Last weekend I visited a friend in California who I hadn’t seen since 2021 (side note: her new neighborhood is so exceptionally cute and she’s just a short walk to the downtown area and then to the beach!). We’ve been friends since college. Over the years we’d visit each other from time to time and call to catch up, but with being so far away and her raising a family, it was hard to coordinate staying in touch. Visiting her reminded me of how much I love her and how much she (and now her family!) means to me. It made me realize (yet again) how important it is to make the time to cultivate meaningful friendships even if it’s difficult to find the time for.
“The best friends aren’t necessarily the ones you’ve known the longest or have the most fun partying with, but are the ones who SHOW UP…It’s showing up for that kind of stuff that solidifies a friendship…” This is a quote from a 2014 Huffington Post article (and still resonates). I wrote about this concept of “showing up” in 2017 but thought it would be nice to reflect back on it 7 years later. The article also comments on how you’ll be surprised by who shows up for you and who doesn’t. It still surprises (and touches) me when I see folks show up for me at the levels that they do. For my wedding weekend, I remember a friend whose Vermont flight was canceled on the way to our wedding and she made her brother (who hates driving in cities) drive her to Boston to catch a different flight just so she could be there for me. I was really touched that she did whatever she could to be present for this milestone event.
Just like with any relationship, creating and maintaining friendships takes serious effort and time. Moving cities and states every few years since 2006 has made it especially difficult for me to develop and maintain close bonds (let alone create new ones). A study published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships notes that it takes roughly 50 hours of time together to move from mere acquaintance to casual friend, 90 hours to go from casual friend to regular friend, and more than 200 hours before you can consider someone your close friend. That’s a lot of hours when so many have families and/or demanding personal or work commitments. It’s even more discouraging when the friendships you thought would work out end up not being the right ones for the long-term.
Mr. Nacho has lived in this area most of his life and he’s been able to maintain his childhood friends here. I love that he and his friends have such deep friendships and are able to see each other often. I wish I had something like that, though I know I’ve gained a lot of different and valuable experiences from moving all over. Trade-offs, I suppose. I look back at my friendships in different cities and I wish I could have appreciated and leaned into those times more. We had a lot of fun and created lasting memories that I’m often nostalgic for. It feels different living states away where just to see them in person could take a few hundred dollars for a flight.
There are two sides of this friendship coin which I still haven’t figured out. One is creating and cultivating new friendships here in Virginia, and the other is how to best maintain and develop quality friendships I already have. To create friendships, I know I have to put myself out there and find weekly activities or events to participate in (which I still have not found what exactly those would be). And despite knowing that cultivating friendships is important, I’m still not quite sure where to start (aside from showing up for important milestones). It’s clear that friendships will continue to get harder to maintain with age, so I think I will need to find creative ways to create more consistent and structured interactions (for example scheduling monthly phone calls, or annual visits).
