You’ve finally made a good friend. You’ve put the time, effort, and energy into being a friend and you were rewarded with a deep friendship. Then out of the blue they sit you down and tell you they’re moving.
What do you say? What you say will determine whether you keep your friend or whether you’ll drift apart after the move.
Of course you are shocked and so many different thoughts are running through your mind. How should you respond?
What is your face already communicating?
Having the clarity to say the right thing in a moment filled with so many different emotions is harder than you think.
I live in a fairly transient area and because I pastor a church in that area I’ve experienced many of these announcements. I’ve also observed others receive such news and either respond with grace or with raw emotions.
If you don’t have a pre-formulated response ready you’ll speak from your loss and hurt. Depending on how deeply you feel the loss you can speak from a place of disappointment, pain, and even betrayal.
As you might imagine your sense of loss and sadness is in conflict with your friends’ sense of excitement about a new adventure and opportunity. When you have two friends who are on the opposite end of the spectrum about the same event you have the potential for an enormous amount of misunderstanding.
Now you understand why what you say in those first few moments will determine whether you keep your friend or whether you’ll drift apart.
What’s the right thing to say?
Do you communicate the part of you that feels like you aren’t good enough? The part of you that feels sorry for yourself and your loss? Or the part of you that loves seeing them excited?
Do you communicate the part of you that really is happy to see your friend succeed and pursue more of their dreams? Or the part of you that feels like your friendship is being traded in for more money?
Maybe there is a place to communicate all of those feelings, but there is only one thing that needs to be communicated immediately after the news is shared.
What is it?
“I’m so happy for you!”
As hard as that might be to say in that moment you understand the difficult challenge of “Rejoicing with those who rejoice.”
A true friend ultimately wants what’s best for their friend not what’s best for themselves.
It’s difficult to say that you are happy for them because you truly comprehend what you’re losing. But if you want to keep the friendship…lean into their excitement.
You aren’t losing your friend it’s just a change in the relationship.
There’s a big difference between an address change and the death of a friendship.
You’ll experience both if you don’t respond in an unselfish manner.
Selfish people can only look at it from their perspective of loss instead of what their friend is gaining.
Your friend will always remember how you respond. So be gracious. They will be looking at your body language a lot closer than you want for clues about your thoughts. They probably will be insecure and reading too much into what you say or don’t say. Just be sure to tell them that you are happy for them. It’s what you would want if you were the one making the announcement.
You will have time to process your other thoughts and even discuss them, but the first words after such a revelation shouldn’t be about you. It should be about them.
The world is smaller than you think. Some of my best friends live several hours away…even in other states. You need as many friends as possible if you are going to thrive in life. Make sure you keep the friendship you worked so hard to build by saying the right thing.
Remind yourself…you aren’t losing a friend it’s just a change in the relationship.
