As the end of the year approaches, along with an overseas trip, I’m going through a phase I like to think of as ‘friend management’. In my professional life, the calendar is filling fast with work catchups.
Christmas with extended family awaits in London, around platefuls of roast turkey and baked ham.
This leaves just a narrow window of opportunity to check back in with friends: that unique and precious group of people we’ve chosen to share our time on the planet with. Not because we’re forced by genealogy or the fact we share a physical office space.
No, when you are in your 40s, genuine friendships have to exist for a reason that transcends circumstance.
There must be a genuine connection, a meeting of the minds, interests in common, an ability to laugh and be honest with each other. The relationship must work, more or less equally, for both sides.
Most of all, I have learned the need for suppleness, forgiveness and a willingness to simply keep going – both when our friends disappoint us or we let them down through our own inevitable self-absorption.
This year, scanning the state of my friendships, it is alarming to feel that I have been anything other than a bad friend.
Possibly, for quite a while. Struggles with aging parents are a growing theme. In one case, the father of a good mate of mine had a stroke earlier in the year. This bloke used to talk the leg off a chair. Some time ago, I remember him cracking bawdy jokes through a buck’s event that began on a golf course and ended in a club.
Now in his late 70s, the requirement to find satisfactory professional care for him outside the home has stressed the entire family. I feel I’ve not been there for them – checking in only very occasionally by text.
Another old friend separated from her husband. But only recently did she feel able to disclose what was an intensely sad and difficult situation, with kids caught in the crossfire.
Meanwhile, someone else has abruptly announced that she and her partner are chucking in Sydney and relocating to another part of Australia. They must have gone through a complex process of soul-searching. If so, I was unaware of it.
Most jarring of all was the friend, aged 40, suddenly diagnosed with a potentially life-threatening condition.
We normally make aborted attempts to ring each other, with missed calls unreturned for weeks or months. It’s just never a good time to go through the work of maintaining a friendship when you’re living in different states.
This time, she told me about her situation over text. Shocked, I dropped what I was doing and voice breaking, rang back straight away.
The rhythm of friendship changes as we age, requiring a sense of realism and long-term perspective that keeps expectations in check. Back at school, we saw friends every day. At university, contact might have been intermittent when sharing a class. Commencing our working lives, new circles and relationships competed for our attention. Some old friends faded away.
New ones took their place.
As bereavements, major surgeries, relationship breakdowns, professional burnouts, aborted PhDs and struggles with IVF have come and gone, there is no set playbook for how to maintain contact. Some people choose to deal with setbacks and tragedies privately. Others retreat to a trusted friendship core, or take refuge in family.
It’s impossible to be there as much as you’d like. Sometimes, all you can do is keep an outstretched hand and be there when they are ready to re-engage.
In the next fortnight, I’m trying to make up for lost time by arranging coffee or lunch with those I need to see. I’ll go for a gym session or run along the beach with my mate who’s caring for his aging Dad. And I’m flying across the country to see my friend who is unwell but hopefully soon on the mend.
True friendships replenish our spirit and nourish our soul.
Sometimes all it takes is a simple hug and a chat, or a shared activity that reconnects us both with why we became friends in the first place.
Other times, it’s a simple check-in on WhatsApp. You do what you can.
That’s been my experience. My resolution for the next year is to be there more for my friends as well.
Alan Mascarenhas
Alan is a journalist and communications specialist. He writes a weekly column for Parra News.