How do you manage to lose touch with friends? Did you not miss them?
If you did, why didn't you contact them?
If you didn't, why do you care?
One can not forget about friends, one can only stop caring.
If you did, why didn't you contact them?
If you didn't, why do you care?
One can not forget about friends, one can only stop caring.
Also all my family is overseas.
As a kid I would try so hard to stay in touch and it never worked. The harder I tried the more it hurt for those attempts to fail.
But I'd see family once a year or so and we'd catch up and it was always wonderful.
I think about people all the time, but it doesn't trigger my reaching out.
It's like a really deeply ingrained learned helplessness or generalized relational despair.
Some people for a variety of reasons, some cognitive, some environmental, don't have their internal desires intrinsically tied to the psychological pressure to take action.
Due to surgeries and anesthesia I also developed aphantasia, so anything short of in person interactions feels quite hollow.
Be glad your experience in life is healthy and normative, for some of us it takes effort.
I'm sure most have the best of intentions that they will reach out to friends and keep in touch, but the best laid plans of mice and men...I don't see why having a system to do this so bad?
You seem to use forgetting in a sense that is akin to erasing a person from your past, as if they never existed. That’s very drastic. People do forget to reach out not necessarily because they don’t care but because things slip their mind. Life happens. Stress happens. The proximity isn’t that close anymore. And so on. Isn’t setting up a system like this not a good effort on their part? An example of them caring enough to make sure their relationship stays alive? “Don’t be a stranger” sometimes takes a bit of work. So why not use tools that can help with that?
- Did you not miss them? 'Missing' someone is an interesting way of thinking about it. When should you 'start' missing someone? I find that often I miss people intensely soon after we meet. This can be difficult, because it may not be possible or practical to meet or communicate with someone immediately, but then that 'missing' starts to wane. By the time it starts to become stronger again, a significant period of time might have passed.
- If you did, why didn't you contact them? Missing someone is fairly subjective as mentioned above, but for me, contact alone is not enough to stop me missing someone. Meeting in person is. If I contact someone, it does not stop me missing them we are unable to meet in person, and in fact in some cases, makes me miss them more. Many of my friends don't live in the same city (or even the same country) as me.
- If you didn't, why do you care? Because friendships take work, like any other type of human relationship. Someone who currently is an 'acquaintance', who I wouldn't really be too upset about not seeing frequently could develop into a friend.
> 'One can not forget about friends, one can only stop caring.' - I think here you're using a very literal definition of forgetting. I think most people don't actually forget about friends, they just use the word forget as a shorthand for 'not actively thinking about all the time'.
I'm just saying I could make MORE effort, and I don't see a prompt to do so as being harmful.
Well yes you can not miss your friend for long period of time because they are far away and a large enough social circle keeps you so busy locally that your mind do not get the opportunity to feel it.
Anyone who has been living in different areas/countries lost track to some real friends. There is always a moment when you feel you might want to reach out to them again but sometimes it is too late.