Dear Harriet, I am 52 years old man, self employed and a constant reader of your column every Saturday. I need your counsel on how to revive a lost friendship, please help me. –Anonymous Lagos.
Thanks for your text message, long lost friendships happen over time base on different reasons, sometimes might be situation beyond a person’s control, for instance you grow up, move away, get married, start a family and make career moves before you realise it you lost touch with many of your close friends, more so, people change for different reasons, so the friends you once were close to may not want to have a relationship with you anymore with time so reviving lost friendship can be tough but here are some useful tips that might be of help: Diagnose the cause; a lost friend can happen at any age so at what point and how did you get disconnected. A proper evaluation of the situation will help you know how to bring that friendship back to life again or how to connect with your friend provided that you did not have an unresolved misunderstanding, if that is the case, first is to find a way to address the problem with your friend amicably. Next step is to find a way to reach out to your friend; try to search for your friend, this can be done through, may be common friends you both share, relatives if you happen to know any of them, or social media. For example make a phone call, sometimes the most challenging part of reactivating a lost friendship is simply finding that person again. if it has been a long time you saw or heard from the person, he or she might have moved to a different location, you might not be able to reach out to them even on the phone in case there’s a change of number, some calls to other people who could give you information on how to reach your old friend should be considered.
Furthermore, once you are able to reach out to your friend, invite him or her to lunch; the easy way to renew an old friendship is over a nice friendly lunch or outing. A public social setting (restaurant, an eat treat) is always one of the best way to create a relaxed, no strings environment. You will both feel more at ease and discuss openly, catching up on each other’s lives. Moreover, plan a play date; if you both have a family now, it will be nice to plan a play date with your children. Arrange fun outing with the children, do have fun outside the house doing activities that benefit both families, this will also give room for both families to get to know each other, active and busy rather than just sitting and looking at each other, running out of conversation in no time. In addition, understanding is very vital in reviving lost friendship; in some cases it might just be difficult to restore an old friendship, especially if there may be hurt feelings or perhaps too much water flowed under the bridge. Or may be the person is going through some challenges that prevent him or her from re-forming the friendship with you at the moment. The approach to such situation is patient and understanding if things don’t go the way or at the rate you expected them to.
The need to rebuild respect is an aspect that must not be neglected; respect suffers in some cases of disconnection of friendship so if your friendship is to survive it will ultimately depend on the reviving of respect. Taking away respect from a friendship is removing the most splendid ornament it possesses. To beginning this step is to first identify your friend’s most admirable qualities, make a list of these qualities of character. The reason is not to whitewash your friend’s personality but to appreciate his or her strength and accept his or her weaknesses, bearing in mind that people are partially good and bad but most of life including our friendships plays a variety of colours and we must learn to accept the fact so that we don’t miss out of a lot of relationships. Friendship is about accepting each other’s imperfections In addition, you might need to own up to your end of the relationship by offering a genuine apology (if you are the offender) for not being the kind of friend you could have been. Identify specific things you did that contributed to the friendship failure, admit them to your friend in an apology, and seek forgiveness with a sincere heart so that mutual respect can follow. This will make you feel better with yourself because you are the main beneficiary of reconciliation but if you feel pain of regret or remorse when you think about a lost friend and you pay no attention to it, you will never know what might generated into a great wonderful friendship although some people believe that some friendship are not worth reviving so long there is no enmity involved. Trust is essential and the relationship must be reunion on trust without any doubt. This might not happen immediately because of the gap over time but with time things will fall in place. Take care of yourself and each other.
