There are all kinds of quizzes out there about how to tell if you’re compatible with someone, but I’ve come to appreciate that I am already in possession of the best relationship barometer ever.
We all are.
I first came to this realization with the dissolution of an old friendship.
This was a tough one.
I met Sam, I’ll call him, when I moved to California to study Spiritual Psychology at John F. Kennedy University in the early 90’s.
The early 90’s! Remember them?
Dial-up modems! Grunge rock! Beverly Hills 90210!
It was a super groovy time, and Sam was a super groovy friend.
We bonded instantly. He was super woo woo, like me, and had a smart-ass sense of humor. (No better combination, in my book.) He was also brilliant and sensitive and just generally an all-around awesome person.
We were in a lot of the same classes, so we spent tons of time together and became great friends.
Sam got married soon after we graduated, and he and his wife started having kids, so the two of us drifted apart for a while. He lived down in the Bay Area and I moved up to Sonoma County, so that added to the distance.
Eventually, though, we started reconnecting. We talked on the phone regularly, and we hung out in person from time to time.
Once Melissa and I got together, Sam and Melissa hit it off, so the three of us began hanging out regularly as well. Sam came to view Melissa as one of his closest friends, and told her so frequently.
About ten years ago, Sam and his wife divorced. It was a particularly contentious break up, involving a custody battle and a gnarly division of finances. Melissa and I supported Sam through the gnarliness, strengthening the friendship between the three of us even more.
Everything was great!
Until it wasn’t.
It started with a text. Melissa reached out to Sam for support when one of her family members was going through a hard time. Sam works in the mental health field, and he often had particularly astute and sensitive insights about psychological matters.
Except in this case, he texted Melissa back to say he had a movie to watch.
Not in a theater. Not a Netflix and chill situation with a hot date. Just a movie he wanted to watch. Even though he’d told Melissa previously that he’d be happy to talk to her about her family situation.
The three of us had a group text thread, so I tried to “help out” by letting Sam know that Melissa was having a particularly hard time, and it would be great if he could perhaps be flexible in his movie watching activities.
No reply.
It was extremely odd and, we thought, out of character for him.
When Melissa sent Sam a voice memo, a few days later, to let him know that his Moviegate response (as we came to call it) was hurtful, he texted back a stiff and formal reply that sounded like it had been written by AI.
What had happened to our friend? Had he been replaced by an AI bot? It sure sounded like it.
Eventually, a clearer picture began to emerge.
Through a series of texts and emails between Sam, Melissa, and me, Sam let us know that he wanted to step back from a friendship with the three of us. He said he was willing to stay friends with each of us separately, but it sounded like he mostly just wanted to stay friends with me. The way he talked about Melissa was dismissive and disrespectful. Which felt horrible not only to Melissa, but to me as well.
I was now in the awful position of feeling like I needed to choose between Sam, my friend of over twenty years, and my wife.
Although it was a no-brainer, because of course I’m going to choose my wife.
The whole thing was confusing, disorienting, and painful.
As I thought about my friendship with Sam in the months after it ended, one thing kept coming back into my awareness.
There are a lot of ways to describe it, but it boils down to this: Every time after I hung out with Sam, I was exhausted.
This had been going on for years, and I was constantly coming up with “reasons” why, usually blaming it on not having had enough sleep the night before.
With anyone else, I would pay attention to the fact that my body felt utterly drained after spending time with them. But this was Sam! My old buddy Sam! This must be an exception to the message of serious wisdom from my body temple.
Right?
No. Not right.
I came to realize that my body had been predicting the dissolution of my friendship with Sam years before it happened. I just wasn’t willing to listen.
Melissa had felt similarly drained after spending time with Sam. We acknowledged, even back then, that Sam’s need to process often devolved into a mental loop that felt exhausting.
But this was Sam! My old buddy Sam!
As the weeks went by, other problems emerged in the rear-view mirror of my friendship with Sam. The way he seemed oddly threatened by Melissa’s and my ministry. His sudden cutting off of other friendships. The unsolicited feedback he gave me that became more and more off base.
I had been overlooking these things – no one is perfect, after all – but my body hadn’t.
Turns out that I have an extremely sensitive and intricately calibrated physical system that acts as the best relationship test ever:
How do I feel after I hang out with someone?
Do I feel alive and energized, as I did when I first hung out with Melissa almost twenty years ago? (So much so that the friend I went walking with the next morning said I was still glowing from my time with Melissa the night before.)
Or do I feel drained and exhausted?
It’s such a simple test, but it can be tricky and complicated to acknowledge what our bodies are telling us.
In the case of Sam, I wasn’t ready to hear it.
It wasn’t until afterwards that I was able to put the pieces together.
But the experience changed me.
Since then, I have taken my body’s messages more seriously.
I do my best to honor the wisdom that lives in me, 24/7.
I am less inclined to talk myself out of what my body is telling me.
I remember that my extremely sensitive and intricately calibrated physical system is capable of telling me things I may not be ready to hear yet.
But I need to listen.
How about you? When has your body told you things your mind isn’t ready to hear yet? Share your comments below!
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