ri45

I want to maintain these friendships and relationships but after a point, I’m tired of being the first one to reach out all the time, the one word replies, and all the anxiety surrounding their very late replies. There is no such thing as busy, the average American checks their phone 96 times a day. If they want you, they’ll make time for you. It’s heartbreaking when it goes to this from a point where we’d talk for hours. It’s clear they no longer value the friendship and have moved on. Relationships need active effort from both sides to maintain, it’s over the moment one loses interest in maintaining it

As an adult, friendships keep passing by. All of a sudden a good friend "gets busy" or "life just happens". I really do not believe it anymore, even if people are genuinely busy, the least they can do is spare a few seconds of their day to reply back to a text? After what can only be described as a long "sliding window" of maintaining multiple friendships, seeing one tail expire and me actively trying to build more, I am genuinely tired of this or being so emotionally invested with them. I just don't feel its right either talking to so many this devotedly to someone I have no intention of marrying.

I'm looking for something deeper, as this article shows, a monogamous romantic relationship. I would like to have many children too. I don't think humans are built for multiple deep friendships. It also invites jealousy with the romantic partner. Being religious, "till death do us part" being expected out of marriage, I doubt these deep friends would go that far without the benefits of marriage.

Marriage and kids seem to be the center of life in this otherwise busy world

David Brooks argues that the American style nuclear family was a historic oddity and never really built to last. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-nuc... If anything, it was designed to enhance consumerism.