Friendships evolve but with a little nurturing, they will endure
The follow-up to 101 Tiny Changes to Brighten Your Day focuses on improving your personal, work and wider worlds. Here Ailbhe Malone discusses friends
I’ve always found it easy to make friends and to keep friendships alive – at least, that’s what I’d always believed. But as I’ve grown older, and my close friends no longer live in the same city as me, I’ve had to learn how to nurture friendships that don’t involve a ten-minute bus ride to watch TV. At university, my favourite thing was how all my friends lived in each other’s pockets. We even copied out each other’s class timetables so we’d always know who was around for a coffee or some nourishing 11am chips in the canteen. Even in my early twenties, most of my friends stayed in those pockets – I could practically ping pong around the city and check off seeing my friends, catching up and fuelling our relationships. But as people move out of cities and back to their home towns, and jobs become more important, it’s tricky to feel like you’re still getting quality time.
If you’re in this situation, and you hold onto all of your worries, questions and pieces of news for when you see your friends in real life, you miss out on a lot in between. And contrary to the stories you might read about how technology keeps us disconnected, I believe that you can nurture friendship from a distance – on social media or over the phone.
Catching up in person is wonderful but it can bring challenges too. For instance, my university girlfriends and I had a weekend away in Edinburgh the other year, and it was the most fun I’ve had in a long time. I had to push down my fears that nobody would want to spend an extended amount of time with me and that all my ideas for activities were bad (for example, a wet and windy hike). But really, so what if they were bad?
It’s OK for one friend to enjoy hiking, and the other to prefer to check out local coffee shops. There’s no way to ‘get things wrong’. Maybe, like me, you really value time to chat and catch up in a cosy setting – eating crisps on sofas is the ideal Saturday night. It takes courage to ask for that from your friends, to say: ‘I know there’s a great DJ playing tonight, but I’d really like to catch up over a pizza.’ I’m proud of myself for asking for what I want – and in doing so, I think I’ve helped my friends to ask for what they want too. It feels like a gift to be able to let your friendships grow and change.
Change is OK, and there’s no need to fear people changing over time – you’ve changed too. But like a tree, while leaves may drop off and new buds may form, the trunk of your friendship will always stay firm and rooted in the ground.
Here are five easy-toimplement tips for helping to nurture your friendships, no matter whether they’re longdistance pals or your best friends from school who still live around the corner:
1. Make sure you and your friend have the same expectations of each other and set them out clearly. For example, if you have a friend who loves to text you their every waking thought, but you’re not great at texting back, let them know. Say: ‘Hey, I’m not great at responding to text messages, but I see them, and I’m glad you’re thinking of me.’
2. If you find phones are getting in the way of real life interaction, play this game when you go out for dinner – everyone puts their phone in the centre of the table and the first person to react to a notification has to pay the whole bill.
3. It’s OK to have only one or two close friends. Don’t worry about other people’s #squads on Instagram or try to compare your fearless duo or trio to them. What feels real and right to you is real and right.
Don’t worry about other people’s #squadsoninstagram
4. Facebook gets a bad rap, but I find it great for talking to faraway friends and family. Don’t feel bad if you rely on social media to keep in touch – some of my best chats have been via Instagram DM.
5. Establish friendship rituals. Every year on the first day of spring, my friends and I have a delicious lunch together where we exchange presents. It’s my favourite day of the year.
● 101 Tiny Changes To Brighten Your World by Ailbhe Malone is published by Icon Books at £9.99.