‘Do I Spend Too Much Time on My Friends?’

I’ve always prided myself on being a good friend. I love and value my friends so much, and I want them to know it. Recently, I moved from the city where I had lived for nearly a decade, a place where I had a very tight-knit group. We’ve been there for each other through so much, and people would often comment on how involved in each other’s lives we were.

However, now that I’ve had some distance, I’ve realized that I was putting a lot of effort into maintaining this community without saving much energy for myself. In the midst of my flourishing friendships, I didn’t make space for things that would only offer me an individual benefit: dating, networking, regularly getting enough sleep, etc. And, looking around, no one else seemed to have this problem. Can I train myself to expect less from friends? How do I toe the line between social and selfish?

There’s something in the air today: A suspect was arrested in connection with the 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur; George Santos hard-launched his relationship with a condolence message; flooding in New York City is so bad even buses aren’t safe; and the Taylor Swift–Travis Kelce discourse has reached new levels of inane. Meanwhile, Fat Bear Week could be another casualty of the impending government shutdown, not to mention the 3.5 million federal workers who will have to go without pay. Do it, Mick. And pharmacists in the U.K. say millions of people wrongly believe they are allergic to penicillin, one of the most effective, commonly prescribed antibiotics.

Sign up to get Brooding, a biweekly newsletter interrogating modern family life, written by Kathryn Jezer-Morton.