1- Communication: Life’s Stresses

To each and every one of us, our relationships are important. Yet sometimes we lose those relationships because of a lack of communication, no matter how important they are to us. Communication in relationships can be difficult, especially if we’re far from our friends and family. Under life’s busyness and stresses, we don’t communicate as often as we should, or sometimes not at all.

As a current college student, I understand how busy life can get. This last semester for me has definitely modeled that, with eighteen credit hours that included a remote editing internship and classes in freelance writing, philosophy, law and policy, and platform building, with an on-campus job thrown in. Needless to say, I’ve tried to be very careful about my timing of things, but it’s been hard to keep up some of my relationships here.

Of my closest friends here at school, we’ve all had really busy schedules where our free time often doesn’t overlap, especially after we’ve factored in homework time. At first, this was quite a struggle for me, as I had lots of friends that I wanted to see on a regular basis. But with time, effort, and sacrifice I’ve been able to keep up with most of my friends this semester.

When we’re stressed, overwhelmed, and all of our time is taken up by school’s classes and homework, or life’s work and responsibilities, we need to be conscious of the relationships that are important to us. We need to be fully aware of how much communication we’re having with those friends and family. Sometimes, we have to make some sacrifices in our own lives to keep a space open for that communication to happen, even if that may mean sacrificing time with other friends we see more often.

We need to make that contact and communicate on a regular basis if the relationship is to be sustained and continually growing.

“But what if I’m the one always reaching out?” This is always a good question, and for certain personality types, such as myself, it’s something that crops up fairly often. Many times, we feel we’re the only ones reaching out, that if the other doesn’t it means they don’t care or don’t want to talk to us.

I say that’s lies. Every bit of that is a lie. Think about it. There are times others have reached out to you. Or think about the reactions you’ve gotten from others when you’ve reached out to them. I, for one, tend to forget this when I feel I’ve been the only one reaching out. From my own experience, those I reach out to are always reciprocating and happy that I took the initial step. And some people have the type of personality where they just don’t think about it all that much; it happens because we’re so different. And those lies that come into our minds, that make us feel unloved and unwanted–we need to ignore them and continue to reach out, to make those connections with those we care about. (There will be more discussion on this in a later post; it’s a big topic.)

So what should we do when we see ourselves in danger of losing a friend because we never see them or talk to them due to conflicting schedules? We need to see what we can do to rearrange our schedules temporarily to catch that friend and talk about it. Then the two of you can work it out, can agree to rearrange your schedules so you have time to communicate and keep that relationship going. I, for one, am immensely glad I did this so I could keep the relationships that are important to me. And I will continue to be open to it.

 

What do you think? You’re welcome to share your thoughts and/or story below, or if you want to hear mine, feel free to ask. 🙂

 

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