I'm seeing a lot of comments about what do you do if your friends are being shitty over COVID/social distancing/SAH/etc and a thing I have learned over many years: if telling your friends they're being hurtful means they'll stop being your friends, you will find better friends.

I think a lot of us who were "smart kids" or "nerds" or "weirdos" or whatever in school when there was a limited pool of other people to be friends with get it into our heads that if we alienate our friends we won't find other ones. Because for the first 20 years that's true!

Unless you have other outlets for meeting/making friends, you're not going to be able to make more friends if you lose the ones you have. But once you're an adult-- or at least old enough to build relationships through online communities or other activities than school-- you can!

Do not stick with the shitty friends. Do not try to win them back if they drop you. The people who are worth being friends with might weave in and out of your life because life is complicated, but they won't actively ostracize you or push you out.

If you are afraid that being a good person or a kind person or a compassionate person toward the world outside your friendgroup will cause your friendgroup to alienate you, you don't need them. You will find new friends.

And that is a really, really hard thing to accept and it takes a lot of courage to go through with it, but the friends who matter won't do that to you, and it will take you a little while to start replacing the friends who do, but the new friends? Will be so worth it.

Some people will not have their minds changed, but will remain your friends. Some people will have their minds changed, and will remain your friends. Some people will not remain your friends. You can work with the first two, and find more people like the first two--

Or, better yet, more people who don't make you feel like you need to try to change their minds at all. A big part of friendship in adulthood is finding people who care about you *in the way that you WANT to be cared about.* And you will!

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