Posted on 09/17/2022 5:38:39 PM PDT by DoodleBob
Much like a plant or any living thing, the more care and attention given to friendships, the stronger they grow and the more connected people feel.
So when COVID-19 came along, and the term “social distancing” became the new norm, friendships were put to the test. Some bonds, because of the pods people formed in an effort to limit virus exposure, grew stronger. Others, after months of limited or no interaction, faded away or were lost entirely.
“People were forced to reconcile the value of friendship, because you can really understand the value of something when it’s taken away,” says Marisa G. Franco, a psychologist, friendship expert and the author of Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make — and Keep — Friends. “You can see how that affects you.”
A AARP survey on friendships among adults 50 and older found that more than half of people say that since the pandemic began, strengthening relationships with friends and family plays a more important role in their lives.
According to Franco, research points to an interesting phenomenon that occurs when people spend time with others. Feelings get amplified, intensifying both positive and negative emotions.
At the same time, during the darkest days of the pandemic, “a lot of us felt like we were in a limited emotional range,” Franco says. “We felt blah. I think all of this reveals just how important social connection is for us to feel like we’re at our homeostasis.”
Here are six ways COVID-19 has changed friendships.
1. There’s a renewed emphasis on reconnecting
The pandemic has changed the way people feel about friendships. The AARP survey on friendships among adults age 50-plus found that 67 percent of those who knew someone who became seriously ill or died from COVID-19, and 59 percent of those who didn’t know anyone who died or was seriously ill, now say that social connections and spending time with loved ones are more important to them.
During the early days of the pandemic, Donna Flanagan, 62, who lives alone in San Antonio, thought a lot about rekindling old friendships that had petered out.
“That time made me reflect and think about who I hadn’t talked to in a while and wanted to reconnect with,” she says.
Flanagan upgraded her Zoom account to allow for longer online meetings with friends and family, and she reached out by phone to her best friend from middle and high school. The friends hadn't been as close starting decades ago, when Flanagan moved from her hometown of Chicago to Texas, and stayed connected only through annual Christmas cards and conversations at high school reunions.
While the two don’t talk as frequently now that the pandemic has entered its third year and everyday life is a bit closer to normal, the women text regularly. Flanagan’s childhood friend sends photos and shares updates about her family and some of the people they both knew in high school.
“We have so much history,” Flanagan says. “Now, when I go home, it will be, like, ‘Hey, let’s get together.’ I’ve probably been there a million times and not called her in the last 25 years. Now I want to meet her kids and all that stuff.”
2. More use of technology to stay connected
Zoom, texting, email and other forms of technology have been invaluable during the pandemic for shoring up friendships, says Rebecca G. Adams, 69, a sociologist and gerontologist at the University of North Carolina Greensboro School of Health and Human Sciences.
“The more frequently we interact with people, the closer we feel to them,” Adams says. “People on the wrong side of the digital divide — those who don’t have access to electronic communication or don’t know how to use it — are more deprived.”
3. People want to see each other in person
Despite fears of COVID transmission, people are craving face-to-face interactions. The AARP survey found that more than three-quarters of respondents wanted to meet up in person rather than virtually when it comes to socializing.
Those surveyed also said they preferred gathering with small groups of friends and loved ones rather than attending big events that might include strangers or people they don’t know well.
4. Close friends grew closer
In general, COVID’s impact on friendships seems to be based on how close the individuals were before news of the virus broke in 2020.
Franco says that when it comes to our most intimate circle — which tends to give us the strongest support — those friendships strengthen during times of increased vulnerability and struggle and, therefore, got stronger during COVID.
Fringe friendships, often built on bumping into each other around town or at shared gatherings, have suffered.
“Not only did we lose casual friends, we didn’t have the opportunity to make new ones to replace them,” Adams notes. “My guess is that our networks have become smaller, denser and closer just due to attrition.”
Ties with neighbors and community members have also grown weaker. Adults over 50 reported in the AARP survey that while strengthening bonds with close friends and family remained important or increased in importance during the pandemic, they viewed strengthening connections with neighbors or community members as less important.
5. Attitudes toward COVID-19 cost some their friendships
The physical distance and separation caused by COVID-19 wasn’t the only factor that strained and, in some cases, ended friendships.
Brian Moffitt, 57, of Rochester, New York hasn’t completely cut ties with one friend he used to see twice a week before the pandemic — but neither does he go out of his way to make plans to get together. Even though he and his friend share the same views with respect to COVID, the friend became so judgmental and angry toward people who responded to the pandemic differently — about vaccinations in particular — that it became less enjoyable to be around him.
“I don’t know if he knows I’m treating him any differently, because I’m not cutting him off entirely, but I keep him at a distance more than I used to,” says Moffitt, a clinical engineer. “I don’t really have an interest in doing things with him anymore.”
Indeed, as the AARP survey found, in cases where COVID caused a shift in friendships, the change for many was not positive: 28 percent of respondents 50 and older reported that their relationships with friends grew weaker during the pandemic. This was especially true for 50- to 59-year-olds, 34 percent of whom reported weaker connections.
6. Male friendships suffered
In some cases, friendships among men changed because men are typically not as comfortable opening up about their feelings as women, says Geoffrey Greif, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Social Work and the author of Buddy System: Understanding Male Friendships.
Greif’s advice to men is to be as communicative as possible without making yourself uneasy.
“You don’t have to get to a point that makes you feel uncomfortable,” he explains, but he asks men to challenge themselves. “If you’re at a level five, try to get to a six, but don’t go to a 10. Ask yourself to move a little bit, but don’t think that all of a sudden you have to share your deepest thoughts and feelings.”
Franco, who believes friendship is too often relegated to a second tier, behind romantic connections, is pleased to see the conversation coalesce around what sustains us.
“As much as we have been fed the message that we only need one person to complete us, that’s not necessarily true,” she says. “We need an entire community to feel whole.”
It takes a village, eh?
Maybe the community should try to be tolerant and accept diversity instead of trying to mandate lock-step adherence to constantly changing arbitrary rules. Who wants to be friends with Nazis with control issues?
No, many men found out that a lot of the so-called men around them were not men at all. These male Karens got their opportunity to bitch out and went full bore. They celebrated virtue-whining, and demanded everyone wear masks and other nonsense. They were determined to outkaren the female Karens for a pat on the head from their Branch Covidian cult leaders.
Geoffrey Greif, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Social Work, is peddling this detrimental fiction to sell his book Buddy System: Understanding Male Friendships. I don't think he's had friendships with anyone with a significant level of testosterone. His decades in academia would certainly help insulate him from them.
He's selling decades-old pro-womanism. He's been working as a professor at the University of Maryland since 1984. If he spent ten minutes among men, they'd enlighten him about how so-called men like him have fueled the problem.
7. It was used by *emocrats to steal an election.
Sage words from ‘aarp’. 😂😂😂😂😂😂
No mention of those insisting on still wearing face diapers revealing themselves as liberals?
I lost a long term friendship due to the one-two punch…
Trump + Covid
Yep - it has weeded out a lot of relationships that probably should have ended long ago. The Great Winnowing as I call it. It has also led to new friendships with like-minded folks.
Anyone stupid enough to believe that wearing an old rag over you face is going to stop a virus isn’t smart enough to be my friend.
We were getting together because it was probably going to be the last chance we had. A few of the younger cousins asked if we were going to have masks, stay six feet apart and a whole bunch of other nonsense. I told them no.
They did not show up.
Their loss.
Amazing how people who were at the most risk showed up and those who were not, did not.
Happy ending. Our aunt, who we were gathering to say goodbye to, survived and is still chugging along. Doctors gave her three months. It's been two years.
Nice rant, I agree.
To their credit, if you peruse through their study there is an interest observation.
In terms of "getting back the normal," about one-third of people over 50 don't expect normalcy soon be sure they are still self-denying themselves of things out of covid-fear (prolly all leftists).
That's not the interest of observation, though...the interesting finding was that 56% of all 50+ respondents fear that INFLATION will block any "getting back to normal."
Thats why you should come visit cupidpureblood in 2 wks
Many became aware that it's not just "toxic" people that one has to cut out of their life, it's also people who are outright liabilities. If you can trust their thinking because of poor decision making, low intellect, lack of reason, or mental defect, cut them loose now.
The Great Winnowing - good term, and yes long overdue.
Covid19 was the cause of me losing a friendship since childhood.
She lives in California and she went batshhh crazy blaming Texas and me for her not working and for Covid spreading.
After listening to enough verbal abuse I said *I’m DONE* hung up the phone and that was that.
Who knows if we will ever talk again— after that phone call I no longer think we’re the same people that we once were—probably best to leave it behind.
It wasn’t COVID-19 that divided people, it was how people reacted to what governments did to us in its name that revealed our differences.
I was in the hospital for three weeks in March last year with covid and missed an additional three weeks of work recovering from respiratory failure / pneumonia and myocarditis. Didn’t get one jab after I was cleared to do so - the fact that I had to be cleared and read enough to know not enough was known was enough for me to say hell no. So - I dropped my acquaintance’s who insisted I get the jab rather than giving them the advantage of ostracizing me before I could ostracize them
I’m absolutely uninterested in hanging out with people who got suckered into taking the clot shot. That goes for family too.
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