How to be friends with your friends

Bashful Buddies! Graham here.

Two of my oldest friends live about fifteen minutes from my house. 

One of them I’ve known since we were both awkward teenagers, and his wife’s a dear friend too.

So of course I haven’t made an effort to see them in months.

This is something of a pattern for me. Some of my closest friends, I’ll go forever without contacting.

In part it’s just an age thing. Life gets in the way. You think fond thoughts of each other, and trust that when you do eventually catch up, you’ll pick up wherever you left off.

But it’s not just life that gets in the way. It’s also me that gets in the way sometimes. Here’s how…

Different parts

The thing is, part of me can know that it’s completely fine, that no matter how long I go between drinks with close friends, we really will catch up just like we used to, when the timing is right. No one’s sitting there going ‘why hasn’t Graham made more of an effort??’

But then there’s this other part of me that isn’t so sure.

A part that wonders…

‘Does so and so really want to see me anymore?’ 

And of course, there’s the ever-ready guilt and self-judgement too, whispering in the wind… 

‘Does leaving it this long actually reveal what a terrible friend I am, and they’ll finally figure that out??’

To the part of me that knows better, these sound like baseless fears. To the part of me that doesn’t know better, well, they’re enough to stop me reaching out even when I want to.

Perhaps you know this spiral. The longer it goes, the harder it is to send that simple ‘hey, how are things?’ message.

In my e-Book I call this the Cycle of Unbelonging:

This cycle is how you can go from taking a little social break to falling off the map completely.

Breaking the cycle, step by step

The only way out of the cycle is to take risks. Tiny risks. The smaller the better at first. 

In this case, the first step is usually to message your friend. 

Never an easy prospect! Since a part of you is convinced they never want to hear from you again.

After a few false starts, you send the message. You break the silence. Huzzah!  

An invite to catch up maybe, if you’ve just had a coffee and are feeling bold. Or better yet, you just send anything at all. Because here’s the truth. The content doesn’t matter, it’s all just code anyway, for ‘hello! I still exist! I know you exist also!’

You know this, and they know this. So you send the message.

You probably know the steps from there, because you’ve probably done this little reunion dance as often as I have. You know for instance the awkwardness of going to send a message, then immediately seeing the last text exchange you had with this friend sitting smugly above it, revealing just how long it’s been since you were last in touch. 

(Surely someone can fix this particular problem, by the way? Maybe a kind of Lorem Ipsum filler text you can backfill into the text chain? A series of pleasant, fictional exchanges, always no older than a week or two? I’d pay for this feature.)

A tiny step, then. A single message. 

Maybe they’ll reply right away. Maybe they’re like you and they’ll reply a month from now. But a first step is a first step.

Lean on the little things

In the case of my dear old friends from Auckland, we planned a catch up a couple of weekends away. A morning coffee at their place.

As the day approached, I was nervous, partly because anything in my calendar makes me nervous. And partly because all those ‘does anyone really want you at their house’ doubts were still swirling.

So I did what you do when you visit people. I brought things.

One, a cute book for their delightful baby. Because giving presents to babies is fun and did I mention he’s adorable? Two, I picked up coffees on the way.

Just the standard houseguest etiquette, but these little steps in the time honoured social dance helped settle my nerves. It made me feel like I was arriving with more than just myself. 

Well if I have nothing good to say we can just read this book together? It’s very well reviewed. By babies.

With any of this stuff, so much of it is just about getting through the door.

The catch up

In the end, the catch up was everything I’d hoped for.

We went deep. We covered every topic under the sun.

We even talked about the way older friendships work, how you’ll go for ages without seeing each other then just dive right back in. One of my friends turned to me and said simply, ‘by this point, you’re locked in, y’know?’

The parts of me that had been unsure beforehand felt deeply nourished and tended to (without having to make a whole thing of it).

As I left, she said something else that stuck with me. I’d been talking about how I maybe wanted to write a published book, but I don’t know, how do you even do that, and do I even really want to, and so on.

She just looked at me the way only someone who’s known you for years can. She could see right away what I was I really saying, behind the demure deferrals. ‘I want to write a published book! But I’m not sure I can??’ 

She proceeded to give me one of the best pep talks I’ve had in ages. The guts of it was, ‘if you want to write and publish a book, I believe you can do it.’

By the time I got home I had about 700 ideas for a new book I want to pitch to publishers, and a renewed sense that I can do this hard thing - or at least give it my all.

Old friends. They see things others might not. You nudge each other along, in small ways that can make all the difference.

(Once you actually make it through the door.)

Be friends with your friends

So this is my new mantra. ‘I’m going to be friends with my friends.’

In a nutshell it means, when I’m feeling a bit lonely and disconnected, I’m going to do my best to remember that I do actually have friends who want to see me.

A key thing: this isn’t some new bar to live up to. It doesn’t mean seeing people more often. It’s not some new set of criteria about what it means to be a good friend.

It’s really the opposite of that. Lowering the bar, as a way of encouraging myself to hop over it a little more easily when I want to.

Being friends with your friends means acknowledging that, with long, dear friendships, time apart is part of the deal. Because of course it is. 

And for me, it means gently reminding myself that there will definitely be times I feel like I’ve left it ‘too long’ with the people I’m close to. Times I might feel unsure about reaching out… but I will do it anyway. 

(Eventually.)

And I will always, always bring coffees.

— Graham.

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