Ask Jono: When Friends Get Weird

Dear Jono,

I need some help. I've been best friends with my best friend for about 4 years now. When we first met she was this awesome, funny, random, girl that reminded me you never grow out of things like Tinkerbell and stuff. But now we're a little older and maybe it's peer pressure, maybe it's her parents, or maybe it's just me, but she's not the same anymore, at least not around me. She's really serious, and she doesn't even smile when I do or say things that are silly and random. The weird thing is, when we're around any of our other friends, she acts pretty much like she used to, but when it's just me and her, she usually seem really cold and annoyed. I tried to talk to her, and I asked her what I did wrong. She said she didn't know what I was talking about, that she didn't know that she was acting differently. What should I do Jono? Should I try to repair our friendship? Should I just leave it alone and see what fate decides? Or should I tell her how I'm feeling and end our friendship? I don't know if I could do that. (I'm a girl, btw.)

This is an old e-mail. Vikings were exploring America, which was then called Dinosauropolis, when I first got this question. So for all I know, you got tired of waiting for my advice, and long ago decided to simply fill your friend's shoes with scorpions and be done with it. But in the off-chance you're still dealing with this situation (and because I know some other people will be), I've been wondering how to answer this in a way that isn't terribly depressing. Let's get to it.

Everyone changes.
If you were both 30 years old, and your friend suddenly started acting like she'd just found you standing over her empty shoes with a box of scorpions, then there might be an unresolved issue there. But you are literally at the point in life when everyone changes the most, sometimes dramatically and overnight. Kids who love Spider-Man will wake up one morning and be like, "No no, now I like things that are terrible," and they will melt down all their Spider-Men in the microwave and use them to poison a cat.

I too had someone get all changey on me once—he was normal around everyone else, but around me it was like some mockery of regular social interaction. "Do you want to get breakfast?" I would ask. "YES, LET US PLACE MATTER IN OUR FACE-HOLES, FELLOW EARTH-MAN," he would respond. Well, not really, but it was a kind of stilted weirdness like you're describing, so I'm familiar with all this. I suppose it's possible that all he grew out of was our specific friendship; I'll come back to that.

You change, too.
I've had the unfortunate opportunity to read things I once wrote in high school. I remember writing them, and I even remembering thinking, "Oh boy, this is so good," but if I could go back in time and meet one person, it wouldn't be Socrates or Jesus or Einstein; it would be High School Me, so I could just ceaselessly punch myself in the face, over and over, knowing that if I was causing a time paradox that would destroy the universe, at least it would prevent me from writing poetry moaning about the rain or whatever.

My point is that you're not just going to change; you might change so much that Previous You will strike you as some kind of humiliating android designed to embarrass you from the past. Furthermore, future-you and future-troublesome-best-friend may turn out to be perfectly compatible and friendly later on. For now, just bear with me on this point: absolutely everyone goes through changes that may seem completely invisible—except to everyone else, to whom they are extremely obvious.

You almost certainly didn't do anything wrong.
"But Jono, you admittedly attractive idiot!" you are probably saying. "She only changed around me, so what is up with that??" Well, first of all, your words sting me, like a shoe full of stinging scorpions. But this is the part where I kind of have to excuse myself from advising, and admit that I have only the most cursory understanding of how female humans work. If your Lady Sense informs you that her behavior actually does stem from some irrelevant thing you did two months ago, then there's something there that can be repaired, but that's not always the case. Sometimes people just move on from friendships, and you have to figure out whether or not they're worth your continued effort or not.

Confront her about your friendship.
Everyone grows up and changes, and sometimes people get unrecognizably weird. The thing is, it's harder to make new (close) friends than it is to put up with the old ones until they stop acting like a malfunctioning robot every time you enter the room, so it's worth making the effort to keep them. Probably the best way to deal with this is to be straightforward with her; tell her, up front, that you care about this friendship and need to know if she wants to continue actually being friends or not. Don't be confrontational or angry about it. You can't beg to make amends if you did nothing wrong, and you can't just hit her over the head with a golf club and be like "Friendship: Activate!" All you can do is be honest with her, and give her the chance to do the same.

Have you ever had an experience like this? What did you do?

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