Everyone wants community, nobody wants to put in the work
Navigating friendships in your twenties and how nonchalance might be at the root of the loneliness epidemic
The plague of a loneliness epidemic and a lack of community
Over the past couple of years, every major publication has come out with something to say about the current loneliness epidemic. Every twenty-something who went through university or entered the workforce within the context of the pandemic can attest to the effects on our social lives and, consequently, mental health. Being in your twenties brings a newfound set of challenges. In conversations with several friends who were graduating and about to start work, many of whom were moving to new cities for a job, making friends as an adult seemed like a major challenge. Factor in the fact that some of us felt borderline socially inept having spent some of our prime socialising years locked up at home, and the loneliness label might start to make some more sense. Still, I feel that many of us are not entirely blameless for our current predicament.
A couple of years ago, when my brother was still living in London as a fresh post-grad (a phase in his life I now see with much kinder and understanding eyes) I remember a conversation with my mom where we discussed his lack of enthusiasm for the city. We moved to London at the same time, I was a fresh undergrad and my brother was a master’s student. Both of us struggled that first year, with classes being fully online we leaned on each other and grew a lot closer. We spent a lot of time together, walking around the empty city, racking up our step count (and to this day I have a near-perfect mental map of Zone 1 to prove it). As the summer of 2021 drew to a close and things started opening up again, my second year of uni meant trying to make up for lost time and living off the high of meeting new people. When I told my mom I thought what my brother was missing was community, I mentally eye-rolled and lightly cringed at the word, but there was no better fitting term.
An interlude: tales of an intimacy junkie
I crave connection and a single conversation with a barista or my produce lady or my neighbour on my way out of the house has me giddy for the rest of the day. I want to know people intimately. I collect coffee orders and allergies and favourite books and throw-away details. I am always the least cool or chill person in the room, and have made peace with the fact that it’s the price to pay for not running the risk of missing out on connection. I’m sometimes a little too honest or upfront, I’ll tell someone I’m not that close with that I really enjoy our time together, or that I saw or read something that made me think of them, and then I might stay up that night staring at the ceiling, trying to figure out if it was too much. I will never understand people’s fixation with trying to be cool. There’s this boy I had a fleeting crush on, a lapse of judgement, and we still hang out from time to time. One of my best friends is perpetually curious about why I was even interested in the first place. He’s the complete opposite of the type of guy I usually go for (though with my sometimes questionable taste, that fact alone wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing). Still, he’s also the human embodiment of everything I find frustrating. She once said that if we looked up nonchalant in the dictionary, a picture of this boy would come up alongside the definition. I’m not sure what drew me in, maybe the fact that he’s hard to read? I have a lingering suspicion it might have been the intense eye contact and the fact that he always asks me what I’m reading whenever I see him (which are both quite mundane things). My friend suspects that I’ve fallen for the whole nonchalant cool act, which I refuse to accept as a card-carrying member of the caring too much club.
Relationships take work, and making time for the people you love still requires effort
As Kim K famously said, nobody wants to work these days. People want a community, everyone wants the perks of having a village, but no one wants to be a villager. Strangers are often surprised when I mention I still hang out with friends from high school. I’ll see the ones who ended up in London every month or two. My close group of high school girlfriends who all live in different countries try to get together for a girls’ trip a few times a year (and I started on Substack as a way of keeping them updated on my life). I see childhood friends every time I go back to Brazil. I’m still in touch with my middle school best friend and visit on a semi-regular basis. Last year, a friend I made when studying Italian over the summer of 2021 came to London for a week, even though we hadn’t properly spoken for the past couple of years. Seeing us talk for four days straight, you’d think we hung out on a weekly basis. Since graduating, brunch with friends from grad school has become a monthly occurrence. My Google Calendar is full of coffee dates and catchups and dinners and calls (my introvert friends’ personal hell), though I’m all for bringing back the casual hang. If I see someone I know on the street, I’ll always stop to say hello. I once made friends with a girl whilst waiting in line outside a club (hi Harriet!) and then proceeded to make plans to hang out the following week. I now attend her book club every month. The thing is, this busy social calendar and subsequent support system didn’t just fall on my lap. In school and at university, meeting people and maintaining friendships was easier. Spending time together was just built into your day, no need to play calendar Tetris to try and find a date and time that works for everyone, making plans weeks or months in advance.
I’m very lucky to have incredibly present and supportive friends, but it goes both ways. Being a priority for someone else also means knowing how to prioritise them. When I told a friend from high school (who’s also an avid runner) that I’d woken up at 5am that day to bike alongside my flatmate who had a 25km run as part of her marathon training, I was met with a wow, I don’t think any of my friends would do that for me. My immediate thought was you need new friends. Sure, not everyone is going to be your ride-or-die, I’m all for making more pointy friends (a term I’ve stolen from carotlyns to replace my much less flattering medium friend), but I think so many people have been caught up in putting themselves first and protecting their peace that they have forgotten that sometimes caring for someone means inconveniencing yourself, or doing things that might not be important to you just because they’re important to them. I’ve trekked an hour on public transport on a weeknight for a friend’s volleyball game. I don’t really care about volleyball but I do care about her.
The challenge of friendships in the age of being effortless and cool
Reaching out to new friends or old classmates with whom I’m trying to rekindle a friendship means an internal discussion and having to convince myself that its not weird that I’m trying to make plans, and that I’ve never once been put off by someone with whom I clicked with at a party or did a group project with reaching out to get coffee. I’ve been ignored enough times in a group chat with an assortment of friends and acquaintances from high school (being the initiator is not for the weak) that I had to convince myself that these people did not actually hate me, they just don’t reply on group chats (when trying to make this friend group happen I felt like Gretchen Wieners being told by a screechy Regina George that its just not going to happen). I have since named and shamed the non-responders (we need to start using the thumbs down emoji more often) and no longer have to enlist my close friends to reply in the group before I try to plan something.
Of course, effort goes both ways, but I’m trying not to get caught in the trap of thinking things will always be 50/50. When it comes to love (in all its forms), keeping score is never the way to go. Whilst many of us are trying to unpack casual relationships and what they can entail (see also: What the f*** is a situationship? by Emilie Mendham), casual friendships can also be tricky. I’m used to and have no problem going above and beyond for my close friends, but am still figuring out how to navigate lighter and newer friendships (can you accidentally love-bomb a new friend? how much enthusiasm is too much?), as well as what happens when the nature of a friendship (sometimes inevitably) changes. In the meantime, I’ll carry on wearing my heart on my sleeve and hoping for the best.
Further reading and some rabbit holes I’ve been down on
I’ve binged all of Antonia’s pieces these past few weeks, and here she managed to articulate all the perks of actually giving a shit
These touch on romantic relationships and how they can help you develop as an individual, but I think a lot of the sentiment here can also apply to platonic relationships.