Impacts on Friendships

For many of our participants, living with long COVID has meant they have limited energy for social relationships. It has also led them to step away from some relationships and focus on others. 

One widely shared experience, among the people we spoke with, was coming to terms with the loss of certain friendships. Sometimes this happened because friends expressed doubt that their long COVID was real, had lost patience with the situation, or were unwilling to adapt the friendship to their new reality. As Lesley told us, “We have friends now who … they’re just done with COVID … which I get, but they don’t really want to know somebody like me who’s still really affected by it … So I find that I’m closer to people now that I wasn’t necessarily close to at the beginning of the pandemic, and I’m more distanced from people that I thought would be in my life forever.” Or, as aerik put it, “I’ve lost relationships during COVID … I’ve also gained a lot of relationships and a number of my existing relationships have deepened considerably, so it is certainly the full range.” In a similar vein, Jennifer 2 explained, “I have actually estranged myself from … people who say, ‘Oh come on. Oh come on, you can do it. You can do it,’ you know … I know they mean very well and in the past that kind of thing would’ve been, ‘OK. Yeah, sure. Maybe we’ll try this hike.’ but now I can’t. I can’t have that … it just makes me so anxious because I feel like I have to, and I know I can’t.”

Many participants talked about the loss of social relationships that were based on shared activities. As Maggie put it, “We all have friends that are with us through thick and thin, and they’re a small number. But we have friends that are still important to us, but sort of more on a social level. Those … people have kind of moved on … they have their other activities and their other things that they do and I’m not part of them any longer. So, those relationships changed.” Lesley is unable to eat normally because of long COVID and expressed a similar view. She explained, “From a food perspective, no-one wants me at a dinner party because I can’t eat. Everybody’s afraid that what they’re going to make me is going to make me blow up in massive hives or have this histamine reaction that I can’t predict … We just don’t do any of that anymore and it’s a lot lonelier.”

 

A Catch-22

Several participants described their loss of certain social relationships as a Catch-22 situation. Because they often have to say no to invitations, people stop asking them. Then they feel left behind.  As Lori described it, “Because [I] can’t do everything anymore they don’t ask me … you feel bad when you say no … so it’s almost better not to be asked … You don’t want to miss out or not to feel included but after so many times it’s like, ‘Well, why ask her because she can’t?’” This kind of situation could feed people’s anxiety. As Christine put it, “People just don’t want to ask you to do things and so then your anxiety gets in the middle of it. I haven’t seen one of my very good friends for a year and she lives six miles away … It’s not on purpose but … when you start thinking about it, like ‘Well, [is it that] they don’t want to put me out, or they just don’t want to see me?’”