The Pandemic Ended Relationships by Removing Happiness Crutches

I just had a really great conversation on the phone with one of my best friends, I’ll call her Lily for the sake of privacy.

Lily and I talk about everything and usually cover lots of ground in our chats — from work talk, to boy drama, to health goals and everything in between. There always amazing tidbits that come from these conversations and I’m always left wishing our conversations were recorded. I feel like a) others would benefit from them and b) I would benefit from listening back because I always forget the juicy bits!

So this time, I took a note at one especially juicy topic that hit me light a massive lightbulb.

We were chatting about our regular catch up topics, bantering back and forth about our romantic relationship, work, the fall weather in summer (thanks Vancouver), our dogs…and then we got into talking about friends. I always ask her how some of her other friends whom I know are doing because Lily always has great stories on their updates, so it makes for a highly amusing convo.

This time she brought up how one of her friends (lets call her Karen) is complaining constantly and she’s not so sure the relationship is serving her anymore. Apparently Karen is always negative about everything lately, saying she has gained weight, her relationship sucks, her work sucks…and my friend is fed up with listening to it, because Karen doesn’t take any actions to change these things, she just simply complains, constantly.

I challenged Lily, as I often do. ‘Well, is Karen depressed? This pandemic has really affected a lot of people. I know it has affected me and I’ve been questioning everything, definitely crying more frequently and feeling depressed. Maybe she’s just going through a funk?’

She responded by saying that she has tried the empathy card with her for months, but moved more to a blunt approach because she simply wasn’t taking any actions to chance her circumstances. She feels that the pandemic has been used as a crutch for everyone. An excuse. An excuse to gain weight. An excuse to be rude. An excuse to be lazy. She was tired of it.

I was in full agreement and relief someone else felt this way, as my partner has been increasingly negative about many of the same things and well, Lily and I agreed that it’s all good and dandy to complain if you’re doing something about it. But, to complain about your job, your weight, day in and day out but do nothing about it? Nah.

We also agreed that we sounded like total b*tches saying that, but hey…thats what good friends are for. An open and safe space to be vulnerable, honest and blunt (if you want to).

So as we got to chatting about the pandemic being an excuse and crutch for so many people, we got to talking about all the friends we had before the pandemic that we’ve grown apart from over the passed year and a half. We got into detail about the reasons why, which ultimately came down to differences in character.

This is when Lily said “I think it’s not so much Covid thats at fault for ending some of my relationships, but it’s Covid that got rid of the happiness crutches and then you have nothing distracting you from that person.”

Ding ding ding! Lightbulb moment.

She went on to talk about a friend she doesn’t talk to anymore because all they ever did was go to concerts together, but when those shut down, she realized how negative of a person she was. Or her friend who was her city friend, going for drinks and dinners, but without that…there was nothing to it. Her friend was a miserable person and leech to her growth. Crutches gone, eyes wide open.

I responded by relating with some of my friendships that were clearly no longer serving me and the gratitude I have for my new ability this year to say “no”. Before this huge shift, I said yes to everyone, I was there for every friends phone call, even when I was drained and needed my introverted recharge time. This passed year gave me the strength to have boundaries to protect my own energy and say no because well…I really didn’t have enough energy to give. It caused some relationships to naturally end as I was no longer their crutch.

We agreed that it’s no easy feat to say goodbye to people in our lives, especially if they have been there for many years, however; the process of shining a light on the people we surrounded ourselves with every day was a really beautiful and needed one because now we have core groups of friends who we truly enjoy. Mutually beneficial unions, filled with love, support and growth.

And sure, many aspects of this pandemic really suck, many things changed drastically and rapidly, but we have also have the pandemic to thank for the truth it showed us about our lives. It shone a light on all the nasty bits and if you were present enough to witness it, then you likely levelled up from it.