“He is engaged now, if we get to see him this year it would be a miracle.”
“She is spending all her time with her stupid boyfriend, she has no time for us.”
“He always chooses his girlfriend over us.”
… We always hear – and say – stuff like this. Whenever one of our friends gets into a relationship, we feel betrayed by them when we see that they are not spending time with us anymore and that they are not even balancing their free time between us and their significant others. The moment someone enters their lives, we feel like they don’t need us anymore and that we were only there to amuse their free time until their perfect someone came along.
That might be how it feels, but that is not always the case.
In most cases, our recently-relationship-status-updated friends truly love us. They truly care about us, and the bond we have is real and strong. It is just that introducing someone new into their life messes up the balance of everything, and leads us to thinking that they don’t need us anymore. Here are a few reasons why we usually get frustrated with them:
Psychological Reasons
One of the reasons why our newly-in-relationship friends disappear from our lives is based on a theory introduced by a British anthropologist named Robin Dunbar, he said that the maximum number of cognitive relationships one can maintain is 150. That means that the maximum number of people you can know about, hear about, ask about, is 150. The number of the smaller circle is even less, it can reach 5 or 10 people max. So technically speaking, when one gets in a relationship, he subconsciously feels the need to remove one (or some) of the people in his circle in order for the new person to find a place.
Time Management
Another common reason for that is the lack of time management. When a friend gets in a relationship, his whole time plan equation changes. After getting used to dividing his time on his usual activities, which includes the interaction with his friends, he now has a new addition to his day. Thus addition requires more time and more management and more attention. Consequently, in the beginning at least, the activities that he used to do daily will be done weekly instead, and so on.
Feeling Threatened
A major reason also concerning this matter is the feeling of threat. The newly introduced significant other is not always comfortable with the fact that their partners have friends that are closer and have more inside jokes. So they start to feel threatened and their self confidence starts to shake, which leads to them needing to spend more time with their partner in order to make up for that.
We don’t like their significant others
Sometimes we feel that our friends don’t make the wisest decisions, which is why we sometimes see the the ugly side of our friends’ significant others that they themselves don’t see, which lead us to disliking their significant others. This energy of dislike we create leads them to distance themselves from us, even if we mean well.
Managing our relationships with friends is always difficult, especially when we feel that they are not as close as they used to be. But we need to be understanding of their situation and always be there for them, even if we feel that they don’t need us as much anymore.
