#75: Why Would Anyone stay in touch?
💌 thoughts on nurturing friendships
Bonjour,
Here is my answer to the second question that I received in response to my call for motivation conundrums, a few posts ago. I was delighted to receive questions that I could have asked myself, and wrote the answers that I need to read, too. (If you missed #1, click here to read about navigating motivation dips in long-term projects.)
I’ll add the same disclaimer: I’m not a therapist or a behaviour scientist, and I am wary of prescriptions, especially ‘productivity hacks’. I am writing from my own experience, and having immersed myself in the subject of motivation for this newsletter. Please take what makes sense to you, ignore the rest, and keep asking questions.
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Vikki, who writes the newsletter Ideas. Imagery. Story., wrote:
… one that really bugs me a lot is getting in touch with friends—old and new. I really cherish the depth I can get to with old friends. And I really get buzzed from conversations with new acquaintances! However, I feel dragged-down by guilt from feeling I've already failed them by not being in touch more! It's like if I think about calling or emailing one friend, my mind goes to, "Well what about [other friend]? And also, you should call [so-and-so] for [plausible reason!]"
There's another problem with this too. In most dialogues, I feel tremendously responsible for how things go. It's like I'm being self-protective of my own image but also holding myself super-responsible for using words to help the other person as much as possible. Sometimes I send too-long emails "so as to not be misunderstood" or "because something shorter wouldn't truly capture what I'm trying to say"—which seldom serves my hearer or the cause of maintaining a dialogue. Other times, it results in, well... starting a lot of writing (sometimes personal communications, sometimes substack posts, etc.) that I never complete. Ahh. I think the word I wanted here was "perfectionism."
Ouch, Vikki, I feel this.
What heavy words you’ve chosen—“dragged-down by guilt”; “failed”; “tremendously responsible”. Sometimes, we treat reaching out like a chore, almost, or an opportunity for (self-)judgement, rather than the treat and chance for connection that it is.
First, I want to acknowledge that:
it does take effort to tend to our relationships (and it’s often, not always, worth it)
the time and energy that we can/want to dedicate to maintaining them ebbs and flows, depending on the seasons of our lives (and that’s okay)
our friendships will change over time anyway, in quantity and quality (and that’s not necessarily a function of 2.)
Of course you want to pen heartfelt, helpful letters to all your friends! Oh, and this friend deserves a particularly sensitive message, so you put it off until you have time to reach out properly!
Yet you know the goal is not to deploy epistolary talent. In your note, you mention:
goals for yourself—getting depth and energy from your exchanges
goals for your friends—you want to “help the other person as much as possible”. (What a tall order!)
Both point to one simple but hard-to-implement approach: could you lower the bar on the quality (not the frequency) of your communications? Here again, I’d like to make a plea for living to our lowest potential well.
Warm relationships are a basic human need, not a luxury. Let’s take drinking: occasionally you might concoct a flavourful cocktail that you’ll sip in front of a breathtaking landscape; most other times, you’ll drink water in whatever clean receptacle’s available. Either way, you gotta stay hydrated.
Sometimes it takes you 15 seconds to send a picture and an emoji; or 5 minutes to record a voice message; or 5 hours to write that beautiful, wise letter. It all counts, and it adds up.
[Inspired by your question, I stopped typing and texted a school friend who now lives an ocean away:
hi!! how are you
If you’d asked me years ago, I’d have scoffed that these lower-case Hs and faulty punctuation are not my style! But one-handed, typo-ridden texts do the job better than careful but unsent drafts.]
This chimes with the idea of “scruffy hospitality” that writer Oliver Burkeman1 encouraged us to embrace in his newsletter The Imperfectionist a few days ago. I would encourage us to also embrace scruffy, sincere, spontaneous communications:
Scruffy hospitality means you hunger more for good conversation and serving a simple meal of what you have, not what you don’t have. Scruffy hospitality means you’re more interested in quality conversation than the impression your home or lawn makes. If we only share meals with friends when we’re excellent, we aren’t truly sharing life together.2
If your mind goes “Yeah, but”, let me counter two potential objections:
if your goal is to help a friend who’s going through a rough patch, and you don’t want to bother her or put your foot in it:
… if you’re choosing between saying something and saying nothing, you’re almost always better off saying something.
This quote is from There Is No Good Card For This: What to say and do when life is scary, awful and unfair to people you love, by Kelsey Crowe and Emily McDowell.
if you haven’t been in touch for a while (even a really long time), and you’re dreading some unease:
Sure, we’ll get rebuffed sometimes. But more often—much more often, in fact—we overestimate how awkward we’ll feel and underestimate how much others will welcome our overtures.
This comes from Daniel Pink3’s book The Power of Regret, where he urges us to “shove aside the awkwardness”. He also quotes Robert Waldinger, current director of the Harvard Grant Study, which has been following the health and happiness of hundreds of people since 1938:
Taking care of your body is important, but tending to your relationships is a form of self-care too. That, I think, is the revelation.
Finally, what if we applied Ben Carson’s decision matrix to the situations you describe?
Here are my guesses; correct me if they’re off base:
So, Vikki: here’s my permission slip to send (what you think is) a botched email to that friend who’s on your mind. I’d love to know how you feel after doing that.
Author of the very very good Four Thousand Weeks. Time Management for Mortals
The paragraph comes from a sermon by anglican priest Jack King, quoted by Sharon Reeves.
Wow, fascinating at every point. Thanks for those lovely graphics for the decision matrices.
So good.