Lockdown has shown that all friendships need a periodic edit
Back in the strange, still, early days of lockdown, when the sun beat down endlessly from a blue and silent sky and I was woken up early every morning by the unnatural quiet, there was a sort of underlying frenzy that acted in contrast to the inertia of the days. It was the incessant sound of pings and beeps as our phones and computers went mad with Whatsapp messages and Zoom invitations.
Trapped at home, with only immediate family for company (if we were lucky), the need to communicate with our wider networks became, for a time, incredibly urgent. This compulsion manifested itself in surprising, and sometimes delightful ways – my husband got up at 4.30 in the morning one day to dial into a Zoom check-in with two of his best buddies from university, one in Oregon, the other in Hong Kong, while a previously sporadic Whatsapp group with my oldest group of school friends morphed into a weekly Zoom hangout where we drank wine and competed on whose life had become the most boring.
Zoom fatigue set in after a few weeks, and I got more discerning about who I wanted to communicate with. Some interactions, like my school pal chats, were genuinely life-affirming events that I looked forward to; others highlighted the fact that real life acquaintances do not always pass the screen test. I was struck by how little I missed some people, and how much I came to rely on regular check-ins with others.
So it’s perhaps not surprising that an Oxford University study has found that our friendships may have been irrevocably changed by lockdown, with full recovery only likely up to a full year after all this madness ends (i.e. possibly never). “Zoom is only a sticking plaster,” warns Robin Dunbar, the evolutionary psychology professor. “Nothing on Earth is going to stop a relationship quietly sliding away to being ‘somebody I once knew’ if you don’t, once in a while, meet up physically.”
But as with Zoom, so with real life. As we resume something a little closer to the latter, and are allowed to see our friends again, there are definitely some people I’m prioritising; others I’m less fussed about. Having always enjoyed a large and disparate group of pals, this whole shebang has forced me to work out which ones I truly value. But then, I’ve long believed that most things in life benefit from a good edit. Friends, it seems, are no exception.
What’s the weirdest
thing you bought during lockdown? I don’t mean the loo roll stockpile, or the extra pasta, but those impulsive, possibly alcohol-fuelled purchases checked out in anticipation of a wholly new life. Research has found that nearly three quarters of us splashed out on something we later regretted, and an informal straw poll among friends threw up some interesting results.
One pal’s partner invested in a bike helmet – despite not owning a bike. Another bought an electronic ear wax remover from America, yet to be delivered. One friend has a large projector screen languishing unusable in her basement (it’s wider than her house) that would cost more in courier fees to return than she (drunkenly) paid for it in the first place. Perhaps most suspiciously, one (currently gainfully employed) friend invested in a lock-picking kit. A side hustle for when redundancy looms, perhaps?