Since I graduated from college, I haven’t done the best with keeping in touch with a lot of my friends. I have a select few that I talk to daily, but it’s only a couple.
There were people I interacted with every single day, who helped me through my string of personal problems and vice versa, but I don’t check in with them frequently.
I can’t help but feel guilty about it.
I’ll think about my friends, and I’ll think,“I wonder how Matt is doing right now” or “I actually don’t know what Faith has been up to,” but I won’t always check in.
A couple have checked in on me, but I’ve been discouraged because they have done so when they wanted something, not because they were actually wondering how I was doing. And while I appreciated the check ins, I couldn’t help but wonder whether it was more transactional than relational.
Sometimes it upsets me that my friends won’t reach out to me if I don’t reach out to them. We all have done those personal experiments where we don’t reach out to anyone for a couple of days to see if our friends care about us and whether they’ll reach out to us back.
The world can very easily move on without us, but that doesn’t mean it should. Relationships are a two-way street, and it’s easy to see that our commitment to friendships isn’t always reciprocated.
I feel both relief and sadness — relief that I’m not the only one out there that’s bad at it, but sadness at the thought that most of my friends won’t value my friendship from a distance.
It’s a simple extra step for me to do better. My attention span is so low that it’s a flicker, and then it’s gone. I’ll have moved on to doing something else or talking to someone else.
I’m great at interacting with people that are in proximity and in my most immediate circle. But my friends that are thousands of miles away? Yeah, it’s really easy to lose touch.
It shouldn’t take a birthday or a crisis or favor, should it?
Think about the last big transition you had, whether it was moving away to start a new job or leaving your friends at school. How many times did you and a friend say “let’s keep in touch” and not do it? You talk every once in a while and you’ll say happy birthday when it’s time, but your days are busy and soon months and even years go by without contact.
Relationships are a two-way street, so why is everyone so bad at doing it from a distance?
Holly Riordan at Thought Catalog captures those feelings accurately:
“I’m sorry that I suck at keeping in touch. I’m sorry that I don’t text you nearly as much as I should. I’m sorry that I’m not as updated on your life as I used to be when we were younger and saw each other in the halls every single day.”
But keeping in touch is not just a you or me problem — it’s a human problem. We’re busy. We have a lot of things to do. We live completely different lives than we did when we saw some of our old friends all the time.
It’s tougher to be a good friend when you don’t see someone every day. I mean, I only call my parents once a week! We look after the people we see every day that we interact with, and that’s why, to me, it’s so important to have good relationships with your co-workers — you interact with them 40 hours a week.
We can do better as long-distance friends, like texting a simple “I’ve been thinking about you, how are you doing?” when they come to mind.
And it’s not just making excuses — our immediate friends can change. We meet new people, discover new interests. But because there’s distance between you and your old friends doesn’t mean you’re any less friends — it just means there’s distance:
Liesl Goecker at The Swaddle notes why it’s valid to be bad at keeping in touch:
“At certain points we’ll be closer to some people than others, and vice versa at others; friends become intimates, intimates become friends; acquaintances become friends and friends become acquaintances. We can’t be all things at all times to all people who matter to us, but we can be some things sometimes to some people.”
My favorite times getting in touch with my old friends are phone calls on long drives. I’m not as good of a texter as I used to be — I can very easily just leave someone hanging when we’re texting without even thinking about it. But I’ll give friends a phone call and we can talk for hours at a time — updating each other on almost every part of our lives. In those times, I feel like we’re close again and not as distant as usual.
But even when I’m caught up in my new daily routine of work and errands and relationships, I am still thinking of them — my friends from earlier times in my life, who loved me, supported me, and laughed with me.
I think of them more than they can ever know or imagine. I would bet that they’re thinking of me, too.
Because we’re friends, and always will be.
Photo from artiemedvedev on Adobe Stock
Originally published on P.S. I Love You on July 10, 2020.