Make or Break

You did it.

I'm hoping that you practiced. Maybe you felt really ridiculous for writing your feelings on pad and paper, and scratching them out, and editing it twice, and keeping your ears perked up for an inappropriately placed "you." That's okay. It takes a lot of practice to be emotionally cognizant, and the proverbial Rome was not built in a day either.

You had an advantage. You practiced. You know the "I" stuff, the "you," and the "we." Your friend could have been really cool and did his own Google search for being a third wheel. Maybe he practiced, too.

Or not. You can never tell these things for sure.

Prepare for the talk.
Keep a cool head. The goal in talking things out is to reach out to the other person and to let your friend into your world. This is simultaneous. The words you choose, the tone you speak from, and the eye contact really help speak this real intention to share some feelings.

Your goal is to reinforce what you have been practicing. Keeping your emotions in check is vital. The clearer your head and the ability to stay cool and collected will allow your real feelings to show through your speech. If you're busy biting off words and tensing up in response to what's being shared -- it's not all flowers and sunshine and soft kittens, right? -- you'll self-sabotage all that hard work.

So, before going in there, relax. Get a bite to eat. Have something to drink. Relax. Take some breaths. Don't surreptitiously motor off what you've been writing on paper. Just take a minute to think about what you really want out of this talk. Make that the prominent image in your head. You want your buddy back! Think of the good times you've shared because careful word choices might make that happen again.

What if you're the victim of blame?
Just remember this simple rule. While talking, your job is to pick really good, thoughtful language to help open up the dialogue. Carefully chosen words can often diffuse any build-up going on in your friend before it even starts.

It's not perfect, though. Maybe your friend had a bad day and you happen to be on the tail end of some frustration. Is it your fault? No. Is it appropriate? Certainly not. Again, be cool.

Conversations are great because we tend to take turns with each other. You get heard. Your friend gets heard. You take turns speaking and listening. Frustration might make that difficult sometimes, and you might get cut off. Before you tell your buddy to pipe down, change your position. If you're leaning in, try straightening your back and sitting up. Try moving your hands. If they're in your lap, put them on the arm rests.

It's a pretty innocuous nonverbal change, but it really shows a shift in the conversational response. You're moving from "verbalizing" mode into a focused stance. It is not intended to be confrontational. After all, you aren't balling up your fists or tensing up ready to leave out of your chair to commence an eventual choke-hold.

Try the following strategy change. You know how to pick about bad "you" words. Your friend may fire off a full salvo of them. Recognize them, for your own sake, and then move on. You're really interested in the feeling part.

Here goes.

Fuck you, man! I call you back! Don't start that shit with me. I'm just super busy with my new girlfriend and classes. I don't get to spend time with anybody!

What's on the tail end? Your friend says, "I don't get to spend time with anybody." Granted, you'll bite your tongue before admitting that the girlfriend still gets time. I hear you. Beneath that angry bluster was something. What do you think?

Let's just stick with a literal interpretation. You're taking your friend's words at face value. He doesn't have much free time. He feels like he's in a time crunch and he has a lot of things that he feels are a bit much to juggle at the same time.

So, start there with your response. This is a great way to show active listening: that is, repeating the last thing you heard and offering it back. If all else fails, keep it simple.

Okay:
It sounds like you don't get to spend time with anybody.

Better:
It sounds like you're really pressed for time.

Don't be afraid to get literal. Seeing it in print, it looks like a cheap ploy. In actuality, being able to fire back that language is another quick, clever way to diffuse some tension. You use good language to make yourself heard, just like you try rehashing what the other person says so that they, too, feel heard.

Use your better judgment. The stronger the anger/resentment response, the safer it is to keep it simple and just fire back the same words. If you feel particularly proficient at good emotional language (see Exercise 1 from "Time to Talk"), and your respondent feels a bit cooler, try throwing it an emotion. Your friend might attach to it in the same way people go "Yeah!" when you get something right.

Talk it out.
This conversation can happen in one fell swoop, or it may take several get-togethers in order for the understanding to emerge. If things go well, the two of you can make plans to talk again. The sooner, the better. You want to go into subsequent talks still fresh off the progress you made in the previous one.

Is this relationship worth saving?
Unfortunately, this is the sixty-four million dollar question that I can't help you with right now. Why? You're ultimately the one who decides when a relationship is worth saving or abandoning.

In the process of prepping for the talk, you learned just exactly what you wanted to save, right?

I was willing to entertain the idea that, from the start, you might not be able to put all those positive memories together. They get lost in complacency, and as time goes on, we tend to forget things. We get bogged down in everyday foolishness and lose touch with what we really enjoy in life.

In the meantime, I recommend stopping where you left off and resuming your soul-searching another day. I also recognize that if you struggle with finding the good worth fighting for, and, as hard as you try it you fail at finding it after having taken several stabs at it, then maybe there isn't something worth fighting for after all.

There is no magic "second try" or "third one for charm" to this dilemma. You are ultimately the judge of what's worth keeping in your life.

Don't beat yourself up over it. Just like you can't blame individual circumstances for contributing to the make-ups and break-ups in your life, you can't beat yourself up for not "trying" hard enough to salvage a friendship. An unfortunate truth is that a good lot of the friendships we carve out in life are made to be transient.

Maybe you are blessed to have friends that date back to high school. And that's good! It's also uncommon. You have a set period of time -- four years, if it all works out well -- to have a set of peer relationships. Afterward, they tend to fade out as you embark on new life challenges. Your twenties are fraught with that, too, be in the friends you make in college or ones you pick up in the job market, or neighbors along the way, or co-workers or what have you. You start new classes, socialize in different circles, move to a new house, maybe even embark in a serious relationship with signs of marriage potential.

Good friendships really do weather all those storms. Sometimes you won't get to be so buddy-buddy and chummy as a typical, stable routine might afford you. After tending to hang out every week or two, life may catch up and you find that several months have gone by.

Life happens. Relationships can and do survive life's challenges. It only takes one good spark -- just a bit of kindling -- to bridge those gaps. People can be close, grow apart, and pick up where they left off.

However these talks progress, ask yourself one simple question.

What do you mean to me?
You have already answered the question before. Recognizing it or not, you were doing this way at the beginning when I asked you to think more about the friend you care about and love, the friend you miss who, all of a sudden, got bogged down in his life.

The strong emotions and the powerful relationships that created them, I think, are worth fighting for. They are worth a few bad conversations and even some misplaced blame and anger. They are worth trying again.

There's a big difference between stumbling for words when thinking what someone means to you, and -- flat out -- not having anything worth fighting for. Give it some time. Between the talks, try to figure it out. Don't overanalyze it. Don't try to generate this false system to establish how much a given friend is "worth." Don't assume arbitrary values to hiking trips, video games, or happy hours.

Just let your heart tell you what's what, and let your head give you the foresight and understanding to deliver those words.