The Pandemic is Helping Us See Who Our Real Friends Are
Once we’re sprung from isolation and back to our regular life, should all our old friends still be with us?
Sprinkled through the many terrible realities of this pandemic have been a few good ones. For me, the best thing has being slowing down and reassessing aspects of my life — something, like many of you, I should have been doing all along but was too caught up in busyness and routines to bother.
This has led me to reevaluate my friends: who they are, how I acquired them, and, most crucially, whether the friendships are truly worth continuing when the pandemic is over.
Close girlfriends are so important to me that I’ve made them an integral part of my both of my mindfulness women’s novels. The theme of these books is how the main character can keep her inner peace despite the challenges in her life. At the core of the answer are both spiritual practices and close supportive friends.
Buddies are a crucial pillar in all of our lives. Virginia Woolf famously said, “Some people go to priests. Others to poetry. I to my friends.”
As a health journalist (my other hat along with novelist) I know that friendships have even been documented to support physical wellness. Having close pals across our life span impacts blood pressure, inflammation, and other markers of health, a large study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found.
And a review in the American Journal of Health Promotion confirms that people with good social support — aka friends — recover better from illnesses and even live longer than those who don’t.
So friendships are great.
But are all friendships great?
During the forced slowdown of the pandemic, I’ve come to the realization that they all aren’t. Lugging friends through my life just because I’ve had a past with them is actually draining. Keeping up with friends — calling, texting, inviting them over or out — takes a lot of mental energy.
It’s dawned on me that there has to be a solid return. And with too many of my friends, there hasn’t been.
Time to Rethink Our Pals, One by One
The pandemic has squashed the concerts, movies, shops, theater, and indoor restaurants and bars that were the staging grounds for most of my female-bonding. This means there are people I’d previously considered pretty good friends who I actually have not seen or talked to in nearly a year.
Coffee chums. Shopping mates. Theater buddies. Drinking pals. Girls night out accomplices. Travel companions. And, as with many people, a huge category: work and industry friends.
Over the years, many of us have picked up friends the way ships gather floating barnacles. As we swim through life, we meet someone who loves the quirky movies or the hot yoga that we do, and we start doing that together. Or someone moves into our neighborhood and it’s so convenient to have happy hours in her home. Someone similar enough to us moves into the office next door. Or our kids attach themselves to their own friends, which inevitably links you with their parents.
We rarely stop to evaluate whether these friendships still work. We don’t ponder whether they’re giving us the satisfaction they did early on. The pandemic offers us the opportunity to do that.
Applying the “Remaining-Friends” Test
How can I tell if a friend is still important to me? As I’ve put my attention to this question, here are the things I’ve been asking myself.
Have We Stayed in Touch?
Friendships demand nurturing. If neither I nor the other person has watered our relationship even a sprinkle during these lockdown months, it’s probably because we don’t really care.
Sure, maybe they’ve been super busy, especially with everyone juggling work and becoming the unexpected educator of the kids. In my own case, we had a massive water leak that led to an unplanned home renovation that has sucked up the months.
But still, I’ve found time to reach out to the people who matter most. If we haven’t called or texted one another more than once this past year, that says something about where our hearts are.
Are We Making Plans?
There are some people I haven’t reached out to because our friendship is built around specific circumstances that aren’t happening right now.
Travel friends are especially in this category. A buddy we generally don’t see unless we’re flying to France or wandering the West Indies is a friendship that may be worth reviving down the road.
But even here, we should be dreaming and planning together for what might ensue when the world returns to normal. If we aren’t scheming our next adventure, are we really more than airplane seatmates and hotel roommates?
Do I Ponder the Person Often?
Friends of convenience don’t often enter my mind. I think of them mostly when we encounter one another in the course of regular life.
If in all these months I haven’t much wondered how they’re doing, missed being in their presence, felt the urge to catch up beyond seeing their feed in social media — that’s a sign that the friendship is just a weight I’m lugging around.
A True Friend Is One Who Fills Your Soul
The key friendships I want in my life when we reemerge back into the world are the ones that warm my heart and fill my soul. The friends who I think about reaching out to the minute something wonderful — or terrible — happens. The ones who, as Eleanor Roosevelt poignantly put it, “leave footprints in your heart.”
It turns out that I don’t have as many of those as I’d like.
Oprah Winfrey famously talks about the importance of everyone to have “a Gayle,” a reference to her bestie Gayle King. Oprah often shares how they chat multiple times a day, move heaven and earth for one another, and of course, take those famous road trips arm in arm.
None of my current girlfriends is a Gayle (although my husband remains one). I want to cultivate that in my post-pandemic life.
I’m realizing that the best way to get a Gayle is to create space in my friendship circle, to release all the friends that don’t deeply meet my needs. I’m so glad I’ve had the chance to slow down and grasp that.
