Prayer for Relationships

Requests about the people around you who are not your spouse — a friendship that has gone quiet, an estrangement, someone you are trying to forgive.

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This page is for the people around you who are neither your spouse nor your family. Friends. Former friends. The colleague who makes every week harder. The neighbour it has become awkward to walk past. Someone you have been trying to forgive for a long time and have not managed to.

Adult friendships end strangely. Very few of them end in an argument. Most simply stop — a message not returned, a diary that never quite works, and then eighteen months have gone and it would be odd to write now. People are often surprised how much that hurts, and more surprised that they feel unable to say so.

Loneliness belongs here too. A person can be surrounded by acquaintances all week and have nobody who would notice if they went quiet for a fortnight. That is worth praying about and worth saying out loud.

How people pray about the people around them

A lot of this is prayer about forgiveness, and forgiveness is slower than most sermons imply. It is rarely a single decision. It is more often the same decision made repeatedly over a long period, each time the memory comes back, until eventually it comes back less. Praying about it is not evidence that it has not worked.

The second common shape is asking for one specific thing rather than a whole restored friendship: the nerve to send the message, the grace to let a remark go, the ability to sit in a room with someone without an atmosphere. Small requests here are the ones that get answered.

And there is prayer for people to arrive. Asking God for friends can feel undignified — it sounds like something a child would pray. It is one of the most reasonable requests on this wall, and a great many adults are quietly making it.

For a friendship that went quiet

God, I do not know what happened. Nothing was said and it just stopped, and I have written the message a dozen times without sending it. If I should send it, take the awkwardness out of the way. If that friendship is over, help me be grateful for what it was instead of picking at it. Amen.

When you are trying to forgive

Lord, I have said I forgive this and I clearly have not, because it came back again today. I do not want to spend another year carrying it. Take it a little further from me each time it returns, and do not let me become someone defined by it. Amen.

For someone who is lonely

Father, I have plenty of people and nobody close, and I am not sure how that happened. Bring one person into my life who would notice if I disappeared. And in the meantime make me the kind of person somebody else could find, rather than only waiting to be found. Amen.

What helps besides praying

Send the message. Almost nobody is annoyed to hear from an old friend after a long gap, and the awkwardness you are imagining is doing more work than the actual risk.
Turn up somewhere repeatedly. Adult friendships are made almost entirely by repetition in a shared place — the same class, the same church, the same football on Thursday — and almost never by a single good conversation.
Where someone treats you badly, name the behaviour rather than the person. What was said was cruel travels much further than you are cruel.
Forgiving someone does not require you to keep them close, and staying close does not require you to pretend it never happened. Those are two separate decisions.

Questions people ask

Do I have to forgive someone who is not sorry?: You can let go of what you are owed without the other person taking part, and that is the part within your control. It does not mean pretending it did not matter, and it does not oblige you to restore the friendship. Reconciliation takes two; forgiveness does not.
Is it selfish to pray for friends?: No. Being known by somebody is a plain human need, not a luxury item, and there is nothing in the text that treats loneliness as a failing to be endured quietly.
How do I pray for someone who has hurt me?: Most people start by praying for the ability to want good things for them, which is honest and is usually the true state of affairs. Praying for someone through gritted teeth counts. It is generally the first stage of it becoming genuine.
Should this be here or in Family?: Family is for parents, siblings and the relatives you did not choose. If your request is about a friend, a colleague, a neighbour or someone you are estranged from who is not related to you, this is the right page.