I was wondering if it's perfectly acceptable to do that. Years ago, I hung out with my friends a lot. I never really wanted to participate in anything at school. I just only had friends on my mind. Everything seemed cool whenever I hung out wih them. Then I left home when I joined the military. It's been four years now and I recently came back a few months ago. Everything seems different. I made different kinds of friends in the military. A couple of them i discussed some personal things like gender identity with. I noticed a lot of bad things about me that I'm working on fixing. I also learned more about myself and realized some people can be downright cruel. I felt like I made actual friends while I was gone. I now noticed this when I decided to hang out with an old friend back home. He acted incredibly rude about me about the way I seem to be more quiet now, And he acted very competitive and bragged about how many games he had and seemed to care only about being rude. I'm sure he was just being what friends would do, but it seemed a bit much harsh. I noticed him and his brother acted indifferent and repulsive to LGBT people. They have no clue about me. They seemed quite immature to be honest. I also started to notice this in my other friends from high school. One of them is joining the military, and he says it's going to be easy. I see he doesn't even care about it and doesn't take something like that seriously. My other friend just seems to hate a lot of things because they aren't to his views. I felt out of place since coming back home. I think about the few friends I made in the military. They really helped me not feel ashamed, guilty, or hateful to myself. I really liked them a lot. My friends back here seem to not like me anymore because they said I've changed and they don't really like it much. I feel conflicted a lot about this.
Hey there, The answer seems to be in your post. You need to surround yourself with people who will make the best come out of you. You seem to have matured a lot, relatively to your friends from high school. You need to be around people who make you feel good about yourself, and that you enjoy being around. There’s no point in hanging on to a friendship that would just remind you of the past and you used to be. You’ve changed as a person, and that’s great. Your friends have changed. Let me put it this way. You were predisposed to be who you are today. But you had to become that person. Back when you were in high school, you were still pretty indistinct. Your friends were also pretty indistinct. So you got along and were somewhat influenced by them. But that was just a ripple across the line that is the trajectory of your life. At the beginning of the trajectory, all points start out the same. As they progress, they slowly start to diverge from one another. So, the people you got along with became who they really were and you became who you really were. It just so happens that you both went in different directions. I’m not putting this into words very well. You had good times with your friends in high school and you should be happy with that time you enjoyed. Now that the distance between your two trajectories has gotten greater, the differences between you and them have also increased. Now, you need to find people who are on the similar trajectory as you are. Prune the branches of friendship. Cut away the old, useless, dead ones, so that the new ones have room to come in. That’s just my two cents of course. Hope I’ve helped in some small way.
I think it's ok to ditch friends, not through a blowout, but by simply tapering down the rapport. For me, it has been easy. They have gotten married and ditched me. A few, about 2 or 3, got to be too much and I ditched them. That said, I find one keeps friends that go way, way back, and that there might then be a void, from the late teens to early or mid twenties, and then another relevant group of friends crops up. That your friends are changing means you are changing, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Surround yourself with the people that make you happy. If your old friends no longer serve you, then find new friends.
One of my favourite quotes: "‘Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for a while, leave footprints on out hearts, and we are never, ever the same.” ~ Flavia Weedn" It's not called ditching in my opinion if they're so inconsiderate of you. You are simply moving on to better things - you want to find people that can make you soar, and leave those that drag you down, behind.
I agree with the others really. You should be with the people who you really like, and who you're able to be yourself with. I'm sure you've changed a lot during your time in the military, while your old friends have chosen different paths in their lives. It's only natural for you to drift apart, isn't it? If you simply don't get along that well anymore, why try to force a friendship? I experienced the same thing after I went on an exchange for a year. I had learned a lot, and because we were apart for so long, I lost some friends in the process. I also learned who were my real friends back in my own country and made a lot of new friends in Japan. Now that I think about it, I'm very happy it went this way, because I'd much rather have close friends that I can trust than a lot of superficial friendships I hope you're able to figure this out without everything getting too complicated. Just don't feel bad - people change .
I'd say stick with your friends from the military. Clearly, you've gone through things which have made you grow up and your friends back home didn't, so you're no longer at the same level as they are (which is probably a good thing). So why bother with them when you have other friends with whom you relate better? And LOL at the kid who thinks joining the military will be "easy."
