How Hard Should You Fight to Keep Friendships Alive?

True friends will stand by you regardless of whatever happens

Photo by Elevate on Unsplash

Holding onto friendships throughout adulthood seems to become increasingly more difficult the older you get. As new life chapters come into play — such as moving to a different city, career changes, marriage, and kids — priorities often begin to shift in tandem. And with the start of those new chapters, our once thriving friendships often times unintentionally fall by the waist side.

All of a sudden, we make decisions that take other parties into consideration. We pull back the reigns on impulsive yeses to last minute plans that typically led to late nights out and instead, we divvy up our time more wisely and far more conservatively in an effort to make room for everyone in our lives— ourselves included.

But, what do we do when we realize that our once fierce friendships that used to burn so brightly begin to fade and lose their momentum? What do we do when we find ourselves incapable of making space for all the friendships that we once prioritized? And how much of ourselves should we give to others despite the fatigue that comes with constantly trying to please people?

I’ve been finding myself in this exact predicament quite often as of lately and it’s been a struggle to find the balance between losing friends or losing steam.

So, how hard should we fight to keep friendships alive when we frankly just don’t have much fight left in us?

Now, this may seem like a bit of loaded question — and it is — which means that there is no clear cut answer (although I wish there was).

The truth is, everyone has a different tolerance level for how many things they can juggle at one time and everyone has their own limits to how much they can handle.

We all have different priorities in terms of what we value and think is important, and for some of us, our close friendships are at the very top of that list — in which case, the answer is pretty straightforward. You just do whatever it takes to keep those friendships alive no matter how many times you have to rearrange your calendar or how busy you might…