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So as I'm entering my mid-40s, I find that my friendships are really what my life is built on. I've got people who are very important to me from my creative writing groups, high school/college, my previous employment, my hometown, my dog activities, my online activities and just general knocking around. These people are located all over the country at this point, and I maintain a strong facebook presence, but I worry about neglecting friendships that are important to me. My one buddy commented yesterday that I was always scrambling, and that's true of my friendships and my overall life in general.
Yeah, I know I could prioritize and trim people from my life, but this is really what my life is all about. Also, as someone who deals with depression and anxiety, it is important to me that I offer support to my friends who are dealing with the same. And honestly, it's my friends that have buoyed me through those periods in my life.
I want to do brunches and game nights, but cleaning my house is hard for me due to my severe ADD and working from home. The former means it is often overwhelming to make the house guest appropriate and the latter means I often just want to get OUT of the house.
I also make it a point to send encouraging cards and letters to friends I know are struggling or frustrated, especially if they're in other states.
I'm thinking logging my social interactions in my journal might be a good idea. But I don't know. I'm already keeping track of work tasks, meal planning, activities and reading habits.
However, there are two more people who are kind of moving into my social circle that I really want to maintain ties with (one is a good professional contact and the other is someone with whom I share some stressors in common which we offer suport to each other for), and I"m aware that one of my primary sources of joy is also becoming one of my primary sources of anxiety. Yes, I'm aware that I'm hoarding friends like Smaug hoards gold. But I have to say I've been lucky enough to find a lot of people who are truly "golden."
I would really like to answer your question, but the truth is...I keep my circle small. I think if you have at least two really good friends that you can really trust and share life with, it is worth gold. Real friendships require a commitment, not everyone can/will maintain that.
You are very blessed to have so many friendships, and social activities going on, but try not to overextend yourself! Good luck!
I would really like to answer your question, but the truth is...I keep my circle small. I think if you have at least two really good friends that you can really trust and share life with, it is worth gold. Real friendships require a commitment, not everyone can/will maintain that.
You are very blessed to have so many friendships, and social activities going on, but try not to overextend yourself! Good luck!
Oh, I know I'm lucky. I am constantly amazed that I have these people in my life.
My two best friends from high school are the most important people to me - my primary friendships. But there are a lot of other people I care about in my life.
I just had coffee with a lovely person I have known for a few years - we recently discovered some points of commonality that make us good sounding boards for each other. She commented that she tends to push people away and that is her pattern in friendships that she had only worked out recently in therapy. It was interesting to discuss that habit given that I had just posted this question and we had a lovely talk.
One of my buddies is a lot like me in terms of his social life, and he tends to maintain ties by having big parties for all his different groups of friends at once. I would like to do the same, but it might be too stressful as I can be an anxious hostess.
It sounds like you are a good friend who is truly trying to maintain relationships with people and not just collect hundreds of Facebook "friends" or acquaintances you haven't had real world contact with in years. I also like to stay in touch with friends from college and past "stages" of my life, many of whom live in other cities, so I can appreciate that. In my case, I'd like to be in touch with all of my friends more often, but life does get in the way. I hope all of my friends know that if they ever need me for anything they simply need to pick up the phone and let me know, but many of my friends who are not local or who I do not run into on a regular basis are probably still friends because they are not the type of people who expect that I will be in touch all the time or who would get bent out of shape if they don't hear from me for a little while. Similarly, I know they are out living their lives so I'm happy to just pick up where we left off when I hear from them and not keeping track of when they last reached out to me. My husband is also very social, so we do like to host a party at least once a year to catch up with at least our local friends, but I don't think you need to do anything that will cause you to be stressed out (or create more work for yourself by logging your interactions). One option if you don't want to host events at your house is to invite smaller groups out to a wine tasting or some similar event that you and those friends would enjoy?
It sounds like you are a good friend who is truly trying to maintain relationships with people and not just collect hundreds of Facebook "friends" or acquaintances you haven't had real world contact with in years. I also like to stay in touch with friends from college and past "stages" of my life, many of whom live in other cities, so I can appreciate that. In my case, I'd like to be in touch with all of my friends more often, but life does get in the way. I hope all of my friends know that if they ever need me for anything they simply need to pick up the phone and let me know, but many of my friends who are not local or who I do not run into on a regular basis are probably still friends because they are not the type of people who expect that I will be in touch all the time or who would get bent out of shape if they don't hear from me for a little while. Similarly, I know they are out living their lives so I'm happy to just pick up where we left off when I hear from them and not keeping track of when they last reached out to me. My husband is also very social, so we do like to host a party at least once a year to catch up with at least our local friends, but I don't think you need to do anything that will cause you to be stressed out (or create more work for yourself by logging your interactions). One option if you don't want to host events at your house is to invite smaller groups out to a wine tasting or some similar event that you and those friends would enjoy?
Yes, a lot of times I will drift apart from a friend for years and we will pick up right where we left off. I found an old high school friend on facebook and we ended up chatting for a couple hours on the phone then met for lunch and chatted for a few more hours. It had been FIFTEEN years since we'd seen each other! I moved shortly after we reconnected, but we regularly exchange warm facebook notes and I've been able to introduce her to other people in her field that I know, and now they post on each other's FB pages... When I go back to my hometown one day, I have to actually introduce them in real life, lol.
I think the idea of a wine tasting or something similar is a great idea. I will start hunting around for some ideas. We could try pottery painting (mainly a chick thing), an escape room (great for both genders), maybe a potluck picnic at one of the local parks.... I've been thinking about doing a sort of restaurant club - go out once a month to a local restaurant to give it a try. Lord knows, I eat out enough ...
Thank you for the suggestion. An offsite get together could be a lot of fun and minimal stress.
It might be worth hiring someone to clean, since that is a stresser you just don't need.
Yes, I'm working on adding that to my budget. In fact, I'm taking a few days off around the long weekend to get my house to the point that someone could come in and easily clean it.
Part of the issue is that it is mud season right now, and I think that may have kind of put me over the top. LOL. Still some changes need to be made. Thank you!
I have the exact same problem. And sometimes it's overwhelming, it really is. If I were to break down my friends:
Best Friends:
I have 6 of these who I am super close to
General Friends
I have about 19 of these that range from being close to, to semi-close.
The overwhelming part is it's all mutual. They seek me out as much as I seek them out. But it got to the point where I was exhausting myself trying to keep up. Going out 5x a week for social activities and I was spending WAY TOO MUCH money. It was ridiculous.
So I decided to cut back. Here is what works for me and has worked for me.
While my friends if they found out would hate this, I put them all on a Excel spreadsheet. My 6 best friends in one column the rest in the other.
Those 6 I make sure that I reach out to them once a week, doesn't mean I hang out with them, but I at least communicate with them, checking in. The other 19 I reach out to less often. So they work in a rotation where the first 4 I reach out to that week, then the next 4 the following week and so on. This helps limit how much I communicate with them and how much time spend with those friends.
The next really effective thing I did was I limit my outings to 3x a week. So if I already have 3 social activities going on with friends, and you reach out to me to hang out that week, I simply say "Sorry I am booked this week" and coordinate with them for the following week. That part kind of sucks but you have to set limits.
It's worked really well with me, because my best friends continue to get the most interaction with me, as it should be. Those other good friends while I have died down a little to them, I am still around and still hang out with them, be it if it's only once a month, but at least I am present maintaining the friendship that we both seek out.
I also try to combine outings with multiple friends depending on the activity. So if I can knock out 3 birds with one outing then even better.
It's like managing a team! It works, take some discipline on your end, but it will help you focus on the more important people while still giving time to other that do indeed want to be your friend.
One things that has worked in my favor, is out of those 19, about 6 them have moved away to another city so they don't take up as much time. Then there are about another 6-7 that just have had babies or about to, which also helps reduce the load as they get real busy with all that stuff, but because of that handy excel sheet, I am always in communication with them.
I'll answer this from the perspective of the friend of a person with a large social circle ...
I'm in a book club with a friend who I'd really love to see more often. However, she ALWAYS has social activities going on...every time we see each other at the book club she's talking about upcoming things she's doing on the weekend, or trips she's about to take.
She actually admitted once that she has FOMO -- fear of missing out -- so she feels like she has to attend every party and social gathering.
After a couple of attempts to get together one on one I gave up trying, based on the assumption she is too busy or has plans. I know she wants to get together with me because she's invited me out spontaneously twice in the past 6 years. But between her friends and her husband's friends, they are just too busy to make plans with.
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