Week Four: Experience with SET

Although I didn't have a title for it and perhaps didn't even realize I was making an analysis, Social Exchange Theory was instrumental in my decision to end my oldest friendship.  M and I had been like sisters for 16 years - from the time we were 12 years old to 28 years of age.  Looking back it was always a dysfunctional friendship but felt normal to us (we hadn't come from the most emotionally healthy and communicative families). As we left our small town and went off to college, I began seeing that the costs from this friendship heavily outweighed the benefits.  This new awareness came from comparing my friendship with M to my relationships with new college friends.  As I began to notice the negatives were outweighing the positives, I began attempts at altering the dysfunction in our relationship.  However, because relationships are two-way streets and M wasn't emotionally ready to make changes, I spent 7 years trying to evolve our friendship on my own.  When that didn't work, I analyzed my options: stay in an unhealthy, enmeshed friendship that lacks the kinds of benefits that I need in relationships OR end the friendship and put that energy into the other healthy relationships I had developed in adulthood.  I chose the latter.  And it was painful.  Painful for her and painful for me.  But ultimately less exhausting and stressful that it was to stay in this friendship.  I don't think she has forgiven me for severing ties but I know it was the best thing for both of us.