‘U ok?’ Virus-era friendships can be both crucial & fraught
A single mother hunkering down at home with a teenage daughter, Sharon Litwin sees her friends, like most people these days, only virtually. Even so, they’ve been a crucial lifeline.
“Sometimes I just need to have a conversation with adults,” she says. “And sometimes I just need to cry, which I really don’t want to do in front of my daughter.” Two of Litwin’s friends, especially, have become valued sounding boards in daily calls she coordinates with her walks outside.
But then there are friends she’s tried to check on — good friends — who haven’t answered. She doesn’t know what that means. Are they struggling? Are they or a loved one sick? Or are they afraid SHE is sick or struggling and don’t want to add to her stress? “I don’t know what the message is,” says Litwin, 45, of Teaneck, New Jersey. “I just worry about everybody.”
As the world has changed in overwhelming ways since the coronavirus era took hold, the complicated ripple effects have been well documented in terms of family life, but less so with friendships. Yet these relationships, too, were key to our previous lives. And they, too, are complicated — especially now that virtually all communication is, well, virtual.
The challenges can be as simple as learning how to navigate a relationship via FaceTime (am I calling too much, or too little?) or as deep as re-evaluating who one’s best friends are, and what one needs or expects of them.
There have been surprises both welcome and not.
There’s the friend you haven’t seen in months who pops up to offer a muchneeded item — a thermometer for your kid, a load of groceries when you can’t get out. There’s the neighbor three floors up whom you hardly knew before, who reaches out to say “I’m here if you need me.” There’s that person you rarely got to see in normal times, but suddenly has become a soothing voice helping you navigate the unknown.
Then there’s the friend who seems callous or focused on trivial matters — someone you’d rather just not be speaking to right now.
Tracy Wakeford knows she’s among the lucky. She’s sheltering in her Rockport, Maine house with a screened porch where her young daughters can play. Still, she finds it frustrating to see millennial friends posting about entertainment options being limited.
“I want to kill all my single friends or friends with no kids who are ‘bored’ and don’t know what to watch on Netflix,” Wakeford, 44, recently posted on Facebook.
“My toddler is being very clingy. We have no daycare and we’re not leaving the house,” explains Wakeford, whose daughters are 8 and 2, in an interview. Her answer to those friends: “I don’t want to hear about Netflix, and I don’t want to hear about how you’re macrameing a blanket.”
Wakeford tries not to judge, but admits to “snoozing” friends on Facebook whose posts sound like they’re on a mini-vacation. “Are people really listening to other people and the struggles they’re going through?”
Family therapist Catherine Lewis says communication can be fraught when friends are experiencing the pandemic differently. Frontline workers, or simply those who must stay in essential jobs, don’t have the freedom to stay home. It’s also harder for some to be cooped up in an urban setting than a suburban house. “It’s a luxury to be bored,” Lewis says.
Melba Nicholson Sullivan, a clinical community psychologist in New York, says the huge stress of the moment can shine a light on temperament differences that were manageable in easier times. “People are now having to pick and choose what works in a friendship, and what’s maybe no longer a good fit.”
For many, virtual communication has been a blessing. Recently, Bruce Leiserowitz, a Los Angeles lawyer, sent one of those “checking in” emails to an old friend, someone he hadn’t spoken to in months. Instantly he received an email from that very friend: “Checking in.”
He assumed his own email was bouncing back. But no: The two had reached out at exactly the same moment. They picked up the phone for a 30-minute catchup.