I realize that I’m having a problem with a friend recently. There is nothing wrong with our relationship. We are still very friendly with each other, and we still hope to meet up after the quarantine. But my problem is that I just… can’t connect with her emotionally. I don’t hate her in any way. In fact, I consider her her my close friend and I have nothing against her. She asks for my help now and then and I’m always glad to be of help. I can ask ask her for help too. The last time we met in person, we exchanged our birthday gifts and said our wishes. But I just find it increasingly hard to connect with her whenever we interact with each other.

She has been a very busy person for two years since she left her job to “open her business”, according to her. When she left her job, she was just busy with setting up the business and stuff. But now she is always busy with something: her business, classes she takes to improve her business skills or just for fun… As a result, she usually doesn’t have time to interact with me and our friends. We have a chat group on our messaging app and she usually makes very minimal effort to interact with our group of friends. Unless it’s something important, she either just throws around some emojis at best and makes no reaction to the conversation at worst. Our group of friends sometimes post our small accomplishments on the chat group and she rarely comment anything meaningful about them. Especially recently, the only time when she posts anything on the chat group is when she wants to promote something, either related to her business or just some random deals that she needs us to participate so that she could take a share of the deals.

The only way I can have a meaningful conversation with her is when our group of friends plan a meeting face-to-face. But even then it doesn’t guarantee I can connect with her either. My face-to-face conversation with her used to go pretty well, but I noticed that around this year it has become less enjoyable. This year she just discovered that support group that helps people with their business ideas, and now all she talks about has to at least related to her business and the group. And she would just go on and on about with without giving me any time to comment on anything. Our conversation would look like this (an actual conversation the last time we met in person):
Her: So, what are you up to lately?
Me: Nothing special. Still working on that story. How about you?
Her: Well, I just discovered this wonderful support group for entrepreneurs! Oh, I think you know about it already, we talked about it earlier. But anyway, it’s changing my life!
Me: Yeah. I heard that you are doing great with that group and the online classes they opened. What did you learn from the classes.
Her: Well, I learned so much! I learned that you have to be kind and nice to your students so that they would come to learn with you. I agree with them completely. Nowadays teachers are so mean, they only teach because of money and nothing else. I heard this horror stories from a student of mine. It goes like this blah blah blah… I can’t believe how they still treat students like that blah blah blah… The classes told me that blah blah blah… I would never be like blah blah blah… yeah you get the picture

As much as I want to, I find it incredibly hard to be interested in her venture, especially when she just goes on and on about it and I don’t have any say in the matter. It’s not that I’m not happy for her, but I’m expecting our conversation to be something more general and light-hearted, something that I can engage in, instead of everything about her work and classes.

I feel so guilty of not being able to be engaged in her venture, especially when I know it’s something she’s so passionate about. And I also know that she is busy with her work and doesn’t have as much time to talk with me and our group. Am I asking too much from her. What should I do in this situation?