Recommitting to Friendship is Work and Requires Choosing Community Over Convenience
- May 11
- 6 min read
Written by Frantzy Acluche, Founder of RConnectFor
Frantzy Acluche has extensive experience in human-technology interactions within social and behavioral contexts that help drive digital transformations to improve the human experience and support community-focused technology efforts. He is the founder of RConnectFor, a platform designed to foster deeper, more meaningful connections.
In a world shaped by social media, AI companionship, and increasingly one-sided forms of connection, genuine friendship can no longer be treated as something that simply happens on its own. This article explores why meaningful relationships require intentional effort, mutual investment, and the daily practice of building community through shared experiences, care, and recommitment.
Friendship as an action oriented practice
When we understand that friendships are not just an idea or status, but an action oriented practice we engage in repeatedly, it becomes clear that we cannot maintain deep, genuine connections if we are not actively engaged in cocreation, for example, sharing experiences, interests, emotions, and ideas, that are the foundation of deeper bonds within community. Moreover, lasting and meaningful friendships often involve intentionally pursuing deeper connections and community, recognizing that this is a daily choice, a recommitment, rather than a one time decision. This means that one of the most important social myths we must debunk is the belief that deep connection and friendship are experiences that just happen, “if it’s right, it’ll work out and shouldn’t require a lot of actual work.”
The work and discomfort of building connection
Dispelling the myth that meaningful friendship requires no effort is vital because building deep connections demands work, active engagement from all parties, and perseverance to sustain genuine bonds that reduce loneliness and strengthen community ties. The RConnectFor team holds that the advantages of experiencing a sense of belonging, feeling that there are people invested in your well being, and vice versa, and of having fewer feelings of loneliness outweigh the temporary discomfort involved in nurturing deeper relationships. This discomfort can stem from difficulty scheduling time for friendship around meaningful experiences, making an effort to meet regularly, and showing interest in and supporting each other's dreams and lives. In a time when it's easier to interact with avatars or stand ins for the people we desire in our lives than to meet and connect with the actual individuals, forming and sustaining genuine relationships with real humans becomes more challenging.
Parasocial relationships and the illusion of community
The rise of social media, which allows anyone to view others' lives regardless of familiarity, has led to a surge in “parasocial” one sided relationships. This term describes the experience of feeling deeply connected to someone you observe daily from afar, even though that person isn’t aware of or able to reciprocate these feelings. This makes it hard to determine whether such connections are genuine friendships that both parties actively choose and nurture. Crucially, the lack of mutual affection, cocreation, and care increases the risk of feeling lonely and isolated, despite the illusion of community created by social media friendships.
AI, chatbots, and the shifting landscape of companionship
The difficulty of feeling like you have a community without the usual benefits, shared experiences, quality time, acts of care, mutual investment, and a sense of belonging, has become even more apparent with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). In this AI driven era, with interactive chatbots and conversational agents, people are increasingly viewing these avatars of human interaction as primary ways to engage with a community. For instance, Harvard Business Review reports that more individuals are primarily seeking life advice, companionship, comfort, and affection from chatbots (De Freitas, 2025).
This prompts us to consider whether, amid the busy effort to build community with AI and strangers on social media, we still find time to nurture genuine relationships, those with people we can call in moments of joy, turn to for a warm hug, share concerns and dreams with, or laugh with as we remember past moments of joy. When do we make time to build friendships with people who will stand by us on our wedding day as best man or maid of honor? When do we make time to build connections with people with whom we fight injustice side by side, because they are as invested in our ability to exist in this world without boundaries as we are in their freedom to choose the life they get to live? When do we build lasting connections that let us know that, no matter what, there is a couch somewhere in the world where we can rest our heads if needed? When do we build friendships that let us know someone will pick us up from the airport when we land and help us move out of an old apartment and into a new home? When do we build the kind of friendship where that person knows to make our favorite cake on our birthday?
When do we genuinely create space for lasting friendships, considering our tendency to focus on distant, often unreciprocated connections because they require less effort?
Big takeaway: Why do we care about this?
Meaningful friendship requires intentional effort. Genuine connection develops through consistent, mutual acts of cocreation, such as spending quality time, sharing emotional energy, and continuously reaffirming commitments, not merely through passive observation, social media followers, or AI companionship. Therefore, the RConnectFor team’s community building application aims to provide a path to spend time and energy building meaningful connections with real people, to enhance a sense of belonging and help lessen feelings of loneliness.
Questions the RConnectFor team recommends you ask yourself
Where am I relying on passive or one sided connections, social media, influencers, chatbots, instead of investing in reciprocal relationships?
What small, repeatable actions could I add to my week to cocreate experiences with people I care about?
Which relationships in my life would benefit from a deliberate recommitment, more time, curiosity, or support?
What discomfort am I avoiding that, if faced, could deepen a friendship, scheduling, vulnerability, follow through, decision fatigue, anxiety?
Who would I call in a moment of real need, and what would it take to build that kind of trust?
RConnectFor team’s practical tactics for building deeper connections
Schedule micro experiences. Block short, regular time, 30 to 60 minutes weekly or biweekly, for people you want to deepen relationships with, coffee, a walk, a shared hobby. Small, consistent actions beat sporadic grand gestures.
Prioritize cocreation over consumption. Turn passive activities, scrolling and watching, into shared experiences. Watch the same show and discuss it, join a class together, or plan a joint project.
Practice intentional vulnerability. Share one meaningful thing about your week and invite the other person to do the same. Vulnerability signals investment and invites reciprocity.
Set simple rituals. Rituals, monthly dinners, birthday check ins, annual trips, create predictable opportunities for mutual investment and memory building.
Audit your companionship diet. Notice how much emotional energy you spend on parasocial or AI interactions. Reallocate a portion of that time to people who can reciprocate and be present in your life.
Make “friendship maintenance” a visible priority. Treat relationships like other commitments. Add them to your calendar, set reminders for follow ups, and track small promises so they don’t slip away.
Lean on community structures. Join groups, volunteer, or participate in local activities where repeated interaction and shared goals make cocreation easier.
RConnectFor’s quote of the day
"I bring everyone who has ever been kind to me, with me. Black, white, Asian, Spanish speaking, Native American, gay, straight, everybody. I said, 'Come on with me. I'm going on the stage. Come with me. I need you now.' I don't ever feel I have no help. I had rainbows in my clouds. The thing to do, it seems to me, is to prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else's cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God, if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. That's what I think" – Dr. Maya Angelou
Read more from Frantzy Acluche
Frantzy Acluche, Founder of RConnectFor
With a background in clinical and neuropsychology and expertise in Human-Centered Design, he focuses on delivering compassionate, behavior-driven support via technology to improve human experiences and promote community-oriented solutions. After years of seeing the importance of behavioral and human-centered strategies to strengthen community bonds, he has developed RConnectFor, a platform designed to help build more meaningful and lasting relationships.
References:
McKay, M., Wood, J. C., & Brantley, J. (2019). The dialectical behavior therapy skills workbook: Practical DBT exercises for learning mindfulness, interpersonal effectiveness, emotion regulation, and distress tolerance. New Harbinger Publications.
Weissman, M. M., Markowitz, J. C., & Klerman, G. L. (2017). The guide to interpersonal psychotherapy: updated and expanded edition. Oxford University Press.
