Sarah Marie Page remembers sitting in her friend’s bedroom in high school, planning out their entire lives together.
They had a name for their group: “The Seven Plus Kevin.” (Don’t ask who Kevin was; Sarah doesn’t remember either. It just rhymed with seven.)
There were seven of them total, and they’d been inseparable since junior high. They spent every day together after school. They made guesses about who would get married first, where everyone would end up, and what they’d all be doing in ten years.
“It felt like we were going to be friends forever,” Sarah told me. “It was like that scene in The Fox and the Hound when they’re little, and they’re like, ‘we’re gonna be friends forever, right?’”
You know how that movie ends, right?
Fast forward to 2018. Sarah had just graduated from law school and moved back to Arizona. Several of her high school friends had also moved back. She reached out, excited to reconnect.
“Let’s do lunch!” she said. “Let’s get back in touch!”
And that’s when she had the wake-up call.
A sad, devastating wake-up call that the relationship had changed so much.
“It was almost like grieving the loss of those relationships,” Sarah said. “I was ready to pick it back up from where we left off. And a lot of them were like, ‘No, we’ve moved on. Without you.’”
Seven years had passed. The blog they’d set up to stay connected had slowly died. They’d all gone to different colleges, built new lives, and found new friends.
And Sarah? She’d just assumed they’d always be there.
That assumption cost her those friendships.
The Instagram Lie We All Believe
Scroll through social media for five minutes, and you’ll see them: those sappy friendship quotes that promise us everything we want to hear.
“Real friendships can survive anything.”
“A true friend is by your side through all of life’s dramas, no matter their own troubles.”
“Best friends are forever.”
We see these quotes and think: Yes. That’s what I want. That’s what real friendship looks like.
And then we use them as permission to… do nothing.
Because if real friendships last forever, if they can survive anything, if true friends are always there no matter what… then we don’t actually have to do any work, right?
Wrong.
So painfully, devastatingly wrong.
Here’s what those Instagram quotes don’t tell you: Friendships require active, consistent work. Not passive hope. Not assumptions. Not “we’ll always be close because we were once close.”
Work.
And when we don’t do that work? Our friendships quietly fade away while we’re busy assuming they’ll always be there.
That’s what happened to Sarah.
How “Forever Friends” Quietly Disappear
When Sarah and her six friends (plus Kevin) graduated from high school in 2011, they had a plan. They were all going to different colleges, but they’d stay connected through a blog.
Each person had a day of the week. Sarah’s was on Wednesday.
“At first, we kind of kept in touch,” Sarah said. “But slowly, over the course of several years (it wasn’t like an all at once thing); we drifted apart.”
The blog lasted until maybe 2016 or 2017. A slow death. Posts are getting less frequent. Some people are stopping altogether. The comment section is getting quieter.
And Sarah? She fell into a pattern that I think a lot of us will recognize:
“Some of that was my own fault. Just kind of assuming they would always be there and ready to pick it back up. I got to the point where I would come into town, and sometimes I wouldn’t even tell anybody I was coming into town. I would just come and spend time with my family, but not really reach out to them as much.”
Read that again. She would come home and not even tell her “forever friends” she was there.
That’s how much she’d taken them for granted. How much she’d assumed they’d just… wait for her.
And here’s the brutal truth: Some of them did stay close. They kept putting in the work with each other. They’re probably still best friends today.
Just not with Sarah.
Because while they were actively maintaining those friendships, Sarah was passively assuming hers would survive on autopilot.
They didn’t.
The Lunch That Changed Everything
Picture this: You move back to your hometown after years away. You’re excited to reconnect with your old friend group. You reach out to get lunch.
You sit down at that table expecting to pick up where you left off. To feel that same closeness. To slide right back into the dynamic you remember.
Instead?
You feel like a stranger.
Inside jokes you don’t understand. Shared experiences you weren’t part of. A closeness between them that no longer includes you.
“Seven years is a long time,” Sarah said. “I just didn’t feel like I fit anymore.”
That realization (that your “forever friends” have moved on without you) is absolutely gutting.
“I remember actually grieving the loss of those relationships,” Sarah told me. “It was a grieving process.”
And it was. Because those friendships didn’t end in a fight or a dramatic falling-out. They ended with silence. With distance. With the slow realization that you’d let something precious slip away while you weren’t paying attention.
But here’s what Sarah said that really stopped me:
“That’s not fair to them to assume that they’re going to wait for you and that they’re not going to grow and change themselves and not find different priorities and different relationships.”
Ouch.
But she’s right.
When we assume our friends will always be there with zero effort on our part, we’re essentially saying: My life gets to move forward and change, but yours should stay frozen in time, waiting for me to decide you’re a priority again.
That’s not friendship. That’s selfishness.
And Sarah had to face that truth about herself. She had to acknowledge her role in letting those friendships die.
That’s a hard pill to swallow.
But you know what’s beautiful? She learned from it. And now she shows up in her friendships completely differently.
What “Doing the Work” Actually Looks Like
Fast forward to a few years ago. Sarah has a friend (someone she met in college) who she’s trying to stay connected with via video calls.
They schedule a call. The friend doesn’t show up.
They schedule another. She’s a no-show again.
This happens multiple times. Sarah’s getting frustrated. Her anxious attachment is kicking in. She’s sitting there waiting, not knowing if her friend will show up, unable to move on with her evening until she knows.
And here’s where Sarah did something different from what she did with her high school friends:
She had a hard conversation.
She sent her friend a message: “It sucks to be stood up. I have other things I could be doing with my evening. Instead, I’m sitting around waiting for you to respond, not knowing if you’re going to respond. I feel like I can’t move on until you let me know.”
Vulnerable. Direct. Honest.
And her friend responded with equal vulnerability: “I feel terrible that I’ve been doing that. Also, I have been dealing with severe depression lately.”
Sarah had no idea.
“I will say, I think that experience brought us a lot closer as friends,” Sarah told me. “Just getting to have a heart-to-heart there. Me saying, ‘Hey, I am anxiously attached. I cannot move on until I know, and so it’s hard to be left in the dark.’ And she’s like, ‘I am just struggling with severe depression, and sometimes I can’t even look at my phone.’”
That’s what doing the work looks like.
Both people are vulnerable. Both people are being honest about their needs and their struggles. Both people are choosing to show up and figure it out together instead of just letting it fade away.
“I will say it was very scary to send that message,” Sarah admitted. “I was like, this could be the end of this relationship. I could be ending this relationship. And I do care about her. That’s a scary thing.”
But you know what? That hard conversation opened up a whole new level of connection.
“Now more than anything, she is one that I am okay just burying my soul to and just opening up and saying this is how I feel,” Sarah said. “I think that stemmed from that experience: just opening up and being vulnerable and having her acknowledge and validate that, and then also her opening up and being vulnerable back. It opened up this channel and this pathway for really true and authentic communication.”
That’s a thriving friendship. And it didn’t happen by accident. It happened because both people did the work.
In the full episode, Sarah and I go deeper into what it actually felt like to have that vulnerable video call moment and how it transformed her friendship. If you’ve ever had a friendship that was drifting and wondered whether it was worth fighting for, her experience with “doing the work” might give you the push you need. Listen to the full episode here.
The Other Ways Sarah Shows Up Now
After losing her high school friendships, Sarah looked at the people in her life and made a decision:
“For the people that I want in my life, I have to do the work to keep you in my life. Otherwise, it’s going to be the same thing all over again. And that sucked, and I don’t want to go through that.”
So what does “doing the work” look like for Sarah now?
She Reaches Out Consistently
Not just when it’s convenient. Not just when she happens to be in town. Consistently.
Sometimes, that’s video calls to catch up. Sometimes it’s texting. Sometimes it’s making plans months in advance and actually following through.
She Travels to See People
Sarah has a good friend in Utah. Last year she visited twice. This year she’s been once so far.
She has another friend in Ireland. She took a trip to Ireland to see her.
“You don’t have to take trips to Ireland,” Sarah laughed. “But taking the time and making the effort to reach out.”
She Shows Up in Small, Thoughtful Ways
“I have been known to Door Dash my friends’ food if they’re having a particularly bad day,” Sarah said. “I’m like, I can’t get you an iced latte, but the DoorDash guy can.”
Small gestures. Consistent care. Showing up when it matters.
She Approaches Friendships from a Place of Care, Not Transaction
Sarah told me a story about a writer friend who had a bad experience with someone who approached their friendship transactionally.
The person asked Sarah’s friend to read her book, promising to read Sarah’s friend’s book in return. Sarah’s friend read the entire (long) book and gave thoughtful feedback.
The other person read 50 pages of her book and said, “This is not for me. I don’t like it. I think it sucks.”
(That book, by the way, is the one that got Sarah’s friend a literary agent. It’s good.)
“Coming at it as ‘what can you do for me.” People feel that,” Sarah said. “Even if it’s not from a very cynical place, people can feel that.”
Her strongest friendships? They’re the ones where both people are coming from a place of genuine care. Where it’s about lifting each other up, not keeping score.
When You Need to Supplement, Not Force
Here’s another way Sarah does the work now: She recognizes when she needs to find NEW friends for specific parts of her life instead of trying to force her existing friends to fill every role.
Sarah is a lawyer by day and a writer by night. (Fun fact: Each of her books is a love letter to a specific friend; she even gives the main characters her friends’ middle names!)
Writing can be incredibly lonely. It’s also full of rejection and disappointment. Query letters that go nowhere. Agents who pass. Drafts that need complete overhauls.
Her husband is supportive. He’s an academic, so he gets rejection from journals and such.
But he doesn’t get it the way other writers do.
So Sarah did the work to find her writer community.
She joined a writers group during the pandemic. Met a woman named Caitlin who lives in Ireland (yes, the one she visited!). Found another friend named Christina, who she considers one of her best friends now.
“Between the two of them, I think I met Caitlin in 2019, and Christina I just met last year,” Sarah said. “And between that, there are a lot of friendships of writers that just did not work out, because for whatever reason, we didn’t click.”
She waded through the awkwardness. The failed connections. The people who weren’t quite right.
Because having friends who truly understand that specific part of her life? Worth it.
“My writing friends get it when I get a rejection. They know exactly what I’m feeling. When I need to scream into the void and cry for a second because this is hard, they’re like ‘yeah.’ And when they’re having those days, I know exactly what they’re feeling.”
That’s the power of doing the work to build a support system that’s as dynamic as you are.
The Brutal Truth About Friendship
Sarah said something that really struck me:
“Friendships are like a plant. If you’re not putting in any time or any effort, it’s going to die.”
(For the record, I did not pay Sarah to use a plant metaphor. But yes, I have an entire “Roots of Friendship” framework based on this exact concept: Episode 12 if you want to dive deeper!)
But she’s absolutely right.
Those Instagram quotes that promise “real friends last forever”? They’re not technically wrong. Real friendships CAN last forever.
But only if you water them. Only if you give them sunlight. Only if you tend to them consistently, even when life gets busy, even when you move away, even when it would be easier to just… let them go.
The work isn’t optional. It’s the whole point.
The work looks like:
- ▪️ Reaching out even when you’re busy
- ▪️ Having hard conversations instead of letting resentment build
- ▪️ Being vulnerable about your needs
- ▪️ Showing up in small, consistent ways
- ▪️ Traveling to see people
- ▪️ Finding new friends for new seasons of life
- ▪️ Checking in regularly, not just when it’s convenient
- ▪️ Doing the thing even when it’s awkward or scary
And yes, sometimes even when you do all that work, the friendship still doesn’t survive. People change. Circumstances change. That’s life.
But at least you’ll know you tried. You won’t have that devastating moment of realizing you took someone for granted and lost them because you assumed they’d always be there.
If You’re Realizing You’ve Let Friendships Fade
Maybe you’re reading this and recognizing yourself in Sarah’s story.
Maybe you have friends you’ve been taking for granted. Friends you keep meaning to call but never do. Friends you assume will always be there, so you don’t prioritize them.
Or maybe you’re on the other side: you’re the friend who’s been putting in all the work while someone else assumes you’ll wait forever.
Here’s what I want you to know:
It’s not too late.
If there are friendships you want to save, you can start doing the work today. Right now.
Send the text. Make the call. Book the trip. Have the hard conversation.
Yes, it might be awkward. Yes, you might have to acknowledge that you haven’t been showing up the way you should have. Yes, some of those friendships might be too far gone.
But some of them won’t be. Some of those friends will be so relieved that you finally reached out. So grateful that you’re willing to do the work now.
You just have to actually do it.
And if you’re the friend who’s been waiting? You get to decide if you want to give them another chance. You get to decide if their renewed effort is enough, or if you’ve moved on.
Both choices are valid.
But please, please, please stop believing those Instagram quotes that tell you real friendships require no effort.
They require ALL the effort.
And the friendships that survive? The ones that truly last? They’re worth every bit of work you put into them.
Start Here: Pick One Friend
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by all of this, here’s where to start:
Pick one friend. Just one.
Someone you’ve been taking for granted. Someone you keep meaning to reach out to but haven’t. Someone you assume will always be there.
And do one small thing this week:
- ▪️ Send them a voice message
- ▪️ Text them something that reminded you of them
- ▪️ Schedule a call (and actually show up)
- ▪️ Tell them you miss them
- ▪️ Ask how they’re really doing
- ▪️ Share something vulnerable
Just one small action. One bit of effort. One tiny way of showing them they matter to you.
Because here’s the truth, Sarah learned the hard way:
Your friends won’t wait forever. And by the time you realize they’ve moved on, it might be too late to get them back.
Don’t let that be your story.
Do the work. Water the plants. Show up.
Your friendships (your real, lasting, forever friendships) depend on it.
In the full episode, Sarah and I talk much more about her journey back to intentional friendship after losing her “forever friend” group. If you’ve ever come home to find that the friendships you assumed would always be there have quietly moved on without you, her story will really resonate. Listen to the full episode here.
