It's the age-old conflict in relationships — how much time do you need to spend with your partner versus friends? How do you maximize happiness on all sides? How do you look out for your own needs, since you don't feel like it's healthy to spend all your time with one person? It's a tough balance to strike, and one I'm having particular problems with.

If I spend too much time with my girlfriend (bae time), I'm neglecting my friends and I don't have proper boundaries with my girlfriend.

If I spend too much time with my friends (bro time), I'm neglecting my girlfriend and taking my friendships for granted just so I can spend all my time with my friends.

No, it's not possible to make everyone happy. These things are only more complicated in the age of the Coronavirus and social distancing.

Obviously, I am trying to limit the amount of people I come in physical contact with due to the constraints of social distancing. I have one friend I enjoy playing video games and going on runs with that I've hung out with during my time off due to the Coronavirus, too, while spending most of my other time with my girlfriend.

Sometimes, I'll be conflicted because both my girlfriend and my friend want to spend time with me. I sometimes make a decision that the other person doesn't like — the conflict is inevitable. I realize that a lot more people struggle with the problem of balancing bro time with bae time.

I have also been reassured that many more people than just I have been struggling with this issue during the Coronavirus pandemic — with a lot of people not working, relationship strife and conflicts come into the forefront. My more adult peers at work have been struggling with the same issue of balancing friends versus family.

In the past week, I have done the following things to best balance time between different people while keeping everyone, including myself, happy:

1. Communicate with your friends.

Most of us will have known our friends longer than we've known our boyfriend or girlfriend. I talk to my friends, who I have years of friendship with, because they're very important in my life and have seen me through thick and thin and the most challenging parts of my life. My girlfriend knows that my close friends from college know me better than anyone else does, even family. I have known my girlfriend and been dating for less than a year, so she understands my deep allegiance to my friends.

As such, I make communicating and spending time with my friends a priority, one that I won't simply put aside just because I'm dating a girl I really like. I make sure that they know they're a priority to me, too. A lot of them are in relationships where they struggle with the same balancing act — some of them have times where they need to be alone. I used to see that need as selfish, but now I see I'm coming to understand it more and more.

I have had weekend excursions where I just spent time with my friends, and have activities like running that I prioritize as things I have to do with my friends rather than my girlfriend. Of course, with most of us in our early 20s, most of my friends and I are not Puritans about planning. We prefer spontaneity — and that includes making last second plans.

My friends and I have set time to hang out that take priority. Just today, for example, I went on a run with my friend. We agreed on a specific time for me to come over, and I informed my girlfriend that I would be unavailable for two hours. I went on a run with my friend, talked for a bit and spent time with him, and got back to my girlfriend's apartment when I said I would.

Of course, good communication doesn't mean communicating with one person, but multiple, which leads into the next point:

2. Communicate with your partner.

She isn't always happy about it, but my girlfriend understands that I need time with my friends, too. I encourage her to do the same, and she knows when we plan on spending time together. Communication is key to any relationship, and my girlfriend is well-aware of how important a lot of the other things in my life are to me.

I know that a lot of the times my girlfriend gets upset or annoyed at me, it comes from a place of love. And the strife isn't because of what I do or how I choose to spend my time, but because of how I do or don't communicate it. We live our own lives and don't feel the need to control each other, and I respect her concert life as much as she respects my need to spend time with my friends.

The other weekend, my girlfriend and I had a conversation about expectations and boundaries about our relationship. With a full workweek, see each other about three or four times a week. We had been seeing each other less as both of us had gotten more busy, and we talked about how many times we wanted to see each other during the week. When we were both tired, both of us opted out of seeing each other. Three or four times was an ideal benchmark for both of us, and we redirected our attention to making seeing each other a priority even when we were both exhausted.

Of course, with the social distancing that accompanies our COVID-19 pandemic, things become more complicated. People are trying to avoid contact, and my girlfriend worries about me any time I leave my place or hers. To maximize social distancing, I only make plans with one friend, which leads in to the next point:

3. Stick with all your commitments.

When you make a plan and agree to be in a certain place at a certain time with a certain person, stick with it. Be a person of your word. Do not skip out on an arranged plan with your friends just because your partner wants to hang out instead, and do not skip out on a dinner with your partner just because your friend wants to go to happy hour. When people have expectations for you and coordinate those expectations, be determined to fulfill them.

Even though a friend or your partner may be upset that you're making plans that don't include them, but they can only be upset to a certain point if you plan ahead. Perhaps the easiest scenario is if your partner is in your friendship, and that way you don't have to think about balancing your friends with your partner. In college, a lot of my friends had this luxury. But unfortunately, I'm not in the same situation, and for now, I have to separate the time I spend for my friends and my girlfriend until their timelines intersect.

But for me, sticking with all my commitments and planning for them is the best way I keep myself out of trouble while simultaneously keeping everyone happy. The worst someone can feel is when they're not a priority. My girlfriend felt this way on my twenty-third birthday, when I wanted to go clubbing with friends instead of having a nice dinner with my girlfriend, as previously planned. It wasn't that I wanted to go clubbing — but rather that I didn't communicate it that made her so upset.

4. Know that life will go on despite your mistakes.

We are all human beings, and that means we'll all make lapses in our relationships and our friendships. No one is going to be perfect. There are times that you, like me, will forget to communicate. There are times where emergencies arise and you have a difference in priorities with your partner and your friends.

Know that life will go on. An angry partner or friend is not the end of the world, and do not live your life trying to please others. Life will go on. The art of reconciliation is much better than playing damage control and trying to keep everyone peaceful and happy. Remember that you have needs, too, and that sometimes, you're going to be the friend that needs other friends or needs your partner. Learn from your mistakes and use them to push your friendships and relationships to be stronger, and sometimes, you will have to choose what to prioritize.

One example of a time I messed up was last August. I am not a very good planner. I plan nothing in my life two months in advance, and I spontaneously booked a flight two months in advance to go to Atlanta and visit my college friends. I informed my girlfriend nonchalantly, but apparently there was a big conflict: her favorite band was having a concert the weekend I was supposed to be leaving. She informed me that she had the weekend planned for us to go to the concert together that weekend where we road tripped, and during that conversation, I either wasn't paying attention or completely forgot.

When I told her I was flying to Atlanta, my girlfriend started crying and turned a cold shoulder to me. At that moment, it was impossible to make her and my friends happy simultaneously. My girlfriend and I had a conversation about how I could do better in the future, and moved on. Luckily, I actually misplanned my trip to Atlanta as well, and my flight was actually a different weekend than I thought, so I could do both, but the lack of planning in advance and communication hurt my relationship. Even though it hurt my relationship in the moment, it strengthened it in the long run.

Love is not convenient, nor is it a balancing act. Only you can find the right balance between bro time and bae time, but part of that balance includes communicating with your partner and friends, being a person of your word, and pressing forward with the knowledge that life will go on.