"The researchers believe the reason for this reluctance is that if enough time elapses without regular contact, people eventually come to see their old friends not as friends at all but as strangers. Just as you’d probably feel awkward about texting or emailing a stranger out of the blue to tell them you’re thinking about them and hope they’re well, so it is with old friends."
I have a slightly different explanation. I think it is guilt. I think the more time that accumulates not having reached out to an old friend, the more we feel guilty that we have not made the effort, and thus we avoid having to face our guilt. Ironically generally both parties have the same problem, so it should be easy to reach back out at some point to erase the dual feelings of guilt.
I have had friends that come at me from a one-sided view of this... that it was my fault for not reaching out. My assessment of that is that I apparently am seen as a leader and more successful and thus there is some underlying expectation that I would be responsible for reaching out... that the other party is justified in being subordinate and sort of unqualified to take the initiative. That bothers me, but I understand.
One good friend of mine, was the best man at my wedding and played guitar with me in our cover band in our 20s, after being disconnected for almost 20 years, told me after we reconnected that he considered me a stuck-up, college-educated successful business type that looked down on him and his class of people. He is Hispanic and never attended college. But he said "you are the same as I remember you when we were younger, so that was my bad for thinking of you that way."
That is another thing that happens when we don't connect with people. The story that one keeps in their head of the other person tends to drift and get rewritten. I think there is some resentment that can build in some that miss the connection and that resentment starts to drift to a more negative picture of the person. Maybe that is a defense mechanism... because if you think of someone you miss as being too much of an attractive positive individual, it will hurt that much more that you don't have that connection. So if you diminish the identity of that person, it is easier to live with.
I also love and hate Facebook related to this. I love Facebook as it has allowed me to reconnect with many friends and family that I would otherwise not have connected with. However, I hate Facebook for delivering so much algorithm-determined junk to my feed and the feeds of others.
My last observation about connecting with old friends... I think the older we get the more interested we become to reconnect. As the end of life starts to loom, we put aside our guilt. I wasn't too interested in attending high school reunion events until I hit 60. Unfortunately some of the school mates I would like to see and talk to are already gone. It is fun to talk to old friends and reminisce about our youth. Certainly there are class differences that develop over time, but when I get together with an old friend from my childhood, those differences seem less of an impediment to relationships... less important. That experience I think is almost therapeutic for me... to help me view the world as being full of one set of human beings instead of layers of class hierarchy. I really don't feel that I see people different based on their economic class, etc., but then if I don't actually interact with people from all walks of life, I am sure there are subtle biases that percolate.
I tried to reconnect to some high school friends and class mates but they seem to prefer a tele-novella or other entertainment to our conversation. They did not express same joy of re-connecting so I stopped being a fool.
I'm 74 and I'm in touch with friends from elementary school as well as later times in my life. I regularly send out postcards. People love getting cards and respond: emails not so much.
I leave notes to myself on my iPhone calendar to reach out to old friends by text six weeks after we last spoke to set up a call. This week? Next? When’s good? Sometimes I think, why is it always me who has to reach out? but I know if I don’t, they won’t either and so…
After this article was released in the Boston Globe, I reached out to my old friend and business partner from my days in corporate circa 2001-2006. Our relationship was severed unfortunately, through no fault of our own, by an unexpected turn of events.
We had connected briefly in 2010, but then we had been out of contact until this year 2024 when I decided to reach out since I still had contact information.
We have started talking weekly now, and it has been so valuable for us both as we are both husbands and fathers, and can now share experiences and exchange ideas.
In all truth, I feel immediately richer and more fulfilled. I have a close male friend again. At this moment, as mid-life is unfolding, I feel a debt of deep gratitude to you RKH, and for my newly rekindled friendship. Peace ✌🏽
This resonates with me, having moved numerous times for career. I’m lucky to have kept in touch just barely enough over the years (with big gaps) to still have a few friends I call/text/email occasionally. Not long ago I resolved to be more diligent after discovering one of my friends had been battling cancer.
I am going to have to read and reread this. I contacted about 40 old friends over the last four years and have had some marvelous renewals. I am having lunch with three guys from 1970 this Friday and a woman I sang with 1969-70 next Wednesday. About a third never responded, a third got back to me once or twice and it just fell to earth, and about a quarter remain in contact at varying frequency. Two went horribly, terribly badly, and I am still stunned that they see me as a stranger who was mildly fun to have around until I said a single thing that bothered them, at which point I became dead to them.
The implications of this study and your comments is going to take some reflection. I think I have a bit of a foothold now.
I agree that we lead a lonely existence. But it might be because we are all so busy just trying to live our lives. I work 70-80 hours a week. After exercising, eating and sleeping, there’s just barely time for family, let alone friends.
Excellent newsletter! We need to take this information and make our existing friendships last and perhaps reach out to those from whom we’ve grown distant. One thing that’s very hard can be physical distance or even perceived distance. We have fewer barriers now than in the past where long distance phone calls were a rare and expensive thing. Differing life circumstances (single vs married vs kids vs whatever), just remember we all pass through phases and we might have differences now but later those differences may even out. I’d like to see just a little less mobility because families and friends get scattered far and wide across the USA where I live, but I’ve noticed since moving states that some communities have residents that may be living in the same region as their ancestors 9 generations ago and have family and friends remaining close. Even if you don’t understand why, the facts remain that friendships will enrich your life beyond what you can earn moving far from your hometown.
See my comment above. That my narrative contradicted theirs seemed to be the point of anger, yes. I find I still want to argue the point! Not recommended.
My dad modeled this behavior when I was young. He single-handedly kept his college friends and family in communication through willpower and personal investment.
I don’t recall how I felt about it at the time or when I initially started to need to reach out to people, as opposed to just keeping in touch with friends. But it never had a stigma for me. Indeed I look forward to it, when I do get the time while walking the dog or at the park with my young kids.
There’s a bunch of people that won’t respond. That’s fine and I drop them from my rotation. Life can be busy. They can reach out when they’re ready. But the vast majority, even when I don’t connect at the time, remember the effort and try to coordinate. And the conversations are incredibly enjoyable, even when life has taken you in different directions. For the most part, though, I find that the people who take the call and have a great conversation also have even more in common with you than you thought when you knew them. I guess it must show some level of shared values that maybe doesn’t come up in most circumstances.
Years ago, I was telling someone how I feel like not being connected to some other people, and I got the response: "What it is important to you it is not important to them." After the COVID misery I lost the connection with a lot of my "friends." I did not get anything from some people I thought I was closely connected. Also, in the same time, the election from 2020 has set many in different camps. Therefore I realized that continuing the line of thinking on what it is important for each one of us, my natural conclusion was: "They were my friends but I was not their friend." It is hard to be sort of "dead alive" and being lost in the jungle of life.
At some point long ago I figured out that I get more attached to people than they get attached to me. I learned to live with it. When I saw the same in my kids we talked about it. I told them that they may get hurt more but valuing people and feeling deep emotion is far better than the other way around. I have strong friendships with a few kids I grew up with. We went our separate ways but always stayed in good touch. Maybe this all stems from the way we were raised.
You are right Maureen, it is about how we feel about the old friends. A strong sense of nostalgia when we part the ways willingly or unwillingly. Each one of them is a lesson of life.
Then there's a different set: the friends we don't like, haha. Way before Covid, when everyting shifted I said to my partner "We have a lot of friends we don't like!" We laughed, because it was true, and funny. But, it didn't matter, they were still ours. Whoever said that you have to like your friends? "They're like family!" 😄
Now that I am older than 94% of the population, I would offer up some advice. It's best not to wait to contact old friends. Most of mine are now dead.
Only about a third of mine are, but I say Amen.
"The researchers believe the reason for this reluctance is that if enough time elapses without regular contact, people eventually come to see their old friends not as friends at all but as strangers. Just as you’d probably feel awkward about texting or emailing a stranger out of the blue to tell them you’re thinking about them and hope they’re well, so it is with old friends."
I have a slightly different explanation. I think it is guilt. I think the more time that accumulates not having reached out to an old friend, the more we feel guilty that we have not made the effort, and thus we avoid having to face our guilt. Ironically generally both parties have the same problem, so it should be easy to reach back out at some point to erase the dual feelings of guilt.
I have had friends that come at me from a one-sided view of this... that it was my fault for not reaching out. My assessment of that is that I apparently am seen as a leader and more successful and thus there is some underlying expectation that I would be responsible for reaching out... that the other party is justified in being subordinate and sort of unqualified to take the initiative. That bothers me, but I understand.
One good friend of mine, was the best man at my wedding and played guitar with me in our cover band in our 20s, after being disconnected for almost 20 years, told me after we reconnected that he considered me a stuck-up, college-educated successful business type that looked down on him and his class of people. He is Hispanic and never attended college. But he said "you are the same as I remember you when we were younger, so that was my bad for thinking of you that way."
That is another thing that happens when we don't connect with people. The story that one keeps in their head of the other person tends to drift and get rewritten. I think there is some resentment that can build in some that miss the connection and that resentment starts to drift to a more negative picture of the person. Maybe that is a defense mechanism... because if you think of someone you miss as being too much of an attractive positive individual, it will hurt that much more that you don't have that connection. So if you diminish the identity of that person, it is easier to live with.
I also love and hate Facebook related to this. I love Facebook as it has allowed me to reconnect with many friends and family that I would otherwise not have connected with. However, I hate Facebook for delivering so much algorithm-determined junk to my feed and the feeds of others.
My last observation about connecting with old friends... I think the older we get the more interested we become to reconnect. As the end of life starts to loom, we put aside our guilt. I wasn't too interested in attending high school reunion events until I hit 60. Unfortunately some of the school mates I would like to see and talk to are already gone. It is fun to talk to old friends and reminisce about our youth. Certainly there are class differences that develop over time, but when I get together with an old friend from my childhood, those differences seem less of an impediment to relationships... less important. That experience I think is almost therapeutic for me... to help me view the world as being full of one set of human beings instead of layers of class hierarchy. I really don't feel that I see people different based on their economic class, etc., but then if I don't actually interact with people from all walks of life, I am sure there are subtle biases that percolate.
I tried to reconnect to some high school friends and class mates but they seem to prefer a tele-novella or other entertainment to our conversation. They did not express same joy of re-connecting so I stopped being a fool.
Absolutely valuable perspective here and it resonates with me. Thanks for sharing it.
I'm 74 and I'm in touch with friends from elementary school as well as later times in my life. I regularly send out postcards. People love getting cards and respond: emails not so much.
I leave notes to myself on my iPhone calendar to reach out to old friends by text six weeks after we last spoke to set up a call. This week? Next? When’s good? Sometimes I think, why is it always me who has to reach out? but I know if I don’t, they won’t either and so…
Fantastic idea!
Good to know.
After this article was released in the Boston Globe, I reached out to my old friend and business partner from my days in corporate circa 2001-2006. Our relationship was severed unfortunately, through no fault of our own, by an unexpected turn of events.
We had connected briefly in 2010, but then we had been out of contact until this year 2024 when I decided to reach out since I still had contact information.
We have started talking weekly now, and it has been so valuable for us both as we are both husbands and fathers, and can now share experiences and exchange ideas.
In all truth, I feel immediately richer and more fulfilled. I have a close male friend again. At this moment, as mid-life is unfolding, I feel a debt of deep gratitude to you RKH, and for my newly rekindled friendship. Peace ✌🏽
This story makes me happy. Friends are family.
I've made a few attempts at reconnecting with old friends and every time the feedback was positive - wondering if there's any research of that.
Planning to reconnect more but somehow I am still reluctant and postpone it over and over again.
This resonates with me, having moved numerous times for career. I’m lucky to have kept in touch just barely enough over the years (with big gaps) to still have a few friends I call/text/email occasionally. Not long ago I resolved to be more diligent after discovering one of my friends had been battling cancer.
I do see this with my young adult children -they seem to have so much more alone time than I did at their age-and I’m an introvert.
I am going to have to read and reread this. I contacted about 40 old friends over the last four years and have had some marvelous renewals. I am having lunch with three guys from 1970 this Friday and a woman I sang with 1969-70 next Wednesday. About a third never responded, a third got back to me once or twice and it just fell to earth, and about a quarter remain in contact at varying frequency. Two went horribly, terribly badly, and I am still stunned that they see me as a stranger who was mildly fun to have around until I said a single thing that bothered them, at which point I became dead to them.
The implications of this study and your comments is going to take some reflection. I think I have a bit of a foothold now.
I agree that we lead a lonely existence. But it might be because we are all so busy just trying to live our lives. I work 70-80 hours a week. After exercising, eating and sleeping, there’s just barely time for family, let alone friends.
Excellent newsletter! We need to take this information and make our existing friendships last and perhaps reach out to those from whom we’ve grown distant. One thing that’s very hard can be physical distance or even perceived distance. We have fewer barriers now than in the past where long distance phone calls were a rare and expensive thing. Differing life circumstances (single vs married vs kids vs whatever), just remember we all pass through phases and we might have differences now but later those differences may even out. I’d like to see just a little less mobility because families and friends get scattered far and wide across the USA where I live, but I’ve noticed since moving states that some communities have residents that may be living in the same region as their ancestors 9 generations ago and have family and friends remaining close. Even if you don’t understand why, the facts remain that friendships will enrich your life beyond what you can earn moving far from your hometown.
"Friendships are narrative minds exchanging narratives". Literally "what's your story". 'Narrative mind' something of a euphemism for 'ego'.
See my comment above. That my narrative contradicted theirs seemed to be the point of anger, yes. I find I still want to argue the point! Not recommended.
We identify with our narrative. Our ego wants to stay in the driver's seat. So does theirs.
Great post! Needed to be reminded of this. Thanks Rob
Absolutely valuable perspective here and it resonates with me. Thanks for sharing it.
Thank you Sir! Great words of widom, as always:)) No time like the present and I'll get right on it....
My dad modeled this behavior when I was young. He single-handedly kept his college friends and family in communication through willpower and personal investment.
I don’t recall how I felt about it at the time or when I initially started to need to reach out to people, as opposed to just keeping in touch with friends. But it never had a stigma for me. Indeed I look forward to it, when I do get the time while walking the dog or at the park with my young kids.
There’s a bunch of people that won’t respond. That’s fine and I drop them from my rotation. Life can be busy. They can reach out when they’re ready. But the vast majority, even when I don’t connect at the time, remember the effort and try to coordinate. And the conversations are incredibly enjoyable, even when life has taken you in different directions. For the most part, though, I find that the people who take the call and have a great conversation also have even more in common with you than you thought when you knew them. I guess it must show some level of shared values that maybe doesn’t come up in most circumstances.
Years ago, I was telling someone how I feel like not being connected to some other people, and I got the response: "What it is important to you it is not important to them." After the COVID misery I lost the connection with a lot of my "friends." I did not get anything from some people I thought I was closely connected. Also, in the same time, the election from 2020 has set many in different camps. Therefore I realized that continuing the line of thinking on what it is important for each one of us, my natural conclusion was: "They were my friends but I was not their friend." It is hard to be sort of "dead alive" and being lost in the jungle of life.
At some point long ago I figured out that I get more attached to people than they get attached to me. I learned to live with it. When I saw the same in my kids we talked about it. I told them that they may get hurt more but valuing people and feeling deep emotion is far better than the other way around. I have strong friendships with a few kids I grew up with. We went our separate ways but always stayed in good touch. Maybe this all stems from the way we were raised.
You are right Maureen, it is about how we feel about the old friends. A strong sense of nostalgia when we part the ways willingly or unwillingly. Each one of them is a lesson of life.
Then there's a different set: the friends we don't like, haha. Way before Covid, when everyting shifted I said to my partner "We have a lot of friends we don't like!" We laughed, because it was true, and funny. But, it didn't matter, they were still ours. Whoever said that you have to like your friends? "They're like family!" 😄