Before COVID-19 I used to have several social events during the week. Toastmaster meetings, LinkedIn Local events, French lessons, dinner with friends, etc.

My goal was to work a few hours during the day and have a social interaction during the evening. It was a good balance between spending time alone and spending time with others.

Now, due to Covid-19, I feel isolated and most of my casual friendships are rapidly decaying.

Covid-19 eliminated my social life

COVID-19 has, for the most part, eliminated my social life. Now, I spend most of the time alone in my apartment.

I go outside, twice per day. I take a 20-minute walk to exercise the body and to keep my sanity, but when I come back, I feel trapped inside my apartment.

I have one friend in my building. We chat for about 30 minutes every day, but we both feel a bit suffocated with our social limitations.

We are social animals, we need human interaction to be happy

We are social animals, we need social interaction to feel happy, to feel validated, to have a witness of our life. Our social life is a huge factor in our overall wellness. Studies have shown that people with social lives are happier, have a stronger immune system, they get sick less often, and live much longer.

So many people are feed up with social distancing and have decided to ignore it altogether. In order to return to regular life, they are endangering their lives and the lives of those close to them.

I have decided that this too shall pass and continue my social distancing for a bit longer, but at the same time, I am aware that some of my casual friendships are decaying quite fast.

Friendships depend on spending time together. I have let go of many good friends when they moved away, or when we stop seeing each other. What’s the purpose of catching up with someone who you will probably never see again, and whose life is no longer relatable with yours? I see no purpose in that. For me, those friendships don’t decay slowly, for me, I end them fast.

Friendships through Zoom don’t work

I have tried keeping up with friends through Zoom and telephone, but all of you know that’s not even close to maintaining a relationship. Maintaining friendships through Zoom feels painful, draining, and unsatisfactory.  None of these technologies can compare to face-to-face interaction.

We need to touch people, to see them in their eyes, to observe their whole body language, to feel the pleasure of someone’s company.

We have been roaming the earth for almost 200,000 years, but only during the last 10, 000 years we have learned to communicate through language; before our communication was done through gestures, through body language. Sometimes we communicate more through our body language than with words. When we communicate through the internet, a lot of that body language communication is missing and that’s why we feel so drained after watching someone through a screen for a few minutes.

On the other hand, families are becoming stronger. For once, everyone can have dinner together. Small community gardens are considered essential and people get together to talk about the growth of their tomatoes. People are beginning to know their neighbors. Yes, some friendships are decaying, but for many, new relationships are being born.

It’s time to re-evaluate our old friendships

Maybe this is an occasion to re-evaluate friendships. For example, the recent movement #Black Lives Matters has given me permission to allow the decay of friendships with people I consider to be racist. Also, I am not in a hurry, to establish relationships with Trump lovers.

I don’t know how much longer it will be before I can carelessly shake some one’s hand, or before I can give a hug to a random person. I know that some friendships will decay, but our human nature will help us build new relationships. We just have to hang in there a little bit longer. We will survive this pandemic and we will come back to be our old social selves.

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