If not, it may not be worth pursuing a friendship with them anyways. If they’re good friends, they’ll be happy to make changes in the nature of your friendship to accommodate your needs. Make sure your friends understand exactly how you’re feeling. The issue, like so many do, falls on communication. As long as both parties understand what the other needs, meaningful friendships can look like pretty much anything. I haven’t spoken to someone who I consider to be one of my closest friends in almost two months, but that doesn’t make our relationship any less valuable to me. Friendships come in all shapes and sizes, and the only person who gets to decide whether or not they’re meaningful is you. You should never feel guilty prioritizing that over other things in your life.īut that doesn’t mean you can’t also maintain other relationships. Like all relationships, maintaining your friendship with yourself takes time and energy. Of all the friendships you’ll ever have, the one you share with yourself is without question the most important. Regardless of your situation, I think we have one thing in common– we’re experiencing a disconnect between our ability to socialize pre-COVID, and now.įirst off let me say that spending more time alone is seldom a bad thing. Maybe you find yourself spending less time around people because even small doses of socializing tire you out after having spent months in isolation. I forget that I need to be alone sometimes and am constantly exhausted. The problem is, that’s not really what I’m cut out to do. It’s like I’m overcompensating for the time lost over quarantine. If a day goes by where I don’t spend a significant portion of it hanging out with my friends, I subliminally consider it wasted. The social exhaustion I’ve been experiencing– and you may or may not be able to relate to this– has been caused by the fact that, now that I’m a little more comfortable seeing people in person, I feel like I need to be doing it all the time.
I’m so glad that you sent this in, because I’ve been experiencing a very similar phenomenon in my life as well! Unfortunately, this means that I don’t really have a good answer for you, but I’ve got a couple ideas that we can try out. Any advice on how to maintain meaningful friendships and also take care of myself, even if that means spending a lot more time alone? Being back in person for school is great but I’ve started noticing that I get socially exhausted a lot quicker now than I used to.
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