This Is Why Your Friendships Suck
Building Community vs. Hoarding Connections
Hi babes. Let’s talk about communication.
Did your eyes just roll into the recesses of your brain? Is your hand already hovering over the backspace? I get it. We’ve been told we just need to communicate better all the damn time. Then, crickets. What in the ever-loving-world does “communicate better” even mean? It’s so non-specific it’s useless.
How do I communicate now? How does the person I’m talking with communicate? How does my communication style change when there’s more or different people around? We throw this idea of “better communication” around like it’s a magic spell that’ll fix all our relationships, but no one ever tells us how.
For me, it took years to realize that I wasn’t communicating at all, not in the way that counted. Not in the way that built the kind of relationships I craved. I wasn’t saying the things that needed to be said. Or, maybe I was trying to, but it never landed. I clung to one relationship that wasn’t working because the sunk-cost fallacy is real, and I thought, “If I just keep at it, if I love hard enough, I can fix it.” But love isn’t a fixer-upper. And neither are relationships.
I remember a time when I tried so hard to tell my partner what I needed. I’d start with a…
