Friendship Maintenance

Some friendships are a lot of work, whilst others take almost no effort whatsoever to maintain.  We can have people in our lives who we can go days, weeks, months, or even years without speaking to, and when we finally do it's like no time at all has passed, you just pick up where you left off and keep going from there.  Having that kind of a relationship with someone doesn't come easy.  It requires a lot of trust and a lot of understanding. 

The trust element comes into play when you think about the memory of you as a person that other people hold and how accurately they will maintain that memory.  Any divergence from the reality can lead people to create idealized versions of you that you can never and will never live up to.  Whenever you engage with each other again, the disparity between the two would create a friction that often causes the rift between you to grow wider, no longer created by time alone but by material differences that pull apart the fabric that bound the two of you together in the first place.

The understanding element comes into play when you think about personal growth, whilst the person you knew will never go away, their interests and their experiences will change when you are absent.  There must be understanding that they won't be the exact same person you knew before and that it is your job when reconnecting with them to synchronize your internal model of them with the updated version.  Like an iPod you need to know what has changed since the last time you checked in, what needs to go and what needs to be added so that your model is as up to date as you can make it.

These two things go hand in hand and are distinguished essentially by the nature of assumption.  Mistrust in the accuracy of the model they retain of you comes from the belief that they will make assumptions about what has happened to you in the time that you were apart.  Trust comes into play when you believe the other person won't make assumptions about your growth and will actually allow you to tell them what has happened since and they will take your word for it.  Understanding comes into play when you don't make assumptions about other people and actually listen to them and hear what they have to say.

Those friendships that can weather any amount of time apart understand that although you are both alive together, you don't live with each other and that ultimately means that your lives are separate and complete, that they have an entire life they lived before they met you, an entire life they continue to live even when you're not there, and an entire life they will continue to live when you are not there for whatever reason that may be.

This whole relationship hinges on the requirement that only 2 people be involved in the relationship.  If you want to involve more than just you and them, then there needs to be a boundary of what you allow other people to fill you in on.  There can be a lot of misinformation, and a lot of assumptions that are shared which don't always prove to be accurate.  When more than 2 people are involved you inevitably end up with one or more telling you things about the other which betrays the trust of allowing each other to live their own lives and accepting that they will tell you what they want you to know about their lives.  You have to respect each other's privacy.  I have had more than one friendship fall apart because of the poison other people pour into your ear.