In this day and age, low-maintenance friendships are the best type of friendships to have. Low-maintenance friends are people who you don’t have to talk to every day but who are there when you need them. 

With all the stressors of life, this type of friendship is key, and here’s why. 

For starters, there are zero expectations in a low-maintenance friendship. No expectations, no drama. 

You know that you’re still friends with the person and you still love each other despite not talking to each other every single day. 

This dynamic allows you to gain mutual respect for each other. 

This type of friendship respects each other’s boundaries and you understand that it’s no love lost, just because you haven’t gotten a chance to talk with them lately. 

There is nothing more frustrating than a friend who thinks you have some weird secret animosity with them because you didn’t text them that day or repost their latest Instagram picture. 

Leading me to my next point, we are no longer in grade school. In grade school, you have little to no responsibilities, making it easy to text your friends all day and hang out with them every chance you get. In grade school, your biggest responsibility is making sure you grabbed your lunchbox or completed a single worksheet. 

As college students, our lives are a bit more complex, and we have super busy schedules. 

From taking 15 credit hours, working a job, searching for internships and making sure that a 1200-word essay is turned into Blackboard by 11:59, it’s not realistic for us to spend as much time with friends as we could when we were younger. 

That said, low-maintenance friendships allow you to live your own life. 

Sometimes with friendships and friend groups, you can become so consumed with each other that you lose your own identity.

You may have been a straight-A student, but once you started hanging out with a certain group you became lazier, and your grades dropped. 

You forget about your needs and who you are as a person because you’re so busy pouring into your friend group instead of yourself. 

Low-maintenance friendships let you have a personal life. With low-maintenance friendships, you don’t see each other as often or speak as often. 

This also eliminates any disagreements or random falling-outs that friends tend to have when spending too much time together. 

This space gives you a newfound appreciation for your friendship and time spent together. 

Plus, nothing beats a monthly gossip session with your low-maintenance bestie. Since you haven’t spoken as much, there is so much to catch up on and lots of tea to spill. 

Those types of meetups are elite. 

I am not saying to cut off all your friends and not be social. We need friendships to keep us afloat and make life worth living.

But if your friendships are draining you, causing you to lose a sense of self and causing excess drama in your life, consider scaling back. 

Consider having low-maintenance friendships.