I limit the amount of energy I give to people who can’t reciprocate it. I don’t care; I matter more to myself than they matter to me, and I’m not in the practice of prioritizing the social needs or limitations of others over my own desires. I also think there was a shift in thought after Covid where we kind of began believing that people who couldn’t keep up socially needed to be babied or carried, and it harmed us all. There’s no reason I should be reiterating myself numerous times, waiting for someone to get off their phone to make eye contact with me if they bring it out during a conversation, or giving someone the abridged version because their attention span is so fried that things outside of 2x speed don’t interest them. My life got a lot better when I recognized that I shouldn’t be limiting myself or dumbing myself down for people who couldn’t keep up, I shouldn’t be indulging one-sided conversations, and I shouldn’t be acting as a therapist or tolerating trauma dumping. I’m still polite, but I have strong boundaries, and I’m not afraid to say “that’s not my thing" or “let’s move on now" when things start to spiral or to end a conversation before it can even begin.
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