Our friendship has changed...

We are a group of three friends and have been together since school. We went to the same college and two of my friends are now in relationships. This is the first time since they have been dating, and it has changed the dynamics between us in ways that I can’t understand yet. I always feel as if I am the odd man out whenever we go out because I have to sit by myself while they chat with their girlfriends. They try and put subtle pressure on me to either start dating someone myself or avoid coming out if they are on dates. This has never happened before, and I am being made to feel as if I don’t belong which is hurtful and hard to manage. We have been friends for most of our lives, and I can’t understand how the presence of two new people has made me less important to people whom I thought I knew. Should I assume this friendship will never recover?
Friendships, like all relationships, evolve over time. This is normal because they stagnate if there is no change, and people can drift apart even without the appearance of new people. What your friends are going through isn’t abnormal, nor is your feeling of being left out. This requires a bit of navigation as well as empathy from everyone involved. Your friends don’t know how to manage their individual relationships yet, and you are entitled to be hurt by their attitude. What can help is trying to see this from their perspective and starting to accept that things will never be the way they were. Teenagers become adults, and adults change their attitudes towards other adults all the time. What you think of as drifting apart is inevitable because each of you will eventually have lives of your own with families of your own. This doesn’t mean an end to your friendship, as much as a shift in priorities. Give it time and you will all settle into this new phase.

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