When friendships cool, it’s normal to wonder if they’re still worth saving. Discover the 10 questions to rekindle your bond and navigate the distance with these expert tips.
Keeping the Friendship Alive: 10 Questions to Rekindle Your Bond
Good relationships are vital to health and happiness, but friendships can wither without time and attention. It’s normal for friendships to change, and a relationship cooling isn’t necessarily bad. Sometimes we struggle to accept that a friendship has run its course for any number of reasons.
Friendships have been a vital part of human relationships throughout history, with evidence suggesting that even ancient civilizations valued close bonds between individuals.
In modern times, friendships are formed through various means such as social media, schools, and workplaces.
Research shows that having strong friendships can lead to improved mental health, increased happiness, and even physical health benefits.
According to a survey, 60% of adults in the United States consider their friends to be more important than family members.
Understanding the State of Your Friendship
Before you decide whether to save your friendship, ask yourself if it’s still something you really want to maintain. One of the great things about friendships is they’re largely free from the obligations and expectations of other forms of love. You or I can disappear from view for a while, and that’s okay.
However, when months go by without contact, especially if you were more regularly in touch before, it can be hard not to wonder whether you’ve done something wrong. Maybe you have, says Max Dickins, author of ‘Billy No-Mates: How I Realised Men Have a Friendship Problem.’ Better to talk about it, so you might repair things.
Rekindling the Connection
If the answer is yes, here are some questions you could ask your friends to get your relationship back on track. What have you been up to? Everyone likes to talk about themselves, says Robert Waldinger, director of the Harvard Study on Adult Development – research that has shown the importance of good relationships – and co-author of ‘The Good Life.’ Just ask people to tell you about the things that are most important to them, because curiosity goes a long way toward reconnecting people.
If you haven’t been in touch for a while, their life might look very different from how you remember it. Just really be interested in who this person is now.
Reflecting on Change
How do you think our friendship has changed over the years? This can bring up the fact that you don’t feel as close as you used to, says Michelle Elman, author of ‘Bad Friend: Why Friendship Breakups Hurt and How to Heal.’ It allows the question to be open and can make someone reflect and question something they might not have noticed.
Being more distant isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as long as it works for both of you. Change in friendships is normal, she says, and can be positive if your friendship is flexible and can adapt.
Communicating Effectively
Perhaps the distance turns out to be deliberate on your friend’s part. How can you prepare yourself for an answer you’d rather not hear? Clarity is kindness, says Elman. While it might be difficult to hear, it is better to know.
You are allowed to have hurt feelings and also be grateful they were honest with you, so you can put that time and energy towards someone who appreciates it.
Finding Common Ground
Do you know that I miss you? One of the tricky things about friendship, says Max Dickins, ‘is that it is ambiguous. How do I know that you like me as much as I like you?’ For men, especially, he says, ‘it’s rare to call out the importance of a friend.’
The simple act of telling your friend that you miss them, ‘has a clarifying effect and – when reciprocated – leads to a mutual recognition that makes the whole enterprise feel more meaningful.‘
Scheduling and Planning
Can we put a date on the calendar? This may seem obvious, but some people are terrible at making plans. When you’re inviting a friend to hang out, don’t offer a generic ‘Let’s hang out’ text. Always suggest specific dates.
A huge hurdle to seeing friends is scheduling. If you’re willing to do the heavy lifting of suggesting the dates and even the place, you’re already ahead.
Finding Complementary Friendship Skills
Perhaps your friendship is waning because you’re frustrated that you always seem to make the first move and do most of the planning, but annoying as it is, don’t give it too much weight. You may need to accept that we all bring different strengths to our friendships.
Perhaps yours is reaching out and planning, but your friend’s strength is being an excellent listener. Learn to look for complementary friendship skills, and not skills that are the exact match of your own.
Regular Communication
Would you like to join me at …? Identify something you could regularly do together. A weekly walk? A monthly cinema date? Remove the stress of scheduling and commit to something that happens at the same time and place – perhaps a course, or pub quiz, or running club.
Keeping up with each other in small but regular ways avoids the pressure of feeling like you need to make time for a long meeting just to catch up. If you talk to your friend every week or every month even, you have more things you can check in about, particularly if you share interests.
Adapting Your Communication Style
Do you prefer to communicate in a different way? Sometimes we’re over-texting the friend who prefers a phone call, says Nina Badzin. Perhaps we’re calling the friend who communicates best with voice memos on their own schedule.
It’s very likely that we’re relying too heavily on our smartphones to stay in touch, ‘and forgetting to spend time together in person.‘ A close friendship cannot exist on texts and exchanges of memes alone. If a friendship is drifting apart, changing the method you use to get in touch could be a simple fix – and make sure to see your friend in person.
Assessing Mutual Needs
What’s the most important way a person shows up for you? This is to check whether you are both getting your needs met, says Elman. You may have every intention of being a good friend, and assume you are succeeding, but there’s a chance you’re missing the mark.
‘Showing up‘ will look different for everyone, and without asking, you won’t know what matters to your friend most.
Unresolved Conversations
What’s something you wish you could talk to me about and haven’t? You might discover new depths to your friend, allow them to talk about their worries or hear some hard truths about something you’ve done to annoy them.
‘Sometimes people don’t know how to bring up conversations and this is a way you can open that door and see if there is anything unresolved,‘ says Elman.
Keeping the Conversation Open
Keep an open mind and remove as much judgment as possible. Instead of focusing on why someone didn’t tell you something sooner, continue the conversation with curiosity, with the goal of understanding them better.
If I were to organise a great day out for us, what would it be? We tend to judge, says Max Dickins, the ‘closeness‘ of a friendship based on ‘levels of mutual disclosure.’ Yet for many people, especially men, the intimacy they miss is of a more active sort. They may have drifted from their friend because they have lost a spot on the horizon, some mutual destination they are travelling towards.
Friendships can suffer when people find themselves at different life stages or crisis moments from their friends, such as starting a family, facing redundancy or losing a parent. ‘A useful place to begin rejuvenation is to ask, what might we share together now?‘
