Priorities
This post will be part advice to some close friends who are having their own troubles, and part counselling to convince myself to reasonable level of sanity. I was faced with the question recently, if someone you care about is too busy for you and prioritizes other things and people before you, does it mean they value any less?
I suppose that in part, when we invest our emotions and feelings into someone, it’s easy to expect that an obligation from the other side that there is at least an equal return. When we prioritize them in our own ways, the expectation is often there that time, space, and opportunity is a constant and that they should be able to prioritize us in the same way.
In today’s age of instant communication, constant contact, we are breeding an overly dependant society. We, and the people we treasure, can always be available to us through an arsenal of mobile phones, IM services, SMS, video phones. In the good times, we’re happy to have these lines of communication yet it serves us less well during the bad times when circumstance or even the other person cannot be available.
What I answered to this question, albeit when I was in a good place and the other in a bad, was that if the other person prioritizes you lower in their minds and isn’t there when you want them to be, it doesn’t necessarily mean they care for you less. We both face our own similar demons - distance emotionally and distance physically.
When my parents call me sometimes, I sometimes can’t talk to them. I tell them I will call them back. Likewise, they do the same. Does it mean that the feelings we have for each other are any less valid?
It gets easy to lose sight of this when it concerns people we are engaged with on a romantic level. For the person who asked me this question, we are at different stages but both drives our insecurities, tricking us to become needy and overly dependant. For them, it is a change in the person they knew over the years. For me, it’s the insecurity of fresh romance and distance.
Being prioritized lower at a given time or period, doesn’t necessarily mean that someone doesn’t have the same feelings for you within themselves. Essentially, you have to trust in the strength of that to be able to understand that or maybe even accept that.
It’s not easy… and it can be hell, it surely is. But then forcing someone to prioritize you twenty-four, seven, in every free moment of their time isn’t really a caring or loving relationship.
