Anxiously attached to a friend group - how do I find balance?

For over 8 years now, I (33M) have been a part of a very tight group of friends, with our closeness being (among other things) based on the fact that we all play in a band together. It's not exactly a financially self-sustainable career for us (yet?), but we've enjoyed at least a moderately decent success on our home turf so far, and I think that I can safely say that we do perceive music as our calling on the whole (which I'd say especially applies to me, since I'd been a professional musician even before I joined them).

Not that I didn't have any close friends prior to meeting them, but for what it's worth, my bandmates really did end up taking the centre stage in my life, no pun intended. I cherish them with all of my heart, and I wish everyone would get a chance to experience such a bond for themselves.

Here's the problem, though: **I need them much more than they need me**. That is not to be taken as a statement about any kind of dismissiveness on their part or anything of the sort, mind you; it's just that all of them already have their respective jobs and romantic partners (two of them being a couple within the band) and aren't considering moving to any different places at all, while I've got none of those (which I assure you isn't by my choice) and the pressure of unemployment is becoming sizeable enough that I'm considering taking more drastic measures out of sheer necessity. But I don't wanna leave my band *or* my closest friends - in fact, I'm genuinely terrified of so much as a thought of it, and I need help.

I did talk to them about it, and they did reassure me that we'd find a way to make it work for the purposes of rehearsing and playing, provided that I don't relocate too far away... and I get it, but as things stand right now, I experience FOMO even on an average night whenever I don't get to hang out with them. It's not lost on me that people are usually *that* close only with their own intimate partners, and that notion doesn't make it easier on me. At least if I had someone like that (friend or lover) to accompany me wherever I needed to go just to make ends meet, I think I'd be able to "decentralise" my emotional life and still be there for my friends to a more reciprocal extent, but that's not the reality of my present life, so I feel really stuck right now.

**TL;DR**

**I'm anxiously attached to the group of my closest friends, which consists of the people I also play with in a band that I currently consider to be my life's calling and desired career (even though it's not profitable enough to be lived off of). If I have to leave them just so that I can find employment, they'll still have their friends and lovers and jobs, but I'll be left with NOTHING. The situation is getting more and more desperate for me, and I need to find some balance before this wretched country basically takes everything away from me.**

Posted Aug 11, 2026, 11:28 AM UTC

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