This excellent essay from Karolina was the best I’ve read this year. I can related with many of her point on why friendship muscle looks different for every person.
Abroad, I meet local people who don’t hang out with expats because they have their Martas. Every time I hear a Dutch or British person say “we’ve known each other since we were little”, I can’t help but feel a pang of regret. I’m moving countries, schools and jobs and leaving those valuable connections behind, while people who stay in their neighbourhood are easily bound to their friends by time and proximity.
And then I look at Facebook at the people who I’ve known since I was little, and think: thank God we’re no longer friends!
Old friendships will cocoon you in familiarity, but they won’t keep up with changes in your life. Unless you make the same choices as your school friends, they will not understand you. If you live your own life, you will outgrow your old friendships.
And indeed, I look at the types of interactions that locals have with their old friends (their cosy bbqs and gesellige borrels) and I’m convinced that for me, they are not a solution. They do not bring me joy.
As a person who moved cities and countries, I also sometimes think about my school friends, even trying to find them online, just to know what they’re doing and what would’ve been like if we were still friends. And almost always I’m happy we’re not friends anymore.
When instead of trying harder, you stop — that’s maturity
I figured out that making an effort to see people who didn’t make an effort to see me was too tiring. So I stopped doing that.
I also figured that even though it’s meant to be good for me to see people when I don’t feel like it, it didn’t feel like it was good for me. So I stopped doing that, too.
I considered the stress that surface interactions give me and the benefit they are meant to carry. The stress balance was too high to justify engaging in them.
Just like I don’t wear sunscreen when it’s not sunny (and I know some people do), I decided I won’t try to be more social when I’m not lonely.
Because — most importantly — I realised that I was not lonely and my social life was perfectly fine.
It’s not the social life from Friends and How I Met Your Mother, but it fits my personality and it brings me joy.
Completely agreed.
If there’s a friendship muscle, it looks different for every person.
Don’t torture yourself with exercises that don’t benefit your friendship muscle and instead, find the ones that make sense for you.
Fridays are not for friends, not for dates, but for whatever the f… you want.
Some of my favourite Friday nights included cleaning the flat, doing Duolingo, writing a diary, going to the gym, eating cereal.