On Maintaining Friendships and Relationships
A few thoughts on the importance of making an effort for those close to you
This is my friend Audrey.
She and I met through our consulting club at UCLA, The Bruin Group (or TBG, for short). We first started hanging out after a club retreat to Palm Springs and drove back in the same car with a few other people in the club, chatted a bunch, and really hit it off.
Audrey lived in the building adjacent to mine last year, so we spent a bunch of time together when we were free. It got to the point where if I was bored and had nothing to do, I’d grab a book, walk across Reiber Court, and knock on her door in Reiber Vista to just chill in her room and read. Or watch a movie. Or do homework.
Basically, hang out.
As a result, we had plenty of wonderful conversations from spending so much time with each other and became great friends as a result. She remains one of my closest friends at UCLA to this day.
I mention Audrey because today, I was chilling outside of Sproul Landing (the building where I currently live) and texting Audrey about enrolling in upper-division econ classes that we had applied to (the classes were taught by Surro, one of the best professors in UCLA’s econ department). She was waiting for a friend on the Hill (dorm complex), so I walked over to where she was and we chilled for about 25 minutes.
We went to the mail room to pick up a package I got, talked, vibed, and talked about Chris (her boyfriend) and Brooke (my girlfriend).
Basically, we hung out.
After I left, I realized that I really enjoyed talking to Audrey but honestly, didn’t really remember what we had discussed.
The point of the conversation was not the conversation itself, but rather the time we spent with each other.
And this brings us to the root idea of this post.
This past week, I got lunch with a mentor (Michael) in Newport Beach, and something he said stuck out to me in particular. This basically sums it up in a nice, tidy sentence:
“Our relationships are always either getting better or getting worse.”
There is no such thing as a relationship that is not getting stronger or weaker. It is always either one or the other.
This was something that I had never considered before, but the longer I thought about it, the more I found it to be true.
Michael told me that relationships always go up and down — there’s no such thing as a perfect relationship that always goes upward. The key is to be able to recognize when a relationship is trending downward and make a conscious effort to quickly slow that decline down, pivot, and regain the upward trajectory.
Consider the following graph, which I sketched in about 35 seconds in my iPad GoodNotes app:
The most interesting thing to see is that relationships will always grow slowly, but can fall both slowly and quickly. Let’s look at a few different relationships you could have, and some situations that could grow or decline them over time.
Slow growth:
Roommate — Being relatively tidy, having nice conversations, and solving any problems that come up in a relatively fast, proactive manner over long periods of time.
Family member — Calling often and making an effort to stay involved in your brother’s life, even when you move to UCLA for college.
Friend — Helping your former roommate and good friend move to another room because he can’t handle living with his male stripper roommate who leaves his makeup all over the room.
Partner — 3D-printing a Rocktopus to remind your girlfriend you’re thinking of her.
Professional Life — Being punctual to all your manager/intern meetings and delivering great work as often as you can.
Slow decline:
Roommate — Being messy and not taking out the trash.
Family member — Not doing your chores or calling infrequently.
Friend — Always being busy when they try to hang out, not being proactive about making time for them.
Partner — Not doing little things to remind them you’re thinking of them.
Professional Life — Doing the bare minimum needed to not get fired.
Fast decline:
Roommate — Stealing their phone when they’re not in the room and selling it on the black market for $150.
Family member — Saying something hurtful in a moment of anger.
Friend — Stealing their girl.
Partner — Cheating.
Professional Life — Violating customer privacy by negligently failing to send emails securely.
In the above graph, the dark green line could represent a healthy relationship (with ups and downs, of course) nurtured over a long period of time. The dark blue could represent you cheating on your partner (thereby plummeting the relationship health), the purple a high school friend with whom you fell off with in college, and the light green a slowly building roommate bond.
And yes, I realize I probably should’ve used different colors for that graph, but it’s too late now!
It’s important to remember that relationships between human beings will always be messy things since we are humans, so it’s to be expected that things won’t always be perfect.
But as they say, “It takes a whole lot of ‘Atta Boys’ to make up for one ‘I’m disappointed.’”
My mom’s favorite quote of all time is, “If it matters to you, you find time. If not, you find an excuse.” This is true in all aspects of life (work, health, academics, learning a language, etc.), but especially with our relationships.
Here’s a personal example.
I did not keep in touch with any of my UCLA friends while I was aboard in Paris, so naturally, those relationships suffered. It took about a month of being back at UCLA before they were back to pre-Paris levels, intentionally building back with long conversations, hangouts, and meals. Now, these friendships are stronger than ever, and becoming stronger over time from conscious intention.
I try to call my parents every day when I can (which honestly should be every day), and call my sister for at least an hour a week to just catch up. She’s been my best friend my entire life, and I plan to keep it that way. She’s busy with work and living it up in SF, and I’m busy doing probably too many things at UCLA.
Yet we still find the time to call each week.
Strong relationships are like a tree that must be constantly nurtured and cared for to grow big and strong. Yes, it can survive periods of drought, but without care and attention, the tree will slowly wither and eventually, die.
Care for the tree, though, and it will bear many fruit as the years go on. With relationships, these fruits are happy times and good memories.
And so it comes back to Audrey.
What I didn’t realize when I was talking to her today was that our conversation was creating a slow growth in our friendship. Slowly but surely, our relationship is trending upward.
It is a reminder to always make an effort to nurture our relationships. After all, if we don’t, then who will? :)
Best,
Dennis