Friendships Should Be Managed: Retire, Maintain Or Invest In Them
Friendships are shared through spending time together — often through shared circumstances and experiences
Earlier in life, these are relatively easy to come by.
You turn up every day at the same place (school or uni), share the same classes, play the same sports, and probably have much of the same social group (and thus common birthday parties and life event-related occasions to attend).
As you go through life though, friction creeps in.
You may work in different places.
You get married and inherit new social groups through your partner.
You have kids who require their own time investment, and a myriad of other things start to take up your calendar.
This leaves you a lot fewer hours to spend with those friends with different schedules to you. Before you know it — its been months, maybe years since you met — even to simply catch up on news, let alone form new memories together.
Like flowers — friendships (and all relationships) need to be fed and watered to be maintained.
Given how we can all sometimes get caught up in the hurry of life — it is important that once in a while you take a step back and evaluate how your friendships are going — and whether you need to take action.
For each one, there are three paths you could take:
- Retire the friendship
- Maintain it or
- Invest in it to see it grow
Retiring the friendship:
The person you were at 15 was very different to you at 25, who is in turn different to you at 45 or 65.
The same is true with your friends.
If life has taken you on different paths and you just don’t see much value (however you define it) — then maybe it is time to stop flogging the dead horse, and let things just dissipate.
Maintaining the friendship:
Some friendships have reached the ideal point of their relationship arch with you.
You’ve got a solid foundation together but you need to feed and water it to ensure it doesn’t wilt and atrophy.
In these cases, try to overcome friction by working these people into your life’s routines.
Maybe it’s joining a sports team together, or building a larger shared social group so you catch up regularly at birthday parties and other life events.
Investing in the friendship:
Relationships strengthen by sharing “notable” experiences together.
Having lunch with a friend every day for a week isn’t going to deepen the relationship as much as spending a morning together diving with sharks.
The latter is a notable experience (for most of us anyway) and is something you can call back to in years to come.
The obvious way to deepen and grow relationships involve creating new memories by trying things out together for the first time. Visit Fiji together, go skydiving, or even just try that cool new place that’s recently opened up in town.
Another simple way to grow these friendships is by letting people “into your world”. You can do this by sharing favourite experiences and places with one another.
For instance: you might take your friend to an off-the-beaten-path winery you really like, do your favourite walking trail, or even watch your one of your top 10 movies together.
Managing Friendships
Many things in life take care of themselves in the medium term. You’ll probably land a job, find a partner, and have a place to live — even if you don’t plan them out years in advance.
That said, many people do plan for these things with specific goals and requirements and set out to obtain them. Taking the latter approach naturally would result in greater satisfaction than simply “letting life happen to you”.
Friendships are the same.
Some are created and maintained organically whereas others, however, require a little more work.
Take note of your broader friendship circle and how much value you derive from each person and relationship.
Think about which relationships have run their course and ought to be retired, which ones are wilting but need to be salvaged by working these people into your day-to-day life, and which ones have an opportunity to grow to occupy a much bigger place in your heart and mind.
Take appropriate action so that each friendship takes up the correct amount of time in your diary!
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