When there isn't enough of you to go around
You can love the people in your life deeply and still not have enough time or energy to give everyone what they need from you.
I think friendships in high school and college were the easiest to maintain.
I'm not always a very reliable friend, and I don't particularly like admitting that.
I have girlfriends I genuinely love spending time with. I'll make plans with every intention of keeping them, and then something happens. See, I have several family members who sometimes need me unexpectedly because of physical or mental health issues, and when that happens, they're going to come first. Always.
I've cancelled lunches, postponed plans, and said, "Can we do next week instead?" more times than I'd like. I've even lost friendships over it, and for a long time, that made me feel like a bad friend.
Honestly, though, I understand the other side of it. If someone repeatedly cancels plans with you, eventually you may stop asking. My reasons may be legitimate, but that doesn't mean my friend isn't disappointed when I cancel again. Intentions matter, but they're not the same thing as showing up.
That's what makes being intentional about relationships more complicated than simply saying, "Make time for the people who matter." Sometimes several people matter. Sometimes they need you at the same time. And sometimes there simply isn't enough of you to go around.
The people who matter aren't always the people getting your time
“The people who matter most shouldn’t always have to live on whatever you have left.”
Think about the people who received most of your time and attention last week. Now think about the people who matter most to you. They're not necessarily the same list.
That doesn't automatically mean your priorities are wrong. Life doesn't distribute our time according to how much we love people. A family member may need extra support. Your child may be going through something difficult. An aging parent might need help getting to appointments. Maybe another friend is dealing with a divorce, or someone you love might be sick. Work might even be unusually demanding.
Meanwhile, another person you love is doing perfectly fine, so you think, “I'll call her next week.”
Next week becomes next month. Yeah, you send the occasional text saying, "We really need to get together!" and you both agree enthusiastically, but nobody actually picks a date.
Relationships rarely disappear because we consciously decide someone doesn't matter anymore. Sometimes they simply get crowded out by the people and problems making the most noise in the moment.
Good intentions aren't always enough
This is the uncomfortable part. You know why you haven't called. You know why you cancelled dinner. You know you think about your friend even when you haven't spoken in three weeks.
The problem is that your friend doesn't experience your intentions; she experiences the cancelled dinner. We naturally judge ourselves partly by what we intended to do because we have access to all the information in our own heads. Other people experience what actually happened (This might be the downfall of 80% of failing marriages!).
Both realities can be true at the same time. I can have a legitimate reason for cancelling plans, and my friend can still feel hurt. I can care deeply about someone and still fail to give the friendship enough attention. I can be doing the best I can with a difficult family situation, and someone else can decide that what I'm able to offer isn't enough for the kind of friendship she wants.
That's why I think one of the most important things we can do when life is complicated is acknowledge the impact we're having instead of relying on our intentions to speak for us. Sometimes that means saying, "I know I've cancelled on you several times, and I understand how that probably feels. I want you to know that this friendship matters to me. My family situation can be unpredictable, but I don't want you to think I'm taking you for granted."
It doesn't magically give you more time, but it makes the invisible part visible. And honestly, that might be all you can do to try to maintain the friendship.
Sometimes showing up needs to look different
See? Doesn’t she look happy?
There are seasons when you genuinely can't give a relationship what you once could. That doesn't mean your only options are maintaining the friendship exactly as it was or letting it disappear.
Maybe you can't reliably commit to a three-hour lunch right now, but you can make a ten-minute phone call. You can send a voice message while you're driving home, text someone because you saw something that reminded you of her, or invite her for an impromptu coffee when an unexpected pocket of time opens up. When you do have to cancel, you can be the one who immediately suggests another date instead of ending with, "We'll figure something out."
Those things don't completely replace spending time together, but they do say, You haven't disappeared from my life just because my life is complicated right now.
Relationships are built through big moments, but they're also held together by a lot of very small ones. When you don't have much time or energy to give, those small points of connection can be what keeps a relationship from slipping away.
Healthy relationships aren't always equal
I think we've also become a little too focused on whether relationships are perfectly balanced. Real relationships rarely work that way.
If my friend is going through a divorce, I would expect the relationship to lean heavily toward her for a while. If someone I love is grieving, I'm probably going to do more listening than talking. If I'm going through a difficult season, I hope the people who love me will give me some grace too.
Reciprocity isn't about keeping score; it's about what happens over time. Can both of you need something? Do you both care about what's happening in each other's lives? Can you be honest when something hurts? Can you set boundaries without being punished for them? Do you both make some effort to keep the relationship alive?
A healthy relationship can be wildly uneven for a while. It just shouldn't be one person carrying the entire thing forever.
Who's actually sitting in your front row?
“Are you doing anything to help the relationships you value survive the life you’re actually living?”
I used to think about relationships almost like seats in a theatre. Your front row is made up of the people who matter most. They're the people you want close to you, while acquaintances and less important relationships naturally sit farther back.
I still like that metaphor, but I think it's more complicated than that. Sometimes the problem isn't that the wrong people are sitting in the front row; it’s that there just aren't enough seats.
Your partner matters. Your children matter. Your parents matter. Your siblings matter. Your closest friends matter. Depending on what's happening in their lives, several of them may legitimately need you at once. You can't solve that by creating a perfect ranking system, but you can occasionally look around and notice where your time is going.
Who is there because you've actively chosen to maintain that relationship? Who somehow moved closer because they demand a lot of your attention? Who matters enormously to you but has accidentally ended up somewhere in the balcony?
Most importantly, are you doing anything to help the relationships you value survive the life you're actually living?
Sometimes the answer isn't giving someone more time because you genuinely don't have it. Maybe it's making sure she knows she still matters.
Some relationships still won't survive
This is something I've had to accept. You can explain your circumstances, apologize when you've disappointed someone, and make an effort in the ways you're capable of making an effort, and you can still lose a friendship.
Someone may reach a point where she needs a kind of friendship you simply can't offer during this season of your life. She may want someone who can reliably make plans, travel together, spend weekends together, or be more available than you can realistically be.
That's painful, especially when you still care about her, but it doesn't necessarily mean she was unreasonable. It also doesn't necessarily mean you were a bad friend. Sometimes two people can care about each other and still be unable to maintain the relationship they once had.
Relationships change shape. People become closer and drift apart. Someone who was one of the most important people in your life at 25 might be someone you exchange Christmas messages with at 50. That doesn't erase what the friendship meant when you had it.
The people you love shouldn't always get what's left
There will always be something urgent competing for your attention. That's part of adult life, but urgent and important aren't always the same thing.
Sometimes the person who isn't asking anything from you is the person you need to remember. It might be the friend who knows you're busy and doesn't want to bother you, the sister who doesn't need help with anything, the adult child who's doing fine, or the partner sitting beside you while you're answering everyone else's messages.
They may not need you urgently, but you still want them in your life. Sometimes that means choosing to give them a little of yourself before everything else has finished taking its share.
Because everything else is never finished.
Before you go...
Think of one person who matters deeply to you but hasn't been getting much of your time or attention lately. Instead of thinking, We really should get together, do something that moves the relationship forward.
Send the message. Make the call. Pick the date. Invite her for coffee. Send the ridiculous meme that will make absolutely no sense to anyone except the two of you. And if life is genuinely too complicated for you to show up the way you'd like right now, tell her that too.
You don't need to give everyone equal access to your time and energy. You couldn't, even if you tried. But the people who matter most shouldn't always have to live on whatever you have left.
If you want someone in the front row of your life, make sure she knows you're still saving her a seat.
Michelle Arseneault is a certified life coach and instructional designer who loves helping women understand why life feels harder than it needs to, and what to do about it.
“I believe small, thoughtful changes usually have a bigger impact than dramatic overhauls. Around here, you'll usually find me exploring the psychology behind everyday life, creating practical tools, or asking questions that help you see things from a new angle.”
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