Do you have bandwidth for me today?
Do you have bandwidth for me today?
Am I your project manager or friend?
Look, I get it; everyone’s busy.
But, I am not a fan of this new concept of ‘finding the bandwidth & time’ to care for the people close(st) to you.
Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of videos by (well-meaning?) creators that talk about setting clear boundaries, protecting your space, etc. And while the original idea and intent were great, they have since devolved into something more selfish.
Accessible & problematic vs. Nuanced & helpful
In the last five years or so, information has become more freely accessible than before. This means that previously complex topics in psychology have become part of our daily lingo. From ‘trauma’ to gaslight,’ a number of these words are common vocabulary now, and I fear we’ve gone a little too far to try and explain everything correctly.
To quote my wise friend, Mai1, “Reels & short videos about psychological concepts are actually fucking things up by oversimplifying them.”
For example, earlier, when something shitty used to happen or if you needed to vent to a friend, you could just pick up the phone to call or text them about it. But if current trends are to be believed, there are a few more steps to this now:
Pick up the phone to text — they might not be okay with calls. 🙄
Check if they are available to chat.
Do they have the full bandwidth, capacity, or mental space to hear you out?
No? Then figure something else out.
To clarify, I mean something minor or moderately shitty — think petty office drama, annoying public transport tales, or just general life stuff.
If I have to ‘check in’ before venting about my dumb manager every single time, I’m just not going to text you about it anymore. In the grand scheme of things, that’s not an issue, but good, long-lasting friendships usually require random, meaningless updates & vents just as much as heart-to-hearts or emotional talks.
Most of the aforementioned videos talk about ensuring you’re setting the right boundary with your friends and clarifying your emotional and personal bandwidth to support them. Again, while technically the right thing to preach, human beings and life events are a bit more complicated than this clinical approach to friendships.
Now, I firmly advocate knowing roughly what frame of mind your friend is in before randomly venting about someone in the office taking credit for your presentation. Are they going through something, too? Something bigger than office drama? Okay, then read the room.
Reciprocity is a kind of a big thing in friendships. But asking for a clean 50-50 split every single time — e.g., only allowing someone to vent or ‘holding space’ for them if they can/have equally been there for you, is quite ridiculous. Again, the original idea for this was to ensure you slowly withdraw from toxic, one-sided, and unappreciated friendships.
So, how and when did we go from being able to lend an ear to our friends to “friends are not meant to be your therapists?”
Friendships shouldn’t only exist to serve you
There’s a lot of talk about ‘upgrading’ your friend circles on LinkedIn (and if you stumble upon the hustle/productivity/entrepreneur side of Instagram or TikTok). Personally, I’m not a big fan of only being friends with someone until they ‘serve’ a purpose in your life.
This all-or-nothing version of friendship is quite detrimental to society as a whole. Holding space and checking your friend’s bandwidth isn’t the problem. It’s wanting the perfect friendship where both of you put in an equal amount, are generally always well-adjusted, and are on track to being mega-successful due to your equal influences on each other.
Not sure that exists. If it does, it’s a business transaction, not a friendship.
Because that’s originally where words like ‘bandwidth’ or ‘capacity’ come from. And while it’s nice to use relatable language to create better personal boundaries and relationships, these words began as corporate lingo for a reason. They’re mostly devoid of emotion and strip the human connection from what you actually want to say.
Sometimes you legit don’t have the bandwidth for your friend. But they need you, so you gotta step up. In a good friendship, this will also happen in reverse as the years go on because you cannot time your bandwidths and their problems perfectly.
In this rush to make info accessible and simple, we’ve lost a lot of nuance and context.
Take similar videos on relationships — often, they present simple solutions: dump them. Easy, right?
But life isn’t that black and white. Of course, there are some hard boundaries people shouldn’t cross, but ideally, when humans fuck up (which they will), we should be offered chances to make amends and change our behaviour. This is a bit hard to do when most pieces of advice are along the lines of “go low-contact, no-contact, break up with them immediately.”
While I’ve also linked to some very nice ‘nuggets of wisdom from therapists’ posts in the past, they were never meant to be a one-size-fits-all solution for your problem. Most of the time, you can't offer an effective solution without the right (and enough) context, which is why actual therapists don’t often provide advice right off the bat. Instead, they let you share info, give context, and help you reach an understanding on your own.
Anyone will tell you that a good friendship or relationship, while seemingly easy, takes effort (on both sides) to maintain. Another thing that most of these advice videos forget is that both people have agency in a friendship. If you need space from a friend or don’t want to be available for them, say at 2 am, you can either communicate that or put your phone on silent and respond when you can in the morning.
Vent to your friends. Cry to them. Share with them. Don’t forget to laugh with them too, though. And don’t forget to ask about them. One hand washes the other, people. (source)
What did you think of this issue?
Your anonymous feedback helps me improve. Thanks!
If you liked this issue (or like the newsletter in general), feel free to buy me a coffee or two!
Stuff I wanna share with you today 💥
I'm not keeping a fast or anything for lent, but I'm using the 40 days to declutter my life (both digitally and physically). This means cleaning out my Google Drives (yes, plural), digital photos & videos, any data on pen drives, Insta & Twitter bookmarks, and saves, etc. All those articles I've bookmarked but will definitely never read, you've been great to have, bye now. Anyway, for those who want structure to do this with me, here's a video on how to spring clean your entire life.
I'm a huge swiftie, but I think it's unfair for Ms Swift to take 13-min private flights & then also send cease-and-desist letters to those tracking public info about said flights. One of my favourite content creators,
2, has encapsulated my feelings on this very well. And again, yes, climate change is primarily the consequence of 100 companies, but it doesn't mean that individuals don't need to/can't do their part.Along with being unable to see things on my screen because of how dark TV shows & movies are now, we've all also got to use subtitles to understand dialogue more often than not. Here's why.
Energy of a tired snail returning from a funeral and other fun phrases banned by the New Zealand Parliament.
FYI, these are useful shortcuts to know (via lifeat.io)
doc.new | cal.new | sheet.new | slide.new | form.new
I think this is a great way to describe friendships:
Thanks for reading! Please hit the heart below or drop a comment if you liked it (helps more people find this newsletter + gives me a serotonin boost). 🖤
Her PR videos are so fkn hilarious, I love them so much!
Thank you, Nia! x