Lately I’ve been really looking at my friendships and working out which ones bring us both value, and which ones are obligation/ feel-bad-if-we-don’t-catch-up friends.
And I’m making little to absolutely zero effort to keep pushing the “should” catch ups.
I’ve been working on it putting more energy into my HELL YES friends and less into my obligation friends. I personally think that there “should” be no such a word as should.
Should (verb): used to indicate obligation, duty, or correctness, typically when criticizing someone’s actions.
This is NOT what friendships are about.
My definition of “we should catch up” = “we feel obliged by social-etiquette to catch up and tick each other off the list for another month, but we don’t reallllly want to all that much.”
This can be the case with long standing friends who we never really clicked with but have known for so long that we feel obliged to keep it up; it can be the case with old friends we had when we were a very different person, and now we’ve changed, our friendship doesn’t make so much sense anymore, or it can just be with friends who we’ve had so many ups and downs with that it just seems futile to keep forcing square pegs into round holes.
It’s draining. Ain’t nobody got time for that. Nor spare fuel reserves.
If a friend is on your should list, it’s likely you’re on theirs, so in the end it’s best for both of you to nip it in the bud kindly and non-taking-it-personally-ally.
In short (not my forte) – put more energy into your HELL YES friends and start lovingly but firmly phasing the “shoulds” out of your life.
Like clearing out your wardrobe it feels tough, but ultimately liberating.
