Relationship Maintenance

In chapter 8 we talked about social relationships and relational maintenance behaviors. The way that this semester has been, especially in the last few weeks, has made me think a lot about my friendships and the maintenance of these relationships. This semester has been my most time consuming out of my four years. I had wanted my last semester to be more relaxed and to have more time to spend with friends, but somehow both my advisor and I didn't realize until I was signing up for classes last semester that, I was one class short of what I thought. Because of this I needed to take 19 hours this semester instead of the 15/16 hours I thought I would be taking. Along with 19 hours, instead of having a typical class that has a few assignments, tests, and a final, almost all of my classes this semester have had weekly assignments (kinda reminded me of high school >.<) In other words I have at least one, sometimes multiple assignments due from Tuesday through Sunday each week (not including extra things like tests, papers, and projects). With that said, I spent a lot of time doing school work this semester, and not a lot time hanging out with my friends. Along with trying to find the time for school, extracurriculars, family, and friends, I've also found that I've been neglecting time for myself. I'm the type of person that likes to meet the needs of my friends and other people first before I meet my own needs. My friends are very important to me and I've always told myself that in life, the relationships that I make with people are far more important than the grades I make or how much money I make. In past semesters this has been evident in that many nights I would stay up talking to my friends when they needed help or needed someone to talk to instead of working on homework or studying. In past semesters because I didn't have as many hours, this caused me to lose sleep, but it did not interfere with me getting homework done on time. However, because of the structure of this semester, I wasn't really able to do those things because it would have affected school. I felt torn because I cared a lot about my friends but I didn't want my last semester to suffer either. I just kept telling myself, I just need to get through this semester and things will be better.

Throughout this semester I've still been able to find some time to spend with my friends, but mostly it would be them asking if I wanted to hang out and I would say "you want to go to a coffee shop and do homework together?" So most of the time I spent with my friends this semester revolved around doing homework. I was glad to still be able to see them and talk with them, but I could tell by the circumstances of this semester that I was missing some relational maintenance behaviors, which has made me feel like my friendships have become more distant than before. I think that "time" especially is a very important aspect to maintaining friendships. Though it is not considered one of the five relational maintenance behaviors, I believe that time affects all five of the behaviors: positivity, openness, assurances, social networks, and sharing tasks. In terms of positivity, I feel like a lot of my friends have viewed me as being "too busy" for them this semester. If they see me as being too busy and always doing work then there is going to be a low positivity and it will cause them to be less likely to want to hang out. When it comes to openness, I'm usually a very open person and have been in the past. However, since I haven't been able to really spend time with my friends and talk to them like I usually do, we haven't really had the opportunity or time to talk in a way of disclosing our thoughts and feelings. I'm not saying I haven't been able to at all this semester, but it has definitely decreased from the past. Similar to positivity, assurances are affected as well when friends see me as being "too busy" to spend time with them. This may cause them to feel that I'm not as commited to the relationship or that they aren't as important to me. Though I try to reassure them verbally, I feel that actions and actual time spent together has a larger impact than verbal expression. The social networks I have among my friends have also been affected due to a lack of time. A lot of the social networks among my friends, I experienced through going to events or participating in different things. When I am more limited to seeing my friends just through studying, and I am unable to go to as many social events, I wind up only seeing a select few, mostly my closer friends, but this has caused my social networks to decrease a lot, which in turn affects my close friends who are use to me hanging around our other friends as well. In terms of sharing tasks, I've still tried to return favors, but overall the amount of sharing tasks has decreased when my friends and I don't spend as much time together.

Overall, it's not that I've been a total recluse this semester and lost my friends, but I have noticed that my relationships have been negatively affected by the lack of time that I have had to put into maintaining them. The thing that disappoints me is that as I mentioned before, to me relationships are more important than materialistic things. I think it is important to have a balance between the two, but this semester I wasn't able to find that balance. The other interesting thing in terms of maintaining relationships is how we also maintain ourselves. As I mentioned in the beginning, I haven't had a lot of time for myself either. I'm constantly thinking about school, applying to graduate school, work, etc. and when I do have some free time, I spend it with my friends instead of taking time out to clear my mind and just think. I have found that this can impact a relationship because if I never take the time out to just recenter and think, then it can affect my conversations with other people. My mind becomes muddled with work and studying and when I do see my friends it can cause our conversations to be less interactive because my mind is distracted. This, combined with seeing them less can sometimes make us feel like we don't have as much to talk about compared to if we saw each other on a regular basis. I have found that when I have more time to write, play my guitar, paint, or meditate, that I'm able to concentrate more on conversations with other people instead of being consumed or worried about the next assignment I need to do.

After thinking about all of this, it has also made me think about how my friendships will be next year. I will most likely be in another state next year at graduate school. Though the strength of my friendships have decreased over the past few months, they have not ended. However, the book comments that "according to research, one of the most common life changes that can end a friendship is physical separation." Friendships are easier to maintain when you see them all the time. As I have already experienced with decreased available time to hang out, it has made it harder to maintain my relationships at the level that they were. Even more so, being physcially separated by distance, and seeing my friends only a couple times a years is going to be even more difficult. Though I know I can still maintain my friendships, it will be a lot more difficult and I know the relationships that will last will most likely only be my closest ones. As we mentioned in one of our discussions, facebook, as some believe has been a way to maintain relationships. I agree that it has made it easier as opposed to writing letters, and I definitley think in the next year I will be using facebook, IM, and video chat more as a means to maintain the relationships that I have with my friends who will be staying in North Carolina (or will also be in other states due to jobs/graduate study).

I am definitely looking forward to this summer =)