Finding Your Framily

Friends!

So happy to be back writing :) I've been discussing a lot with my mom, the Honest Yaya, what my next blog topic would be about. I've been very interested to write about relationships, friendships to be exact. On one of our walks recently we were discussing the idea that people don't know how to have genuine relationships anymore. Making a new friend these days seems to take a lot more effort than it once did, why is that? Are people just so non-committal and waiting for something better to come along? Maybe I am the only one who thinks about these things... but as someone who takes my relationships with people pretty seriously, I find as I get older, friendships come to me in a a few different forms instead of a clear cut mold.

Maybe it is just my love of science and classification but when I look at relationship patterns with people over the last ten years or so, I can't help but notice that gone are the days when you have one kind of friend. Also gone, is the ease behind getting and maintaining a quality friendship, Why is this?

From the time we start to really build relationships with people, until the day we die, we will make hundreds if not thousands of connections. Some of these connections will be meaningful, long lasting and true friendships and some will be fleeting, diminishing once one or both parties have gotten everything out of the relationship they need or want. I've personally had more friendships than fingers to count, but only a handful continue to make a genuine effort to truly be a good and present friend.

It is these types of friendships that I put into the "one-sided" or "self-serving friend" category. You all know what kind of individuals I am talking about. These are the people in your lives that maybe at one point in time, you made a connection with, talking every day, getting together a few times a month and then WHAM. It stops. If you aren't the one to reach out to them then contact is not going to happen. This is the point in time when your  friendship starts to become more of a job and you are the only one doing the work. I would say about 90% of my connections made since high school have turned out this way and that is OK! I am not here to judge and I am positive that somewhere there is someone who feels like I have been this kind of friend to them. The truth of the matter is this, people get busy... lives change and sometimes, you lose your commonalities that once brought you close to someone.

On the other side, you have your framily. The first time I ever heard this term was from my now very dear friend Madison. I giggled when I first heard this but when I thought more about it, this word perfectly described a subset of people in my life. In my college advertising classes we talked a lot about how people live by a tribe mentality more so than sticking close to just your blood relatives anymore, your urban tribe. This was me! I can say with absolute honesty that I have never been a huge "family" girl. I'm an only child who never really found anything in common with my mother's side of the family. After my paternal grandmother died, so did my connection to a lot of my dad's side of the family too. I have stayed close with my dad's sister and her sons but that is truly about it. This isn't something that keeps me up at night, in fact, I think it helps me sleep better! My entire life, I have found my family in my friends, my framily.

Much like the mentality behind a blood family, your framily is composed of those individuals that you may not talk to every single day of your life. They could live on opposite sides of the country and the stints between visits are month if not year long. You could disagree on important topics like, who is the ideal candidate for our next president, who JoJo should pick as her Bachelor or how the Chiefs were robbed another Super Bowl title. Whether you face all or none of these road blocks, it never matters to your framily at the end of the day. These people are there to listen when you've had a hard day or hold your hand through the best times of your life. They NEVER judge you. With framily, time is never a factor weighing on your friendship. It could be a day since you last spoke or a year and you are able to just pick back up, right where you left off :)


When I started high school, I remember it was so important to me to be friends with as many people as possible. Like friends were something collectible and the more you had, added to your worth. By the end of high school I started to see that quantity did not equal quality.  Fast forwarding to today, after having too many of these "one-sided" friendships to count, I can't help but think that people just don't like to commit to things anymore. I once thought that only men struggled with the concept of commitment but after a plague of unreturned texts or one-sided hang out invitations, it's starting to become clear that this may be an epidemic with no gender boundaries to be seen.

What's the point to this you ask? Honestly, I don't have an agenda other than to send a message to all the other bleeding heart sensitives like me...When someone truly cares is the time when they make an effort. Gone are the days when we need to be wasting hurt feelings and energy over these one-sided friendships. Put the effort into cultivating your framily because those are the people who will be by your side for a life time. Everything happens for a reason and everyone is sent into our lives for specific purposes, or at least this is what I choose to believe. Instead of wasting your time trying to figure out why someone won't put the effort into you anymore, turn it into a positive! Figure out what you learned from the time you spent with that individual and use your new found knowledge to create and maintain more meaningful relationships. After all, it takes a good friend to have a good friend :)

That's all I have for today beautiful people <3 Wishing you all a fun and safe Memorial holiday. Go make some friends!!

-Honest Momma