Love Comes and Goes but True Friendship Lasts Forever
What happens when a girlfriend or boyfriend replaces your friends? What are you really losing when you leave your friends for a relationship? Finding time for both love and true friendship is an important part of a healthy relationship.
When you go into a relationship it’s normal to not have as much time for your friends. The plans you make with your partner may seem more interesting, thanks to the phenomenon of infatuation.
You really want to get to know this other person and enjoy these first exciting moments. It’s a new situation that takes more of your attention, but you should never completely abandon your friends.
A group of researchers lead by Robin Dunbar studied the subject. They revealed that when you start a romantic relationship you lose two out of your five closest friends. They also said that couples who make time for their friends and give themselves some personal space will have a higher level of satisfaction in their relationship.
That’s because they learn to divide their time so they can keep all the things that make them happy and bring them comfort. They’ll end up bringing that emotion to their relationship and thus strengthen it.
Love comes and goes, but a true friendship won’t fade over time. Hence the importance of spending time with your friends, wherever or whenever it may be. According to Robin Dunbar’s studies, choosing to split up your time with your partner instead of giving them 100% of it will be good for you.
But that doesn’t mean you should ignore your significant other. It just means you have to look for bits of time to be with the other people you love and appreciate.
Dropping everything for love
It’s such a common idea and it seems very romantic at first glance. But when you drop everything for love, you drop yourself too. You do it to “be together,” but it’s not a togetherness of two whole people; it’s more like clinging. So you lose part of your individuality and create a union: two incomplete people who are together to hide what they’re missing.
That’s not what love is. Love is respecting that your partner has their own time, friends, and life. They’ve chosen you to share it with them, but not to be completely tied together. Trust and communication will help any couple have personal space outside of the relationship, without any negative consequences.
“I’m giving up everything for love” is a selfish decision. It also means that if the relationship ends you’ll be left with nothing. That will just mean an even harder breakup.
You have to keep giving time to your hobbies, having your own space, and maintaining your friendships. Trust us: it will result in a fuller life and more to share. You should never forget that.
A true friendship takes time too
Keeping friendships takes understanding, and it also takes time, just like a relationship. Even though it might not be as much time as you used to have, that’s all the more reason for it to be quality time full of authenticity and love. Enjoy it.
Friendship is love too. So you have to work on it, give it attention, and care for it like a beautiful garden. It’s your choice. Make sure you don’t let those wonderful bonds break just because you’ve started a new relationship.
It’s hard to think about a friend abandoning you for love and then coming back after a while to get back the lost time. It’s hard because no one likes to be abandoned. The important thing is a true friendship will last forever.
