low-maintenance friendships

welcome to introspection ft. harsehaj! ⭐️ i’m harsehaj, a 19 y/o always up to something in social good x tech.

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onto today’s topic: low-maintenance friendships 🧑‍🤝‍🧑

i’m sure you’ve seen those tiktoks praising and saying “in the end, it’s you and that friend you only have to talk to once a year to still be besties.”

i call bs!

sure, low-maintenance friendships probably work for certain types of friends, like concert buddies or the specific friend that you go to a party with. 🎉

this is because you have that same, once in a while touch point. if you want to grow that friendship into something more all-encompassing and upgrade them to other parts of your life, those touch points and mutual effort put into the relationship naturally increase.

just playing catchup once a year doesn’t build on the friendship. no experiences are shared, no memories formed, and the friendship becomes like a box to check. ✅

just because a friendship isn’t “low maintenance” doesn’t mean it’s high maintenance. i think those terms are a bit strange to describe relationships anyways. we aren’t talking about the upkeep of a pool, we’re talking about actual people.

keeping a friendship’s flame burning doesn’t have to take so much effort. simply going out and doing an activity together instead of catching up over a coffee does the trick. this is part of why people find it hard to sustain friendships into adulthood: you stop experiencing life together, so incorporating those shared experiences into your separate lives is an added effort. 🫂

it’s crucial though.

effort keeps a friendship alive and energizing. the bare minimum might be able to keep it afloat, at best.

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