On (Not) Keeping Up with Old Friends
This afternoon I received an email from an old high school acquaintance taking me to task for ignoring her previous messages: “I have gathered by your lack of response to my previous emails that you do not wish to keep in touch with me,” she wrote. My first reaction was, “lack of response?” And then, “hmmm, I must have done it again.”
It wasn’t an intentional snub, of course. I can paint a picture of what probably happened: Most likely, I read her email when I arrived in the office, nodded to myself, and moved on to the 39 other new messages in my box. After answering the ten or twelve that needed immediate action, I grabbed the lecture notes for my 8 a.m. class and forgot all about replying to her.
This is not meant to be a defensive post or a self-congratulatory post. It’ll be as honest as I can make it, and it won’t depict me in a very good light. You probably won’t like me very much after reading it, but I hope you’ll at least give me points for being frank.
The fact is, I’m very bad at keeping up with old acquaintances. The woman who emailed me today isn’t the first to comment on it, and she won’t be the last. It’s not something I’m proud of, but there you go. For better or for worse, it’s a facet of my personality that doesn’t seem likely to change. Her email, however, made me probe a little more deeply into the problem. Why am I so bad at maintaining long-distance relationships?
I do all right with close relationships, I think. I enjoy face-to-face communication. I arrange periodic lunches with a few friends on campus whom I don’t see much throughout the semester. I make an effort to visit my family regularly, driving out to visit them rather than expecting them to visit me. Back when my gamer friends lived nearby, I invited them over regularly, and visited them in turn. After a day spent with friends or family, I invariably go to bed with a quick prayer of gratitude for time well-spent. I value personal, in-depth contact a great deal.
It’s when that kind of regular, easy face-to-face contact becomes impossible that my problems begin.
First, I don’t like to talk on the phone, so much so that I’ve stopped listing my office phone number on my class syllabi. I tell my students to email me because “voicemail is the only thing in the world that goes away if you ignore it long enough.” I feel proud that I manage to call my father and sister once every week or two. My father’s like me — our conversations seldom run over ten minutes. My sister’s chattier. Sometimes we even manage to log in thirty-minute conversations. However, I can say with confidence that I’ve never overrun my cell phone’s monthly minute allowance.
I respond to email, sometimes at great length, but usually only if an answer is required. I’m not the kind of person who sends out chatty emails just to keep up, although I don’t mind reading them from others. I just wouldn’t know what to say. I like blogging and reading my friends’ blogs, though. We can keep track of each others’ lives on our own schedules and comment when we have something to say. But that doesn’t do me much good with the friends who don’t blog.
Second, and here’s where the unpleasant truths I mentioned earlier will come in, I seem to suffer a certain emotional lack. In fact, the first time I read about sociopaths, I wondered if I might be one. I’d already observed that I didn’t have the same depth of emotion as many of my peers. I decided, after reading further, that I’m not sociopathic (isn’t that nice to know?), but I don’t think I’m in the center of the emotional Gaussian distribution, either. Call me a standard deviation or two away from the mean.
I consider myself to be rather short on compassion and empathy. I don’t get soft and fuzzy over children. I’ve never wanted to be a mother. Most forms of humor leave me cold. And, most important for the issue at hand, I have a very truncated sense of nostalgia.
You see, I have little interest in my past, especially pre-college. I never indulge in rosy childhood memories or nostalgia for my halcyon high-school days. I barely even remember my childhood, and frankly, from what I do remember, I wouldn’t go through it again if you paid me. I much prefer life as an adult.
“We were all such good friends once, it is hard to imagine how we let those friendships go,” she wrote. Were we? Perhaps; the fact that I can vaguely remember our hanging out together suggests we might have been. Given my bad memory, I’ll take her word for it. But I can’t share her assumption that we should have kept up with each other. Why? After high school we all set out on our own paths to adulthood, and it’s very unlikely we would have found anything to talk about after the first year or two.
“I am sorry that you do not wish to attend the reunion this summer in Orlando,” she added. To be as brutally honest as I promised you I would be, the fact is, I don’t understand the point of getting back in touch with people I knew 24 years ago and haven’t talked to since. And as an introvert, I certainly don’t want to go just for a party.
See, I told you I’m a bit emotionally handicapped. I’m sure the reasons for attending a reunion or keeping up with old friends are self-evident to you. But to me, it just seems like a waste of effort.
All this isn’t to say that I’m a misanthrope. Well, okay, maybe sometimes, especially when the neighbors are doing their laundry after 10 p.m. But I seem to get along well with people at a superficial level, and I value the few friends I’ve managed to make and ever-so-tenuously keep. They’re smart, clever, creative, and thoughtful. I regret that I don’t make more of an effort to keep in contact with those who’ve moved away, and I count myself fortunate that so many of them are willing to make the effort of staying in touch with me.
But if maintaining our communication were entirely up to me? It wouldn’t be pretty. I have, in fact, resigned myself to Bridget Jones’ nightmare of dying alone and being found three weeks later half-eaten by Alsatians. Or in my case, by desperately hungry iguanas. It’s not a pretty fate, but that’s what happens when you aren’t good at keeping up friendships. Because even though it’s not a very pleasant or attractive thing to admit, I’m afraid there’s a hollowness inside me where everyone else keeps their relationship-maintenance skills.
drupagliassotti @ May 18, 2008
Well after being directed to this article and reading it I have to admit, I’m the same way, I have no desire to relive my highschool years ( once was more the enough, who wants to go back to that mess!) My College years, well some of those were I think good, mostly alot of alcoholic drenched memories which I now believe is the main reason I no longer drink.
Although about, well maybe more then a year now, I was contacted by a former high school friend who in tern told me a close friend of mine had written a book ( Fabulous Hell, by Craig Curtis) I had lost contact with Craig after high school, So after ordering his book from amazon I sat down and read it, and after that contacted him via a website about the book.
The nice part about it, once we got on the phone it was remarkably easy to start dishing the dirt and laughing like maniacs with each other and this was after 27 years. I was worried, I didnt know how he would feel being contacted by someone from high school, but it was good and we talk off and on a few times a month ( he is now living in Washington State)
He is the only person from that time Im glad I got back into contact with. After my father’s death in 2006 whats most important to me are those people in the here and now. I like what your wrote I feel the same way, for me its easier with a smaller group of current friends then a huge array of aquaintances scattered to the four corners of the planet.