Not all friendships are created equal.
Remind yourself of this, before you give your time out to just about anyone.
As I write this, we are fumbling our way through the eerie age of ‘social distancing’ - more physically apart from our friends than we have been in most of our lifetimes. While this has changed how we spend time with these friends, it has also given the over-thinker in me a chance to reflect on my friendships - friendships past, present, and ever-present.
And so, courtesy of my insatiable need to categorise/organise everything in life, I have crafted a line-up of the 4 types of friendship I’ve harboured in the choppy waters of my life so far.
I’m sure many of you would include the ‘long-distance friendship’ in your own friendship line-up, but I haven’t. Right now, with my heart splintered into a thousand little pieces and safely stashed away in far-flung corners of the globe, most of my friendships are on ‘long-distance’ as their default setting.
With that in mind, let’s get started.
#1 The Situational Friendship
This is an interesting one - and one I have become particularly familiar with, as I hop from country to country.
While life has its fair share of drama, there are many friendships that simply fade from your life like mist - gradually, subtly, evaporating into the background of your life. And then you look back and think: what happened there? We went from eating tacos together daily, to FaceTiming weekly, to…radio silence?
I used to always tie myself up in existential knots about these friendships, questioning where we went wrong. But usually, nothing ‘went wrong’. You just got caught up in your quotidian, they got caught up in theirs. Sometimes, you’ll drift apart from the people you thought you would never stop speaking to. Sometimes, you’ll come back together. But sometimes you won’t, and you have to be okay with that. You have to make peace with that.
Recognise that sometimes a friendship will have a specific shelf-life, meant for a specific time in your life. Forcing it to continue past this date is just like eating food beyond its use-by date - it'll just leave a bad taste in your mouth.
So, let it go.
#2 The Pick-Up-Where-We-Left-Off-Ship
A more uplifting category - in fact, a true testament to the beauty and strength of certain friendships.
Ideally, this is how friendship - especially long-distance friendship - should be. These are the friends who have your back, who will be with you the instant things go pear-shaped in life, and they do all this unconditionally. They won’t make you feel guilty for forgetting to call or text. Because when you do pick up that phone, when you do have that chat, everything is exactly how it was. No hard feelings, certainly no grudges, just pure delight at being able to catch up and laugh together again.
A little survival kit for these friendships: Don’t feel an immense pressure to constantly stay in touch. Appreciate and accept the joy in asynchronous messaging. Sometimes, you’ll receive a 900-word message or an 8-minute long voice note - full to the brim with updates. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by these and to find yourself putting off your reply, simply because you have too much to say, too much to reply to, the words tumbling over one another in your head. That’s okay. When you get a moment, just call them. It’ll all be exactly how it was before.
#3 The Acquaintanceship
Sigh. For me, this is a total friendship grey-zone, and one that I don’t often enjoy navigating.
Look, this is an equation where you know the other person well enough to spend a fair amount of time together, but it is not much more than that.
This could be a colleague, a friend-of-a-friend, someone you met once at a pasta-making class. Whoever it may be, if they have firmly planted themselves in your ‘acquaintance’ zone - don’t make the mistake of confusing them for anything more. This is where my problem swoops in. I tend to open up my heart, time, and energy to people fairly quickly, which may have its virtues, but really is just a fast-track to getting hurt and disappointed when you find that your friend-but-not-a-friend doesn’t reciprocate. And why should they? After all, you’re just acquaintances.
So, to protect your energy - and your sanity - take a step back to reflect on these acquaintanceships, recognising them for what they are. Don’t just dish up your heart on a plate to anyone.
And while not every single connection you have needs to necessarily add value or play a particularly significant role in your life, they should definitely play a positive role. Otherwise what’s the point, when there are so many people out there who have your best interests at heart?
#4 The One
Ah, you’ve come home.
This is the relentless, forever friendship. The one that will seemingly never combust, no matter what you put it through. While the term ‘best friend’ never really resonated with me, I totally get the sentiment. This person is your person. The one who gets you and who knows you, from your quarks to your quirks.
For me, that person is S - we have been friends for over two decades and speak every single day. She knows how many eggs I’ve had for breakfast that day, I know what she’ll be baking in 4 days’ time. S has shown me pure selflessness and patience at the worst of times, and I hope I’ve helped brighten her life in my own little way. Our friendship is true proof that some relationships can survive anything: I have gone through periods of being notoriously uncontactable, but she never gave up.
That’s not to say you should take The One for granted - at all. Quite the contrary. Hold on tight to this person. If you both nurture your special connection, The One will be there for the duration of the show that is your life - you’ll have characters enter, exit, re-enter, exit again, but The One will always be there.
Bottom line? Quality, not quantity.
If you’re hopelessly holding on to a decayed, dying friendship or two - for the sake of friendship and nothing else - set it free. Instead, focus on friendships with the people who truly make your life more beautiful, more colourful, more positive. There’s no space for anything else.
Apart from maybe a cat-ship, which I will happily strike up with any furry feline I come across. Do I sound like a crazy cat lady now?
OK, on that note - it’s time to sign off.
Until next time,
S