Among the many things that have changed throughout the pandemic is the nature of friendship. Many people say they have experienced losing friends over COVID.

An American research study from last spring showed people have fewer close friendships and are talking to their friends less than before coronavirus was a household word. Almost half of those surveyed lost touch with friends over the past year. Nearly 1 in 10 had lost touch with most of their friends.

About half of the people surveyed say they have three or fewer friends, but for some, that is enough. Friendship researcher Suzanne Degges-White’s work shows the perfect number of friends for most people is three to five.  

While some of us may be working to renew friendships or feeling relief at pruning some that were no longer serving us, it’s worth taking a moment to consider what kind of friendships you want in your life.

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To fully understand the importance of anything, it helps to compare it to something else. I decided to compare friendships to money. I experienced some interesting, invaluable insights into why friendship truly is priceless.

A Friendship Money Can’t Buy

As Dr. Degges-White demonstrated, we don’t need a lot of friends to have beautiful friendships. It seems that money, no matter how much we have, is never enough.

We don’t pay tax on friendships. We don’t have to send a portion of our friends off somewhere else so someone else can waste them.

We can enjoy our friends just by being with them. Being with money is not very exciting unless we do something with it.

True friends always show up when you need them. Money? Not so much.

Losing Friends Over COVID

Not for a moment am I suggesting that money is not essential. It is. We need it to live. In fact, most of us make money a high priority in our lives for that very reason.

The research about friendships that have been coming out shows so many of us are losing friends over COVID it might be time to prioritize our relationships in the same way.

As we have discussed so many times before, we only ever do one thing. We do what is essential to us at the moment.

If friendships you value have been strained because of quarantine restrictions and other factors of modern life, make them a priority. When they’re what matters most in the moment, our attention will automatically go there.

Our lives will be far more fulfilling if we focus our energies on quality relationships rather than the negative ways life has changed.

Till we read again.