Thursday, December 11, 2014
We recently had a dinner with some friends that we had not met with for about 3 months plus? CW and I were really looking forward to the dinner. However, when we were with these friends, I was actually surprised that it was an awkward dinner where we had nothing to say to each other, while the other 2 (or 3) had their own private conversations.
I have come to the conclusion that when friends are at different stages of life and are not in constant contact with each other, it does take more effort to maintain relationships. In the case yesterday, I had the impression that we were expected to try to maintain the relationship and conversations. In other meet ups that we do have with people our age, every person is trying equally hard to update each other and be interested in each others' lives; that makes meet-ups meaningful and indeed something to look forward to.
Sadly, I felt that the others were not interested in making effort in maintaining friendships, and expected the experience to be status-quo. It really doesn't work that way. I do remember that I had a meet up with some friends (we hadn't met for a year), and we all spent extra effort to be inclusive and converse more also because we had brought in our partners, and we wanted our partners to feel comfortable with our friendships.
As much as I do hope these friends would realise that friendship maintenance takes effort from all parties, I doubt that that would actually be the case, as they are all at similar stages of life (much different from us), and probably not all that interested in relationship building as they are not yet at the place of realising the importance of keeping old friends close. Oh well. I don't think we will be initiating another meet-up soon. It was disappointing, but I guess an eye-opener as to where our friends are at different levels of maturity.
If anything, I'm glad for having close friends near our age. Friends who have gone through phases in life where we realise that even though we all move in different directions in life, it is extremely important to put in effort to maintain contact with friends who care and friends who will support you throughout.
Anyway, CW is curious as to why I'm typing so much so I shall just publish this post now.
Comments:
Post a Comment
