How does anyone have time for friends?
The unavoidable commitments of adult life feel like a barrier to forming consistent, lasting relationships.
Dear Reader,
This morning during my usual procrastination scroll through Facebook (Facebook’s only real use to me, at this point), I came across a post from an acquaintance that essentially went something like this: “How does anyone have time for both a life and investing in friendships?”
Friendships and healthy human connections are, quite literally, the most important pieces of life to cultivate. Good friendships and relationships have been proven to support mental and physical health, stave off isolation and loneliness, and overall make life richer and more meaningful.
So why do I find myself so often asking, “Who has time for deep friendships?”
Seriously, who has the time? When simply being a person requires sleep, organizing, walking the dog, unloading the dishwasher, vacuuming the house, resting, running errands, working out, work, meal preparation, appointments, bookkeeping, and more (not to mention the added list of obligations that comes with having children who also have lives to manage, a task I cannot yet fathom taking on), who has the time to consistently invest in more than, say, two friendships?
It’s not that I don’t want deep friendships. I long for them. Sometimes, I feel both unbearably and embarrassingly lonely. And yet, I still struggle to find the time to build authentic, lasting relationships.
Often, and frustratingly, it comes down to simple logistics: as adults, people have their own busy lives, commitments, and schedules, and simply finding a time to get together for an hour feels like a Herculean task. And then the question arises: can you have a deep friendship with someone you only see for an hour once a month?
At the start of the year, one of my best friends moved away. She was the person I did everything with, the one I could call up at a moment’s notice to go try a restaurant, see a movie, grab a drink with. Without explicitly agreeing, we had chosen each other as the friend we were going to do life with.
I think friendships like this are exceedingly rare. Sometimes I worry the normal obligations of adult life are not conducive to building friendships like this from scratch.
I hope I can find the space in my life to prove this worry wrong.
TODAY’S PRAYER
Lord, please don’t let my life be characterized by loneliness and isolation. Bring a friend into my life who wants to commit to the time, care, and attention it takes to build a meaningful connection.
What is your take on making time for friendships as an adult? Share your thoughts below: