Lowering the Bar Is the Truest Act of Friendship
The pandemic is not a friendship litmus test
For me, the loneliness is the worst. I haven’t touched another person since I broke up with my partner in April. Over the past few months, in my desperation for human connection, I’ve taken to texting my friends way more than I otherwise would. When they don’t respond — right away, or sometimes ever — the loneliness spirals. I start to ruminate over everything my life is missing, and then, more often than not, the catastrophizing part of my brain kicks on to convince me that no one in my life truly cares about me the way I want them to.
Even in the moments between texts, it’s an anxiety that hasn’t fully gone away: that quarantine is slowly and steadily chipping away at friendships. That with all the burdens we’re juggling in our own lives, we just don’t have the time or mental space to be a friend — and that with no timeline for when normal socializing can resume, our relationships may fizzle out. That the pandemic is somehow showing us who our real friends are, with results that aren’t exactly pretty.
But it’s not. Right now, real friends are cutting each other some slack. In fact, the way to prevent this anxiety is to do the opposite of what we’re inclined to do with our friends: We should ask nothing of them. One of the most generous…
