How COVID Broke Us

Written a little bit about COVID and friendships before, as well as about what COVID is doing to mental health, and now I want to tell a quick story that evolved in “COVID times” but isn’t really about COVID per se. I’ll try to loop it all back.

I had a crew of friends through my ex. The thing we don’t discuss is that when you get divorced, you also have to essentially divorce the friends. It’s hard, and maybe even harder than the divorce itself, because by the time you get divorced, the relationship is kinda fucked, but you’re still OK with the friends, and chances are they don’t even know your relationship is fucked. Related: on the exact same day that my ex and I decided to divorce, her sister texted me for relationship advice. How’s that for LOL?

Anyway, one of my friends in that circle was this kid Greg. He tried valiantly, and I do mean to give him lots of credit, to remain friends post-me and my ex. We’d text about dogs, NBA, the Buffalo Bills, and some other shit. It was sporadic, but it was nice and I felt a connection back to my old life. Whether or not that’s entirely healthy I cannot tell you or speak to; it quite possibly isn’t, but humans are weird creatures emotionally.

Now, before I was divorced, I’d say I hung out with this kid 15-20 times, including a bunch of weddings, group texts, 1-2 NYEs (that picture above is us toasting on NYE ’14 into ’15 at their house in MA, I believe), etc. We were definitely and conclusively friends. It was above the idea of acquaintanceship.

Now, during COVID, at one point I was bored, sitting at a bar, as I’m wanton to do, and I decided to start deleting photos from my phone as a project. I got from 2,442 photos to 51. It was quite a little undertaking.

In the course of this photo deletion, I would sometimes come across some cute kid or couple stuff, and I’d send those photos to people. Since it reminded them of pre-COVID times, I had a decently high response rate.

I found a picture of my man Greg’s wife, whose name would be Amy, sitting with a fat Asian child. It’s not her child; since that photo, they do have a child, but this was some random kid inside a museum. So, I sent her that picture as I kept deleting.

I got a response almost instantly that I should never contact her again, which is completely logical, within her rights, and probably for the best. It definitely hurt in the moment — I had been friends with her since probably July 2009, same wedding circuit, text circuit, events, etc. — but I get it.

A few days later I was walking my puppers and Greg texted me something about the NBA. We exchanged some texts therein and eventually I mentioned his wife telling me to go play in traffic for the rest of my life and not contact her. That didn’t land well, and he ended up telling me I needed to “see a therapist.” (FYI: I have and do.)

That was probably last spring/summer, and eventually that fizzled out for a bit, and we got back to some texts about the Bills and the job market. Yesterday we were discussing the Super Bowl — would Bills have been a better entrant than the Chiefs? — and convo got sideways about “get a therapist” again, leading to a Greg admission that “We weren’t really ever that good of friends, or that close.”

Again, hurtful, but I also have enough self-awareness to realize I’m a child of addicts and I think sometimes I run towards relationships, any relationship, and think “Oh, this is a great thing!” just because I want that experience for myself. So maybe I did that with Greg. I don’t think I did, but perhaps I did. I do remember that at one wedding, in September 2015 — I later got fired from a job for making a credit card mistake at this wedding (using a corporate card and not switching it back to personal), so I remember that wedding pretty well — his wife (Amy) told me and my then-wife that “Greg considers you one of his best friends.”

Anyway, not so much anymore. Cool dude, love the memories therein, but I just piped him out of my phone. Not worth any drama on either side of the equation, really.

COVID and related 2020 stuff has been weird as fuck for friendships. I’ve been in groups that crumbled over Trump, crumbled a bit over BLM, crumbled over COVID — again, all belief structures, which are dear to people — and I’ve had a bunch of unresponsive friends too, which is a mix of work/parenting demands, me being an asshole, people cancelling me, me texting when inebriated, and people being pricks. I just learned one of my friend’s wives’ dad has cancer, and he’s been watching their kids solo. He was taking about 17 days on average to respond to texts, and I was getting ornery. Now, with more “data-driven information,” I realize I was being an asshole.

So I started writing about male friendships and tempering expectations.

I guess friendship is kinda like work in many ways: people get disgruntled or disengaged, and sometimes you can work through it and get some superstar output, but sometimes people need to be PIP’ed and terminated. That’s life, right?

What do you think is going to be the long-term repercussion from COVID times on friendships and relationships? (Sidebar: ain’t no Baby Boom we can see yet.)