The Conflict of Caring

Feb 19

When I first left for college, I was excited to experience everything my parents talked about when I was growing up: meeting my lifelong friends, my future partner, having just a generally fulfilling social life. I imagined a Friends-esque group who would become as regular at each other's dorms and apartments as we were at our local coffee shop or bar.

Now, as a senior nearing graduation, I’ve started taking stock and I can’t seem to ignore the fact that instead of having this wild, exciting, and social set of years in my life, it feels like college has been more about stress, strain, anger, apathy, confusion, and above all—loneliness.

I’ve realized that I’m not the only one, though. In fact, I’ve had several conversations with my friends and my peers about how hard it is not just to make friends, but to keep them.

Apparently, the vast majority of Americans today are feeling the exact same way, to a point where the Public Health Service published an eighty-two page document discussing the national effects of the “Loneliness Epidemic.”

In truth, in the case of this so-called epidemic, I would probably not consider my condition severe. I didn’t have a lot of friends growing up and so, since entering college, I have done everything within my power to put myself into positions where I could meet people and build bonds like I never got to before. It feels like in the grand scheme of things, I have no right to complain. Yet, here I am complaining anyway.

Because while I may have been a part of various organizations and had various opportunities to meet people, it’s only on the rare occasion where these bonds turned into actual friendship. According to Berkley’s Greater Good Magazine it takes students 57 hours to move from being acquaintances to actual-friends and it takes over two times that number to move from being actual-friends to good-friends.

Perhaps this doesn’t seem like a lot, but consider the amount of hours within a single semester that are invested into school and part-time jobs (of which many students of our generation have two). Not only is there rarely enough time in the day, but how often do you have the energy to schedule, plan, and then go to a dedicated hang out just to get to know one person?

Fatigue (not just in the case of scheduling but in general) and the perception of abundance is ultimately the crux of this national sense of loneliness because it prevents many of us from having the emotional bandwidth to go through the necessary motions of building depth and intimacy. If we have a conflict with our friends we’re more likely to ghost them (or slow-fade) than deal with the tension of the issue, because social media and the nature of college itself seems to provide a constant opportunity for connection.

Even when we are willing to confront and solve conflicts in our platonic relationships, it can often sound auto generated and insincere because we have the right vernacular to get our point across without ever having to express our true emotions.

I myself am guilty of this and everything else.

While I may only ghosted once, I’ve also only ever broken it off with someone behind the emotional safety of a text. Even in the cases of my longest and deepest friendships, I am very guilty of calling meetings to discuss problems like it’s some kind of performance evaluation rather than a relationship. Yet, I am rarely willing to ask any favors and have only displayed unpleasant emotions (like anger or hurt) maybe once or twice and within the most extreme circumstances.

But this is where true friendships stem from. It’s only by going through the trenches with someone on their worst days and through worst emotions (or even just their most boring days) that you truly build connection and depth. However, while most people are willing to do this for romantic relationships, our culture has imposed the idea that friendships aren’t worthy of the exact same intention and care.

We can see within today’s “loneliness epidemic” how abundantly isolating the world is when romantic relationships are the only thing we allow to be deserving of our vulnerability. We have become so preoccupied with the number of friends we have that we as a culture have lost sight of the importance of depth.

As I have gone through college and now prepare to leave it behind, I have come to terms with the fact that it wasn’t what my parents promised and it wasn’t what I always imagined. Because in truth, while I don’t have an abundance of friends or stories I do have a few really really good ones and have learned over time the importance of conflict and vulnerability. While many of them may now or soon be far away, I relish in the fact that I have people that I’ve grown to care about so deeply that I get to miss them.

Strike Out.

Writer: Knia Robinson

Copy Editor: Sarah Singleton

Chattanooga

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