Stay with the people who want your true happiness.
I was about halfway through my PhD when I turned 25, and lived a fairly dualistic life: I had incredible friends and close relationships through my church, and was gaining so much wisdom and experienced so much love from them. I was learning that life is full of so many gifts, and that all of reality is positive, if I choose to engage it as such. I had so many moments of pure joy doing science, hiking, playing music, and talking and sharing life with those friends.
But I also was, to use an extreme term, "addicted" to a bad relationship with a guy who was wrong for me. I was so terrified of losing his "love" (in quotes, because we had VERY different definitions), that I stayed close friends with him when I should have created distance. I don't regret the relationship, and I still wish for his happiness intensely, but I wish I had learned sooner that my true friends were the ones who sincerely wanted my happiness, and that staying close to them would help me grow through all of the hardships - including that eventual, devastating break-up.
I was about halfway through my PhD when I turned 25, and lived a fairly dualistic life: I had incredible friends and close relationships through my church, and was gaining so much wisdom and experienced so much love from them. I was learning that life is full of so many gifts, and that all of reality is positive, if I choose to engage it as such. I had so many moments of pure joy doing science, hiking, playing music, and talking and sharing life with those friends.
But I also was, to use an extreme term, "addicted" to a bad relationship with a guy who was wrong for me. I was so terrified of losing his "love" (in quotes, because we had VERY different definitions), that I stayed close friends with him when I should have created distance. I don't regret the relationship, and I still wish for his happiness intensely, but I wish I had learned sooner that my true friends were the ones who sincerely wanted my happiness, and that staying close to them would help me grow through all of the hardships - including that eventual, devastating break-up.