Do you find yourself talking to friends MORE now than you did before? I think I do! I still miss before.
Dear Nina,
My friendships have never been better since social distancing started. That’s a bizarre thing to admit, and I don’t know what to make of it. I find myself wondering how these friendships could possibly continue as strongly when things are back to normal. Whenever or however “normal” happens.
I’m not saying I like this way of life more than my old life. So please don’t confuse me saying my social life is better as me saying I’m happy that we’re in this crisis. I realize many people have died, more people are very ill, and countless are suffering economically. I’m lucky that my husband is able to keep his job and work from home, but we don’t know how long his company can keep everyone on staff. I also have no idea if I will get my job back. I have been let go for now, and it’s hard to imagine how the store I worked for will recover enough to bring on all of the former employees. And my two kids (17 and 14), are missing their own friends terribly.
And yet, despite all of the stress and uncertainty, I’ve never felt closer to my friends—the friends who live nearby and the ones who live out of town. I have several group text chains going throughout the day, individual texts and FaceTimes with friends, and also Zoom happy hours with college friends, high school friends, and current local friends. I walk when I can and often end up talking to neighbors on opposite curbs. In the past the most we would have done is wave. Luckily my kids are handling their own online school schedule. I don’t think I could balance my “social distance social life” and all the cooking and cleaning with helping them anyway. Ha!
But back to the silver lining of my newfound closeness to my friends. These are all friends I’ve meant to be in closer touch with in general, and obviously we were in enough contact to be in the same group texts and Zooms right now, but it’s not like we’d be talking this often in normal times. Not even close! And in terms of my local friends, we definitely wouldn’t be going out several times a week for happy hours. Once every six weeks, maybe. It was hard to even find common dates for people’s birthday dinners. Most of us have kids in activities that require a lot of driving and we have part-time or full-time jobs.
I guess what I’m asking is, how do we keep up this closeness when all of this over? I’m worried that all of these friendships will go back to what they were before, which was a lot of “I wish I could, but I’m so busy”– both from me and from my friends.
Signed, Social Distance Socialite
Dear Social Distance Socialite,
Your experience is one I’ve heard from others (in real life and on MPR), read in articles for the past month, and experienced myself. My friends are definitely a lifeline. Similarly to you and your friends, we are in closer touch with a frequency that seems impossible to replicate once we have lives outside of the house again.
Yet I don’t think this new virtual friendship frenzy is happening despite the stress and uncertainty. It’s because of the stress and uncertainty. Many of us, except in times of personal or medical crisis, do not need our friends with quite this level of constant contact in “normal” times. But to your point, (I think this was your point), I agree that it would be nice to keep SOME of the parts of these friendships that have developed over this strange time of slowing waaaaay down.
Rather than worrying about these relationships withering away, I would focus on what you like best about being in touch more often with your friends with an eye towards things that would be reasonable to continue. Your question made me think about this for my own life. What would I want to keep going with my friends once all of this over?
- A willingness to do things last minute.
- More thoughtfulness and sharing. In the past month I’ve dropped off or sent books, given and received yeast and flour and matza meal and baked goods; offered to grab things at the store and received that offer, too. It’s not that I never did these things before, but not often other than birthdays, to be honest.
- More phone talking rather than relyng on texts.
- More texting and talking directly to people rather than relying on updates via social media. (Talking/texting is about 1000 times more powerful than scrolling.)
- Remembering to check in with people I haven’t spoken to in awhile.
- One thing I personally won’t miss is the Zooming. I think more than three people on a Zoom call or FaceTime is sort of a disaster. It’s unclear whose turn it is to speak, so I will have a new appreciation for getting together in person again where body language cues can help us know how to interact in bigger groups. Also, I’ve seen enough of my jowls to last a lifetime.
Readers! What else would you want to keep as part of your friendships once this is all over. (Will it ever be over!?)
And to you, Social Distance Socialite: maybe at some point you can check back in here and let us know how things go with your friends once we are not all home so much.
Stay healthy and good luck with your job, too! Nina
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