There are many external pressures that friendships face and overcome. The most common external influences are competing demands, personal change and geographic distance. Competing demands basically expands on the issues that friends get wrapped into other social circles of live and that can include career and school. For example, when I am at school I mainly focused with my friends who I interact in classes with than my friends at home. Most of the friends that I grew up with our in Southern California and of course I'll go to the school here so it is sometimes hard to call my friends since I am involved in SJSU circle of friends. In addition, geographic location is also an external pressure. For example, when I was in New York interning at MTV my friends had to call me at certain times because it's a three hour difference. Most of the time my friends would call late pacific time but then I told them to called me earlier because when they call me, I am already in bed. Another external influence on friendships is personal changes. Since being away for four years and going to school I've change as person and so have my friends too. I realized I like engaging in move in depth conversations about life, news and pop culture. However, my friends out not really interested in those subjects so sometimes it is frustrating to talk them about these topics and most of the time they do not know what current events are going on. Then for me personally, I feel left out of loop when I come back for summer and winter break and meet up with my friends and catch up on their live. Furthermore, I say time is an external influence because time can fly and may not know friend that you known to be if that makes sense.
-Sir Keithington
Hey Sir Keithington, i have also encountered a number of external pressures on relationships. I particularly can connect with your reference to being from southern California and it being hard to call your friends from back home when you have the circle of friends here at SJSU. You interact with students here every day and it becomes difficult to stay in touch with old friends. Competing demands takes part in a huge portion in my life and it just sucks. Feeling left out of the loop is common because we are never around our old friends. Overall, great job on this post and keep up the good work!
ReplyDeleteHey Sir,
ReplyDeleteI've also been in the same boat as far as external pressures on relationships. One of the biggest pressures for me is also geographic distance. I realized that I keep in touch with my friends a lot more if they live close enough to me that we do not have to worry about traveling to one another. I am also really lazy when it comes to keeping in touch with my friends who live further away from me. It also does not help that I do not like talking on the phone. Although my friend who goes to UCSD and I text each other, texting can only bring our relationship so far since we also get lazy to type long text messages to one another or take a while to respond. It is hard, but I also treasure the friendships where even though you do not see each other for a while, it seems as if nothing has changed between one another.
I definitely agree with your post this week about competing demands. I also notice that many of my friends that have gone off to college in San Diego, Arizona, and so on are focusing on their own things in life such as school, sororities, and new friends they have made at their respected colleges. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just the reality of friendships, and I can say that I am also focusing on my own thing here in San Jose. I can say though that when all my friends come home from college, I believe we will all be able to connect again and catch up with one another. At least I will still have my best friends in my life.
ReplyDeleteGeographic location can definitely be an external pressure, and a hard one at that. When I made the big move from my hometown in the valley to here in the bay area a few years ago to attend college, I tried to keep up with my high school friends and make trips every other weekend to keep in touch with my roots so to speak. Years have now passed by and every year I go home a lot less, which played a major role in the reason why I haven't been able to keep up with my friends and social life back in my hometown. Currently, I am in the middle of a geographic external pressure with someone I have a close relationship with and this person is two hours ahead in time, so that causes some issues, but we get through it since he is considered a friend of the heart.
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