Friends who you forget are friends

We all have them. Friends that we forget about, then you reconnect and it's like "Oh yah, we were friends."

I've got a ton of these types of friends. In almost all cases, we were good, close friends in our twenties. Most of them got married and started having kids, and slowly the relationships fell off. They had new lives. I still had my fabulous single life. 

I missed most of these friends and I would, occasionally, make an effort to plan a dinner or a get together with them. This almost always failed because they were "busy" with kid stuff. After three cancellations or three attempts to connect, I would stop. Then I'd just forget about them. Not on purpose, but because they aren't part of my "regular" life. 

Then suddenly, one day, one of them reaches out. Suddenly you remember, "Oh ya, we were friends." 

I'm not hurt, usually, that they go dormant. I don't take it personally, well, at least these days I don't. I used to and had to do a lot of internal work to realize, it isn't me...it IS them. 

Today I was contacted by a friend I haven't connected with in a very long time. He's not one of those that got married and moved on, but rather our life circumstances moved us in different directions. He reached out last week and asked if we could hop on a call. Literally scheduling a call with me because, "he knows I'm busy." 

My first reaction was, "eww...a phone call." Then my second reaction was how great it would be to chat with him and get caught up. Neither of us could remember how long it had been, we speculated that it had been early 2022. 

What's great about these types of connections is, regardless of how much time passes, you pick up where you left off and have a great conversation. 

We chatted for an hour about life, sudden life changes, new years plans/resolutions, intent on making our lives better, and being kind to ourselves when we fail. It was a really good conversation and I'm so very glad we had it. 

Thing is, it doesn't make me want to reach out to any other missing friends. You'd think it would, but it doesn't. I realized long ago that I just wasn't as important to some of these folks for them to even make the slightest effort. And that's ok. 

What's my point? It's okay to forget friends. It's ok to reconnect. And it's ok to not reconnect. Don't put all that pressure on yourself to feel "obligated" just because it seems like the social norm. Do it. Don't do it.