Sometimes our closest friendships are developed from circumstances of convenience. Think work friends, neighbours, school mums, classmates, gym buddies etc…. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. In fact, I think convenience is probably one of the biggest factors that contribute to building close connections to begin with. If you see someone at regular intervals, consistency and time is mutually invested with minimal extra effort from both parties.
Small talk gradually changes to more meaningful topics, and you slowly open up and connect. You look forward to seeing one another and catching up, until suddenly you realise you really want to extend and grow the friendship outside of the original context and invite them into your personal world, or into a more intimate setting.
While it is fair to say, some friendships don’t survive this phase, because seeing this person in a different context opens you up to seeing different sides of them that were previously hidden, if you’re lucky, it also opens you up to seeing even more awesome sides of them and connecting on more different topics and levels.
If you usually talk at the office, having a drink after work exposes your out of office personality. If you both drink red wine and love dancing, you can expect the sparks to start flying. The more sparks you see, the more integrated you can expect to become into each others personal lives. It is usually easy and wonderful. You live close by, and share similar schedules, which makes effort minimal. If you had to think about it you would probably say that the convenience of your closeness is just an added bonus…. Not the glue that holds the friendship together. It feels true when you say it, doesn’t it? It felt true all the times I said it too, that’s for sure.
However life has this funny way of changing everything. Sometimes slowly and subtly, sometimes suddenly and dramatically. Similar circumstances seldom last forever. If you are both single, one of you will eventually partner. If you are both working in the same place, one of you is likely to be offered a promotion, transfer or alternatively a better offer elsewhere. If you are both childless, one of you is likely to have a child. If you live locally, one of you is likely to move…. Eventually.
And sometimes these changes blindside us completely. Not because we didn’t expect things to change, but we didn’t expect the things that changed to change our friendship. I have a friend experiencing this exact thing right now in a very close and long standing friendship. This friendship has already survived one woman leaving work, getting married and having children, however the bond between the women remained so strong that my friend is actually godmother to her friends children.
My friend has always been supportive of her friend. She has babysat the children often, and made weekly visits to her friend. She has flown overseas for their wedding, and again for a big birthday celebration. Her friend has helped her with hair and makeup for events and always welcomed her into their home and life with her partner and children. The 2 women lived only 10 minutes apart, and my friend always felt welcome to pop in anytime to see them. She felt they were very close friends. And they were.
Notice how I said were. They were. Then her friend moved half an hour away. Where my friend used to feel free to pop over, she didn’t realise that she often did that on her way to and from various errands in the area. If her friend wasn’t home, it didn’t matter. Now it is a 30 minute drive there and back, so it really needs to be a scheduled visit as understandably, she doesn’t wish to spend an hour in the car if her friend isn’t even home. Added to that, if you are doing an hours travel, you don’t really want to pop in for a 10 minute coffee. You need to justify the visit by staying a while. In theory this isn’t an issue because you don’t see each other as frequently as you did before, so increasing the time you do spend should even things out right?
Except, when you have to schedule a visit…. For a start you feel you have to be invited first…. Waiting for that invitation was the first disappointment in a chain of many small things that has led my friend to the crushing conclusion that her and her friend are not as close as she thought after all. To be fair to my friend’s friend….. she has continued to say “ you should have popped over on the weekend, we would have loved to see you.” However that is distinctively different to saying “would you like to come over on Saturday for lunch?”
Now, I can understand both points of view on this subject, but basically, what it appears to boil down to, is that suddenly their friendship is no longer effortless. It is no longer convenient to pop in. Each person has to block out at least half a day to make it worth their while either way. Even if they meet half way, that is still far less convenient than having a friend stop by while you continue preparing the veggies for dinner.
When it comes to putting effort into friendships, this is often where we falter. I have been just as guilty of this as everyone else. So how do we fix it now that we have acknowledged the issue? First off, don’t blame one party or the other for not making the effort. Neither of you really had to before, and now, someone has to go first, right? If you want to save this friendship you have to try. Your friend may or may not come to the party, but at least you can say you tried. If you don’t at least accept that things have changed, and you must change with them, the friendship will fizzle… and the flame may die out totally.
So have a think about how you want to see this friendship unfolding in the future. Do you want to be friends who lunch instead of always going to her place? Do you want to see each other less but call more often? Do you want to do your grocery shopping together? Whatever it is, invite your friend to do that, and see what she says. If it’s not worth the effort to her, maybe you aren’t as close as you thought…. Or you wont continue to be as close.
At the end of the day convenience sparks closeness but it is up to you to fan the flames of friendship to keep it alive, because convenience is almost always temporary, and if you don’t your friendships will be temporary too.
❤ Love,
Your Best Friend ForNever
xx
