Atlus miraculously created a character who is basically the epitome of social awkwardness and made her the most desirable waifu in the game.
For anyone not introduced to Persona 5 yet, the Persona series is basically a JRPG that combines dungeon exploration and turn-based battles, with character bonding activities outside of battle. You play a high school kid that doubles as a vigilante outside of his normal life. While as a vigilante, you invade cognitive dungeons and fight bad guys with your classmates. When not dungeon spelunking, you get to choose from a myriad of activities. You can bond with your teammates, ‘network’ with side characters, boost your own stats, or go shop around. Each activity takes up in-game time, so there’s a good amount of time management involved if you want to maximize your activities since the game follows a calendar-based schedule.
When you bond with characters enough, you may get a chance to romance them. The first time I played through the game years ago, I romanced everyone. Because why not. I wanted it all. This is called the ‘harem’ route. If you go this route, on the in-game valentines day, they all find out about each other and get mad at you. I guess I got my just deserts. However, on my second playthrough, I felt compelled to build a strong friendship bond with everyone (except Futaba of course). I thought about it. Why did I want to go harem route when I first played it? And no, it wasn’t because I’m into polygamy.
I realized that it was because my view of relationships and friendships had changed since my first playthrough in my last year of college. When I was younger, I had this whole idea of love. Love gives you things friendships cannot—everlasting happiness, lets you be yourself, unconditional support, etc. But as I thought more about it, I realized a lot of those seemingly ‘happy’ feelings sometimes stemmed from toxic insecurities, depending on others, and dopaminergic actions, a.k.a. giving in to the chase.
It wasn’t until after I graduated that I started to have a more stable set of friends. I found myself consistently spending time with the same people, nurturing those relationships. I had always depended on romantic relationships to bring me happiness, but those end. The things that do stay, are the connections and friendships that I’ve built with others in my life. The bonds between me and these people, who I like to call ‘friends for life’, aren’t easily broken by where I am in life, physically or emotionally.
The Life Lesson
When a relationship ends, you usually feel alone, at least for a bit. Like a piece of you is just gone. And that is 100% understandable. The person who was always there for you can’t be there for you anymore. They shouldn’t be there for you anymore. But that’s okay, because that’s what your friends are for. I had, and still somewhat have, a hard time leaning on the people in my life for support. But this is me telling you to LEAN ON YOUR FRIENDS.
Recently, I went through my own heartbreak. But I decided to open up, lean on the people close to me and in return received amazing, loving support and advice. One friend told me that it sucks and hurts but I’ll get through it. Another friend told me that it’s okay to think about it and be sad, because it’ll help me accept the reality of things. And as clichéd as those words may be, they’ve helped me immensely.
Oxytocin, the chemical in your brain that gets released when you feel romantic love, also gets released when you surround yourself with close friends and family. So scientifically, yes, you should hang out with your friends after a break up to feel better.
