Friendships which, for one reason or another you realise won’t ever be the same two years on

[Abelard40]

Just that really.

I am not starting a thread about justifying why you felt you were right over a friend.. I’m just giving a space to grieving for those relationships which, now that it’s been two years, you know won’t ever be the same.

I have one I’ve tried endlessly to repair. We were such good friends before the pandemic - but she took a very particular position which allowed no wriggle room and I think I failed in her eyes. It’s so bloody sad, but I think I’m ready to just draw a line now. Anyone else?

I thought about this a little more overnight. I have also MADE some new friends over lockdown. I'd moved to a new place in 2019, then started a job where I was out of the house from 6am - 6pm. I didn't know anyone here at all until lockdown/lockdown easing, when people were chatting to anyone they met in fields! Being able to be at home/out walking locally during daylight for a few months was actually good for me. Socially it hasn't been bad for us as a family. We had a party before Christmas, we didn't know any of the attendees in March 2020.

Try having a severe vaccine reaction! (Yes, confirmed by consultants).

That’s lost me several friends. Some thought I was making it up (yes, I managed to con several hospital stays and expensive scans ), the others were telling me I must carry on and have more vaccines anyway as it must have been a co incidence (um, no thanks).

Am now almost friendless

@NoAprilFool

I absolutely understand what you’re all saying but this makes me sad. I’m hoping my friends haven’t given up on me. My husband is extremely anxious about Covid, to an irrational extent. It’s impacted what I do and the kind of socialising I do. It’s tough

Have you talked to your friends about it?

Slough and Xena really sorry to hear that.

@Deliaskis I’d agree with that about clarity.. yep.. for good and ill in my current friendships. I have to say, to be transparent that most of mine have brought out the best. I suppose for me that’s why I’m wondering about this one that has gone wrong.. I probably over think tbf but the gist is that our differing views of what we are comfortable with has meant we’ve just been only chatting on text / WhatsApp and as she can’t/ won’t meet in person it’s that thing of how much you lose really when that’s the only way you have a friendship. She was always one for contacting me mainly that way, but it’s intensified in the last two years and I guess I feel it’s things she wants to talk about repeatedly through that format that I just can’t keep doing endlessly. Let’s sort it in person sort of thing!

I guess stepping away from my own particular issues what I’m trying to say is conducting friendships virtually has been brutal. For me work has been in person, and family mixed.. so maybe that’s why I’m hung up on friendships in particular because they’ve been lower down the chain of priority of meeting FTF.

It’s definitely made me realise my colleagues are just that and that I will never be anything other than professionally polite to any of them from now on . A lot of friendships have drifted and I can’t say I am bothered about that either at the beginning of the pandemic everyone was messaging each other and talking a lot online and then it dried up and I realised I was the one making the effort with people . I’m an introvert and have little interest in other people and the pandemic has only drew this out more in me .

If you put aside the reasons, some of us find the lack of face to face a problem.

In my 20s, I worked for an international company. They favoured getting people from the London office to do two year placements in the offices abroad with about six flights home paid for.

Lots of people found two years too long because it is quite a long interruption to life and friendships.

I was struck by the poster who commented re her DH. Mum lost her brother last year. A friend - let's call her Jane - was "shielding herself". It might be connected to her DH. Jane called Mum to say that she was sorry and shocked etc but also said she couldn't believe mum hadn't called her.

Mum, in her distress, didn't think to call Jane because, after 20 months at that point, other friends were around in person and a shoulder to cry on, and those are the people you think of.

Yes. Very close long time friend, like family, has swallowed the anti-vax narrative hook, line and sinker. Is convinced that her risk from the vaccine is the same, if not higher, than as if she caught covid. Bury's head in sand about age related risk (early 60s) of covid. Has never had a positive covid/antibody test. Hasn't had one vaccine jab. Is probably immune naive and so at considerable risk as time goes by.

I try not to discuss covid now because if i ever say anything negative about the pandemic situation, I'm swiftly cut off. She is convinced that the pandemic is almost over and that the future is all roses. Though still won't go out of the house without N95 mask, glasses, plastic gloves and rarely interacts with anyone at all, including family, beacuse of infection risk

Takes huge amounts of vit D and believes meditation, turmeric, spices, herbs, tree hugging etc and nature will protect her. I love her dearly but the anti-science stuff and refusal to discuss it, is taking its toll

@EmmaH2022 how sad, but I can completely see it happening. I suppose it's a bit like the question of people who've had to give birth or even die alone... that reducing covid risk was put above all else, and this can be, in some cases and in my opinion, a misjudgement of what it is to be human.

I suppose people like in the case you mentioned, Jane had, either consciously or not, given her mum the message that avoiding covid risk was her absolute top priority, above all else. And when you adjust to being lower in someone else's 'pecking order' so to speak, you adjust your expectations.

That not to say anybody was awful or wrong in that case or any of the cases here, but that our personal relationships are precious and perhaps more fragile than we would like to think (in good times), and if we value them, we should nurture them, because we take them for granted at our peril.