Low-maintenance Relationships Cannot Be Great

What strikes me about this one is that we often have a hard time answering it. It normally takes me a few minutes to come up with something and I know it shouldn’t. Here’s a recent one:

Low-maintenance relationships cannot be great. At least not as great as they could be.

I don’t live in the same city as many of my closest friends and family. Not surprisingly, we stay months without seeing each other. But every time we've met and spent time together over the years, it felt like we were together the day before and that the physical distance had not even begun to scratch the strength of our relationship. It truly felt that way. It often still does. And I sensed that true friendships, the type we have a handful or two of, are the ones that feel exactly like that after some time apart.

I've changed my mind. Here's how.

I’ve realized that the richness of relationships is more about the area under the curve than about the number of peak experiences together. Peak experiences are great, don't get me wrong. They are fun and yield long-lasting stories that we’ll tell our grandchildren. But, depth and intimacy are built through consistent exchanges. And depth and intimacy is what brew rich relationships. Sure, one can still keep only the peak experiences and enjoy them, but it would leave on the table much of what a close relationship can offer.

When I meet folks in my inner circle, it's usually for a celebration - we're having a birthday party, a barbecue weekend, or more recently, meeting each other's babies. It's a lot of fun, we laugh and remember stories, talk about (some) plans, tease questionable haircuts, and eat good food. But it's not uncommon to leave these peak joyful encounters thinking that I don't know what's truly going on with them. What are they concerned about? How's their relationship with their partners? How are they "managing" their elderly parents? What are their secret crazy bold aspirations, projects, and dreams? These are the people I'm supposed to call when the shittiest shit hit the fan in my life - shouldn't I know these things?

Another realization is that some conversations only emerge if you spend enough time together. Tricky, difficult topics, especially the ones that make you vulnerable, can't be scheduled. They find their space after we clear out the more trivial stuff. We assume that when we meet an acquaintance, we'll do some chit-chat before jumping to something more serious, which usually doesn't even happen. Why would we expect something different from our best friends if they are not aware of the trivial stuff happening to us? And you know they aren't aware because you're not the kind who calls just to ask how things are doing. It's “just not how you operate".

Relationships respond to consistency. When we meet and it feels the same, we assume it's the same. But time without interaction chips off at the relationship, little by little. There's a lag between cause and effect here and you'll only realize it after many years. Suddenly, you meet and you're not close anymore. It feels... weirdly empty. Just like when you go to college reunions and meet what used to be great colleagues or even good friends. You drink a few glasses, talk about trivialities, and forget them until the next reunion. There's affection, but that's all there is. Building and maintaining intimacy is a slow-burn activity. Bits of mundane consistent exposure trump megabytes of exciting ad-hoc exposure.

Now the sourest gummy bear to swallow. Meaning comes from commitment. It comes from choosing something and sticking to it (and automatically foregoing other options). The notion that building great relationships should be "organic" (read effortless) is not a good assumption. If you're not spending time in any shape or form with someone in a long enough time frame, it's inevitably because other things or other people are more important. Yes, urgent things and physical distance get in the way, all the time. But still, we should figure out ways to create the environment for these relationships to flourish. If not for the handful of people that we *say* are the most important to us, then for whom?