Like Grateful, I have friends both in and out of program. I have released friends who were toxic but also re-established friendships with friends I had let go of many years ago(mainly because I couldn't handle their personalities but program has helped me set boundaries and learn what is acceptable to me or not). I am an extrovert, though, so making friends and having acquaintances comes easy to me. And, for what it's worth, keeping a friendship going is a two way street and it's not just your responsibility. If you have friends where you are the only social planner or you initiate contact all the time, you might want to evaluate this as a friendship or at what level you feel comfortable still putting energy into it, if that makes sense.

I have a friend, outside of program, whom I've known for 10 years. There have been years where our boys were best friends and we saw each other frequently. Today, our friendship struggles because of our schedules and mostly it's her schedule. They adopted 2 brothers from Ethiopia 3 years ago and then opened up a franchise soccer store last year and she has been working 60 hours a week plus taking care of 4 kids now. Yet, she has always reached out to me, even if we haven't spoken for 3 months and will tell me she misses me and makes time to do coffee at 8 AM if that's all she has available. We still meet at least once a month for 40 minutes and we both appreciate each other and support each other. She never judges me, she supports me and my decisions as I do with her, as well. It's one of the healthiest relationships I've ever had and I am so grateful to her for her love and friendship. This is the friendship that I use to take inventory of my other friendships, especially outside of program. It gives me a guideline for how I want other friendships to unfold.

Hope this helps, I know that having and keeping friends is hard. We all live such busy lives and our priorities get all messed up and living with alcoholism doesn't set us up for much healthy stuff until we've worked a program for a while. Ask your HP for guidance and for him to show you the next steps in building and maintaining friendships in your life.

 

 

Aloha Willow...your share reminds me of the program philosophy of acceptance...Life on life's terms.  Everything changes and nothing remains the same and so for me I had to accept a new balance tool...change.  Being able to understand new friends and letting go or letting loose of old friendships is good lesson for me.  Others in my life have their own decisions in spite of how I feel about things or see them and when I learned how to allow the alcoholic/addict the dignity in accepting the consequences of her choices it wasn't much of a stretch to do that with everyone else including myself.  I love the "re-meetings" planned or other wise because here in Hawaii we are expressive to the max often with laughing, dancing, hugging and more.  Re-meets for me are like the continuation of a good party I had left for a while.  I try to be the best friend I can and program really supports that.    ((((hugs))))