drinking , overspending, complaining, cheating, procrastinating, reckless behavior, unnecessary drama, or whatever else helped distract them from examining their own lives. When you begin changing, that relationship may suddenly feel different because the activity holding it together has disappeared. That’s an uncomfortable realization, but an important one. Sometimes what we called friendship was actually mutual participation in habits neither person had challenged yet.

Blocking someone’s happiness because you don’t possess happiness yourself can become emotionally abusive, selfish, and cruel. Constantly tempting someone toward the very behavior they’re fighting to escape isn’t harmless simply because you’ve known each other since high school. Neither is encouraging a friend to disrespect a healthy relationship because you’re single, encouraging reckless spending because you don’t want to stay home alone, or ridiculing someone’s discipline because their improvement makes you uncomfortable. We shouldn’t romanticize destructive behavior merely because the relationship carrying it is old.

Real love can tolerate another person’s growth even when that growth changes the relationship. Sometimes the most loving thing you can tell somebody is to go. Go build the business. Go save the money. Go finish school. Go repair your relationship. Go get healthy. Go get sober. Go heal. Go become the person you’ve been talking about becoming. If your growth means we don’t hang out as much, I’ll survive. If you can’t afford dinner tonight, stay home. If you need to study, study. If your relationship needs your attention, go home to your partner. If you need the gym more than happy hour, I’ll catch you another day. Your progress should never become my personal rejection.

Maybe we should spend less time measuring friendship exclusively by years and start measuring some of it by the fruit it produces. Who encourages your discipline? Who respects your boundaries? Who celebrates your progress without somehow making it about themselves? Who tells you to save your money instead of helping you spend it? Who pays full price when you start your business because they genuinely want to see it survive? Who can watch you climb without asking you to come back down and keep them company?

Allow yourself to be loved more than you allow yourself to make excuses for people who continually contribute to your roadblocks. Everybody close to us isn’t required to have all the answers, and real friends will occasionally make mistakes just like we will. But there is an enormous difference between someone imperfectly loving you and someone repeatedly encouraging the very worst behavior they know is destroying your progress.

Anybody can stand beside you while you’re stuck. Pay attention to the people who are genuinely happy to watch you grow.

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