It occurs to me that there are several kinds of friendships. Or maybe a number of different types of relationships that all get lumped together as friendships. Or maybe it’s just that people define friendship in many different ways.
It’s tempting to define friends as people you spend the most free time with; after all why would you spend your precious free time with someone not a friend? But in looking back, I realize that there are people I knew, and likely even described as friends, but we really only shared one thing in common and when that thing stopped being relevant we drifted apart and neither of us have made efforts to reconnect.
But allowing a friend to drift away doesn’t necessarily mean the friendship wasn’t real either. For example, I just spoke a couple of days ago with Scott, an old friend; we used to work together. We’d go to lunch at least once a week; sometimes more frequently and argue politics, religion, philosophy and all kinds of things. Great, stimulating conversations. I moved on to another company, then returned three and a half years later. During that time he left as well, but we stayed in touch, getting together every three or four months and talking more frequently. Anyhow, every time we see each other now our conversation seems to take up right where we left off the last time, even if several months have gone by. I’ve got a number of friends like that; it seems like no matter how much time passes between contacts we take up like no time had elapsed. It strikes me that the kind of relationship that aren’t affected be either time or distance is a pretty good indication of real friendship.
Not sure what that says about me, but there you go.
About BigBill
Stats: Married male boomer.
Hobbies: Hiking, woodworking, reading, philosophy, good conversation.
The nature of friendship
It occurs to me that there are several kinds of friendships. Or maybe a number of different types of relationships that all get lumped together as friendships. Or maybe it’s just that people define friendship in many different ways.
It’s tempting to define friends as people you spend the most free time with; after all why would you spend your precious free time with someone not a friend? But in looking back, I realize that there are people I knew, and likely even described as friends, but we really only shared one thing in common and when that thing stopped being relevant we drifted apart and neither of us have made efforts to reconnect.
But allowing a friend to drift away doesn’t necessarily mean the friendship wasn’t real either. For example, I just spoke a couple of days ago with Scott, an old friend; we used to work together. We’d go to lunch at least once a week; sometimes more frequently and argue politics, religion, philosophy and all kinds of things. Great, stimulating conversations. I moved on to another company, then returned three and a half years later. During that time he left as well, but we stayed in touch, getting together every three or four months and talking more frequently. Anyhow, every time we see each other now our conversation seems to take up right where we left off the last time, even if several months have gone by. I’ve got a number of friends like that; it seems like no matter how much time passes between contacts we take up like no time had elapsed. It strikes me that the kind of relationship that aren’t affected be either time or distance is a pretty good indication of real friendship.
Not sure what that says about me, but there you go.
About BigBill
Stats: Married male boomer. Hobbies: Hiking, woodworking, reading, philosophy, good conversation.