Choosing People Who Choose You

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that being in a relationship with people is actually a choice we make on a daily basis. We are constantly choosing to show up, to engage with the people in our lives – whether those relationships are friendship or romantic partnership or even familial. (Reminder: we can opt out of family dynamics). And just because we’re choosing to show up well with people we care about doesn’t mean we’re actually being met in return. And I, for one, have finally reached a point in my life where I’m fucking tired of choosing people who don’t choose me back.

Now, to be clear, making friends as an adult is hard. So is dating. So is trying to navigate connecting with people in general. Relationships of all shapes and sizes and dynamics are challenging because err’body’s different! 

However… we don’t have to settle for a bunch of bullshit from people just because we’re afraid we can’t do better. 

We absolutely deserve relationships with people who can show up in ways that are meaningful and supportive, who can make us feel seen and valued. It’s important to get clear on our baseline standards for that and to then stick to those boundaries (more on that below). We have more agency around cultivating supportive relationships than we typically realize. It’s our job to get clear on our needs with the people we choose to show up for, and it’s also our job to be open-minded about how to recognize when people choose us in return.

Letting Go of the Golden Rule

Treating others as you would like to be treated is a great idea in theory, but in practice, it actually kinda falls short. Why? Because we don’t all want to be treated the same way. What love and care and support look like for me is probably different for you or your partner or your mom. That’s where relationships get tangled a lot of the time – people don’t treat us the way we want to be treated, and we forget that doesn’t mean they’re doing it wrong. 

When we gauge our relationships by our own metrics of care, we’re often missing the mark. Because what we love and value and cherish about other people is that they aren’t the same as us. They add things to our lives that we can’t access or create on our own. So measuring a relationship against how we would show up in any given situation will just set us up for disappointment.

Here’s an example.

I have a dear, dear friend who lives in the midwest. We’ve known each other since grad school (egads – 2007), and we’ve lived in separate cities since 2009. We’re both kickass single ladies with grown up jobs and enough money in the bank to take long weekends across the country. Over the last decade, I’ve been out to visit her at least four or five times, and she’s never once come to visit me. 

Now, I could easily pick that up and take it as a sign of imbalance in our friendship. I could decide it means she isn’t choosing me. I could take it fucking personally and make it a painful sticking point in our relationship. 

OR. I could take a step back and look at the fact that she hasn’t visited anyone since 2009. Girl doesn’t like to travel, y’all. It’s not her thing. Vacations for her are two weeks of time off working on home improvement projects – painting the exterior, revamping her garden, tending her nest – which is one of the things I love about her! She models nesting, pro-active home ownership, carefully considering design choices, going to estate sales… a lot of things that aren’t my natural go-to. So our friendship is rich and rewarding because we’re different people. I travel a lot, she doesn’t. I make quick decisions about a lot of things, she doesn’t. 

More importantly, though, there are plenty of signs that she’s choosing me right back in our friendship. When I call, we have lovely long conversations. When I do go visit, she’s thrilled. She’s present. She makes it a point to come up with fun stuff for us to do and makes it clear how happy she is that I’m there.

That’s choosing me. 

Turning relationships of any kind into a game of tit for tat will only leave us miserable. 

In both friendships and romantic relationships, I used to (and, let’s be real, still do sometimes) get hung up on who initiates conversations or hang outs. If I notice I’m doing the bulk of the initiating in a relationship or friendship, it can leave me feeling sad and rejected. And that IS something to pay attention to (especially in romantic connections). But it doesn’t have to be (and almost certainly shouldn’t be) the primary metric for gauging how much someone loves or cares about or wants me. 

Expanding Our Definitions of Care

Everyone has their own strengths in relationships. For my part, I’m super good at staying in touch with people. It’s probably a combination of my enneagram 2-ness and the impact of a period of adolescence when I legit didn’t have any friends (and the consequent CPTSD), but I am real good at maintaining relationships by reaching out to people I care about in small ways. I’ll send a text or a postcard or even pick up the phone and just call somebody while I’m on a walk or doing the dishes.

Now, something I’ve come to understand over a lot of years and a lot of tears is that most people aren’t as good as I am at this particular way of showing up. And that has nothing to do with me or how much they care about me. 

If my gauge of a friendship is whether somebody reaches out to me at random, I’m gonna be sorely disappointed most of the time. Or, I’m only going to be able to cultivate a small circle of relationships with people who share that particular penchant for connection. 

If my gauge, however, is more expansive, there’s a lot more room for all kinds of relationships. If I want to have meaningful relationships with a variety of types of people, it’s my job to pay attention to how they do show up and to then meet them where they are.

When we do connect, even if I’m the one to initiate, do I feel seen and heard? Do they make me feel safe and valued in their own unique way? Do they communicate care?

Those are the baseline requirements for the relationships I want in my life. I want to choose people who see me, who make me feel safe, and who show me that they care. 

To have and maintain those kinds of relationships requires looking for evidence of care rather than evidence of neglect. If we’re always looking for signs that someone doesn’t care or won’t show up or is going to leave – we’ll find it. If, on the other hand, we’re paying attention to the ways they do show up and they do communicate care, we’ll probably find that instead.

What Choosing Someone Looks Like

Here’s what it looks like for someone to choose you. Now, keep in mind that NOBODY is able to do all of these things all of the time, and you shouldn’t expect that. It’s much too long a list. And everyone is going to have their unique strong suits. But I think it might be helpful to see a list and think about who in your life does some of this stuff, and to then honestly assess who are the people who can’t manage much of it at all.

Choosing you looks like:

• Answering the phone when you call and being present for the conversation
• Returning your calls/texts in a timely manner
• Seeming happy to hear from you or see you when you get together
• Holding emotional space for you when you’re hurting
• Being fully present when you’re together
• Asking questions about you and what’s going on in your life (expressing curiosity)
• Remembering details about your life and what’s going on with you right now
• Initiating conversations and plans to connect
• Planning ahead/getting things on the calendar
• Checking in on you after something difficult in your life
• Being able to have conversations about hurt feelings
• Apologizing when they’ve hurt your feelings
• Forgiving you when you hurt theirs
• Bringing up issues before they escalate beyond repair
• Trusting you with their vulnerability (and tears)
• Making themselves available when you need support
• Reaching out when they need support
• Sharing time/emotional space when you talk
• Honoring commitments by showing up for them
• Being relatively on time and apologizing for running late
• Letting you know in a timely manner if they have to cancel
• Proposing alternatives/follow up plans after a cancellation
• Being kind and understanding when you have to cancel plans
• Offering to help without being asked
• Showing up to help when asked
• Honoring your boundaries when you’re brave enough to set them
• Telling you their boundaries so you know how they want to be treated

Again, nobody will be good at all of this stuff. Please don’t take this as some sort of checklist for the perfect friendship or relationship. Some folks will be real good at making themselves available when we reach out but struggle with reaching out to others. Some folks will be better at holding space for vulnerability than they are with sharing their own. Some folks will be better at phone calls than meeting up IRL (and vice versa).

We’re all growing, healing, imperfect humans and we can’t manage anywhere near all of this all of the time. Let’s look at this list and appreciate what people can offer rather than looking for ways they fall short. And…

Some of these things are likely more important to you than others. Some of them should actually be dealbreakers for you, especially in romantic relationships. Getting clear on those things will help you communicate those needs to potential (or current) friends and partners and recognize when someone isn’t able to show up in the ways you need. 

Then you get to choose if you want to keep showing up anyway, or if you want to opt out.

It’s important that the people we are choosing to make space for in our lives can show up for some of this. And for us to get clear on what any given person can and can’t offer. If they can’t meet our core needs for showing up, that doesn’t mean we have to cut them out entirely, but it probably means we need to readjust how we view the relationship. 

Closeness and intimacy require reciprocity. If someone can’t meet us where we want them to, we get to choose how we want to keep showing up. The real trick is to stop taking it fucking personally when they can’t meet us on our terms. Then, we can choose if what they’re offering is enough and meet them there. Or, the harder (and sometimes healthier) choice may be to let go of the people who aren’t choosing us back. Because we all deserve to feel like the people we are offering our time and love and energy to are choosing us in return.