Reflections about friends
Every now and then I reflect on the people in my life and also see if I can simplify my social circle. It might sound Machiavellian but I think of it as the social equivalent of cleaning my room. If I didn’t want random clutter in my room, why would I want random people in my life? For me, less is more when it comes to friends.
The most productive thing I did was that I unfollowed (not unfriend) all my Facebook “friends”. I didn’t need to know about the travels of a classmate from high school that I didn’t keep in touch with anymore. Or that my freshman year lab partner got pregnant. It might as well have been news from strangers halfway around the world. After I cleaned up my news feed, I realized it was redundant — I already know the important things happening in my close friends’ lives because I talk to them regularly.
Now I mainly use Facebook for planning events with actual friends. And I like it this way. Removing people from my newsfeed freed up my mental space and gave me more time and energy to connect with people I wanted to spend time with.
I also reevaluate the quality of my relationships. We often find ourselves in friend groups in which we’re not close to everyone. It’s normal in these situations to feel obligated to maintain a relationship with everyone in that group despite only being actual friends with one or two people. But you don’t have to.
It’s ok to admit there are some friends you don’t have a genuine connection with. It’s common for friend groups to succeed early on when people meet each other for the first time. Later on, many of us change, or the dynamic of the friend group changes, and we may start questioning whether there’s value in maintaining any of those relationships. Some of us might continue staying in the friend group out of convenience and comfort. Or we would feel guilty for severing our ties with someone we’ve known for a long time.
This was the case with a friend I’d known since middle school. We were best friends for a long time but things changed. I felt like he couldn’t relate to the things I talked about and the relationship became one-sided. At this point in my life, I had known my friend longer than I had not known him and it felt strange to intentionally stop putting energy into the friendship. But I decided I was doing my friend a disservice by giving him a false sense of our friendship. It was better for both of us if we weren’t friends.
It’s also worth looking at the type of friendships you have. Do you mostly have friendships of pleasure? These are friends that share a common activity with you. They might be coworkers, teammates, or drinking buddies. I think it’s perfectly fine to have these connections; it’s easy to build community when you enjoy doing the same things together. It’s common to see extroverts juggle multiple friend groups, each one based on a different activity.
But if these friends are all you have, your social circle can quickly disappear if you’re no longer able to participate in the shared interest. Fortunately, these friendships can naturally become deeper. What starts as a friendship of pleasure can become more if the two of you discover more significant commonalities. But sometimes we have to take a leap of faith and invest some effort.
I remember finishing a climbing session with some friends once, and decided to invite them out to dinner even though it was late. I normally would have gone home to eat but felt like getting to know them better. At dinner, we talked about past relationships. I confessed I had been unfaithful to my last partner when asked about why my last relationship ended. I was surprised to hear both my friends reveal they had similar experiences. We joked and laughed about our degeneracy and finished our tacos.
That night might not have been a big deal but it was significant to me. I had been slightly ashamed to share my dating history but was glad I did. I felt closer to them. I felt like we had more than a climbing friendship.
A lot of times friendships don’t work out. And that’s ok. Not everyone needs to be your friend. That doesn’t mean we have to cut that person out of our life completely. But we don’t have to continue spending energy maintaining a connection that doesn’t enhance our lives.
Life is short and friends are precious. If you have good friends hang onto them. If you’re still looking that’s ok too.
