It’s inevitable after college that the people you spent most of your time with likely scatter across the country and you will realistically only get together a handful of times in the years that follow. High school friends are an extra layer of scatter away having already gone to different schools for college. Maintaining long distance friendships ends up down the priority list when you add in a daily grind of work, kids, and life in general.

Interests, Proximity, Availability

The majority of friends typically have some overlapping interests with you. Although sometimes it can be a limited overlap, shared interests seem to be a requirement for a friendship designation. Proximity can establish a nice base for a friendship, but without shared interests you are probably just friendly acquaintances.

Availability is kind of like the water to make the friendship seed grow. If you don’t have availability to get together or even chat, the friendship can’t grow leaving it stuck as a seedling or wilting over time depending on your progress.

Old friends that have long been established don’t require as much maintenance to maintain the basic friendship flower. They can be more resilient to neglect and can blossom instantly when you do get back together.

I’m attempting to get better about sending random messages to check in with friends. I should probably designate a day of the week for outreach. Does Tuesday work for me? Sure. Tuesday it is. Feel free to reach out to me if you’re bored even if we haven’t talked in the last decade or ever.

Speaking of reaching out. I often contemplate reaching out to people on social media who I think would be a good friend fit for us. Why? I can see their interests and they align with mine.

Do we actually need more friends? Most people can only hang out in the same time windows, so then they would just overlap and crowd each other out.

If you need to turn it all into a catchy podcast line, the IPAs (Interests, Proximity, Availability) are important in friendship.

Friends Like These, huh Gary?

I may be missing an important element that isn’t included in the IPA. Sense of humor. Most of my communication occurs in the form of jokes or quoting movie lines from old comedies. We may never truly be able to communicate effectively if you do not have a firm familiarity with at least one of the following movies: Tommy Boy, Mallrats, The Big Lebowski, Dumb and Dumber, Fletch or Young Guns 1 or 2.