> Someone has to follow up. Someone has to risk seeming too eager. Someone has to pick a plan. Someone has to coordinate calendars. If nobody does that within a week or two, the connection fades and everyone starts over.
I sense that people think like this. But it’s absurd. I treat friendship maintenance like real work in staying interested, and finding people with your cadence so this kind of “exposing yourself as more interested” dating shenanigans doesn’t run your life.
I understand why we become victims of it when we meet the loves of our life because of hormones and what’s at stake.
But if you can’t know that your friends like you even though you haven’t spoken for a year, even if one always has to initiate the call. Then you have a level of honesty and no-nonsense to aspire to:
Just admit to them and yourself that you like them, and that availability is not perfectly symmetric, respect their ability and interest to reply, and rejoice when it matches for whatever brief periods. There is no loss if it doesn’t work out.
I sense that people think like this. But it’s absurd. I treat friendship maintenance like real work in staying interested, and finding people with your cadence so this kind of “exposing yourself as more interested” dating shenanigans doesn’t run your life.
I understand why we become victims of it when we meet the loves of our life because of hormones and what’s at stake.
But if you can’t know that your friends like you even though you haven’t spoken for a year, even if one always has to initiate the call. Then you have a level of honesty and no-nonsense to aspire to:
Just admit to them and yourself that you like them, and that availability is not perfectly symmetric, respect their ability and interest to reply, and rejoice when it matches for whatever brief periods. There is no loss if it doesn’t work out.