By: Paulina Sicius
The author and her friends in a rare moment of prioritization.
Friendships have always been in the top three most important things in my life. My career, studies, and hobbies all came after friendships. Even if I promised that I would prioritize my art or my fitness at a specific time, if a friend asked to hang out I was ready to drop the art project I was working on or skip the gym to spend time with them. When I came back home after spending the summer visiting family in Chile or a semester at university, I would drop my stuff in my room and run out the front door to hang out with my friends. No amount of jet lag, flight time, or hours on the road could stop me. Don’t even get me started if a friend actually needed me. I would have been ready to skip a final exam to help with speeding tickets or break-ups. I once took an eight-hour bus ride to see a “long-distance friend” for an afternoon when she was grieving a lost relative. I could say the same of my friends, for dropping off Krispy Kreme at two in the morning to fix my 17-year-old broken heart, the sleepless nights spent at the hospital with me after a car accident, or the multiple flights across the Atlantic to visit me in Madrid.
However, I’ve felt the dedication to friendships dwindling, both on my end and from friends, new and old. I’m not sure if it has to do with getting into my late twenties, having a long-term relationship, or maybe because of this new paradigm where we stay within our comfort zones, free from any inconvenience.
Over the past few years, not only have other parts of my life become the priority, but friendships have come to feel like they have minute importance—a relationship that I do not dedicate enough energy to, nor expect anything from. I have high expectations for my career and my partner, so I dedicate most of my day to Zoom meetings with coworkers, emails for work, or planning a date night. My partner has felt the same kind of shift. Whereas a couple of years ago, he and his friends would have a trip together every year, now it’s Juan and his girlfriend’s anniversary, Miguel is spending the weekend with his in-laws, or David is taking all his time off for a trip with his partner.
I saw a graph a couple of weeks ago which shows how much time you spend on average with your friends, romantic partner, coworkers, and family throughout your life. Long story short: time with your family and friends decreases starting in your twenties, while time with your partner increases. The version of this graph I saw on social media came with a conclusion: who you decide to pair up with romantically is the most important choice in your life. While I agree that this choice is important, I wish the conclusion said something more like: “Spend more time with your friends throughout your life—don’t just dedicate all your time after your 20s to one person. Friendships are important too, you dumbass!”
Yet, it’s no wonder that the partner line just goes higher and higher throughout our lives—society teaches us that this is an important relationship in our life. We take the love language test and study our partner’s results. We communicate our needs and expectations via Tinder before even meeting in person. We learn “I statements”—I feel that you don’t care about washing the dishes—to avoid conflict. We send good morning texts, lest our partner feels we have forgotten about them (there are 'About 19,100,000 results' when you look up “romantic good morning texts”). We go to couples therapy. Experts report that we spend more time with our partners than ever (Gershuny et al. find that people spend about 50% of their leisure time with their partners and more than any of the years studied). Thanks to books, movies, and social media dedicated to this very topic, we know what to expect and what is expected from romantic relationships: quality time, words of affirmation, gift giving, etc. The same cannot be said for friendships: we don’t do love language tests for our friends or practice communication, as these relationships exist with the premise that they are convenient and easy. There is nothing more to expect from a friendship than a good time and sometimes a listening ear. As soon as there is some level of conflict, we are quick to run away from them. But a friendship break-up can be as difficult as a romantic one.
There’s also the self-care paradigm. We are so quick to run away from anything that is an inconvenience. Unfortunately, friendships often fall into that reactionary habit. It may be a lot more convenient for us to stay home or make another plan. We don’t think twice about canceling plans without thinking about what our friends need or what they expect from us. In the “How to Talk to People” podcast episode “What do we owe our friends?”, Julie Beck speaks on the conflict between self-care and friendships. She posits that the rise in self-care has come at the cost of friendships—or rather, what you can expect from them. Friendship—something that I once viewed as the most fulfilling part of my life—has become an inconvenience. We’re quick to cancel our Friday night plans with friends if we’re “not really feeling up to it”, the codeword for “I rather lay in bed and watch Netflix for the next few hours”. Social interactions within intimate relationships have transfigured from fulfilling moments to exhausting appointments.
Like the podcast host, when I make plans with a friend, I am never 100% sure that they will happen, hence the “Hey, are we still up for tonight” texts I’ll send a few hours before meeting a friend, not much different than a reminder for the dentist appointment. “We’re excited to see you for your teeth cleaning at 10 AM at Dr. Cabrera’s office. Click the link below if you’d like to modify or cancel your appointment.” We’re just one text away from canceling a friend date—and that’s totally acceptable. The only answer we expect is something along the lines of “Okay, feel better,” or “Let me know if you’re down to hang another day! :-)”.
Friendships are supposed to be a source of joy and fulfillment in our lives, relationships that allow us to connect with others and share life experiences: to hear about crazy date nights, strange coworkers, or family troubles. Today, it’s easy to fill this need through social media. We can share our news with our followers, we can listen to other’s life experiences through storytimes on TikTok. The various social media algorithms can help us filter for videos that are of specific interest to us. Gone are the days we needed to listen to a friend talk about their new love interest for hours, scrutinizing a phone over a shared coffee, exclaiming, “What do you think this text means?”
Perhaps this is a symptom of getting older—a natural reduction of the importance of friendships brought on by a more settled, domestic life. Maybe it’s a generation-specific, technology-guilty curse. Regardless, all I know is that I want to feel how I did years ago about my friendships, and so my New Year’s resolution this year is to be a better friend. Friendships continue to be one of the most important pieces of my life, but I want to actually treat them as such so that they can have their expectations fulfilled for our relationship. They can expect to see me for dinner when we make plans or expect me to answer their FaceTime calls. Friendships deserve to have as many expectations as any other relationship, be it with our partner or with our social media.
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