A relationship that needs you to drop your friends isn’t romantic. It’s isolating.

Somebody wanting all of your time can look like devotion at first, and being that necessary is flattering. A relationship that shrinks your world also leaves you with fewer people to check your thinking against, which is how a bad situation becomes hard to see from inside it. Caring about someone does not require them to have nobody else. Closeness should add to your life rather than clear it out.

Make one plan this week with a friend you have not seen in a while, and keep it. Notice what happens afterward, in you and in the person who did not want you to go.