Friendship at a Distance
I went for a walk with Amy this morning, and I started thinking about something I have been turning over for a while. I am genuinely happy with my life right now. My relationship with my partner is great. Amy — our Australian cattle dog — is a daily source of joy. I am grateful for the work I do, the places I get to live, and the routines that make up an ordinary week. I really do feel lucky.
And alongside that, something quieter has been happening: my friendships have thinned. Not all of them, and not dramatically. But the people I used to text every week, I now text every few months. Some of them I haven't seen in over a year. The contact has not ended — it has just slowed. I tried to be honest about why.
Some of it is distance. I split my time between Sydney and Amsterdam, and most of my closest friends are in one place when I am in the other. That alone explains a lot. Even when the time zones line up, a video call is not the same as a coffee. Friendships need time in the same room, and we have less of that than we used to. Some of it is the stage of life people are in. A lot of the friends I am thinking of have small children now, are taking on big mortgages, or are deep in work that leaves little margin. Their attention has turned inward — toward the family they are building. That is fair. If I were in their position, I would probably do the same.
And some of it is just how it works. Friendships take effort, and effort is finite. Most people, when they have to choose, will spend that effort on the people who live in their house before the friend who lives on another continent. That isn't selfish. It is what most of us would do. I don't want to pretend this doesn't sting a little. It does. There is something quietly lonely about realising that someone you used to call constantly is now someone you mostly hear about through other people. But I also don't think anyone is doing anything wrong. We are all just busy with our own lives, and our own lives are good, and for them, that is allowed to be enough.
What I am taking from the walk is this: if I want to keep certain friendships, I am going to have to be the one doing more of the reaching. Not because the other person doesn't care, but because they have less room to spare than I do right now. That is a fact about their life, not a verdict on the friendship.
So I will probably send a few messages this week that I have been putting off. Not big ones. Just the kind that say: I was thinking about you on my walk.
p.s. these are the photos I took during the walk, sorrynotsorry for the Amy spam ;)
