Happy Summer, friends!
As threatened, I’m continuing my occasional series on adult friendships.
I forget where I heard these three essential friendship elements: frequency, proximity, and vulnerability. But I’ve been referring to them for a long time, and they still ring true. Though I’m not perfect at it, I’m pretty good at the vulnerability part. In fact, I painted “Shallow” on a little canvas and put it up near my desk as permission to not go deep with everyone all the time! Maybe your little canvas would say “Deep,” and that’s okay too. We’re all different places along that spectrum.
Strangely, in 2025, I think frequency and proximity are harder to practice than vulnerability. Especially for generations Alpha, Z, and Millennial, there’s been a lot of permission to be vulnerable, freely talking about things like anxiety, depression, neurodivergence, sexuality, and many other identity or life situation markers. I’m glad for that and hope these trends continue.
BUT I’m not interested in vulnerability without frequency and some sort of proximity.
I always joke that the bane of modern life is something like, “I really miss you! Let’s try to get together for coffee in the next 8-10 weeks.” When I think about my closest friends, our trust and connection was built because there was a time, somewhere along the way, when frequency was possible. We made a lot of deposits into our joint bank account, and that means we can make a lot of withdrawals even years later. This is another reason I like to travel with friends. 3 or 4 days equals a year or two of lunches or walks and gets us back to a balanced ledger with each other.
And what about this proximity thing? It’s true that we can’t live next to all of our friends, but I find it untenable to not live near at least some of them. Or to use a phone call to simulate proximity. (Even better than a Zoom call, in my experience.) And if you have the good fortune, as I do, of neighbors being friends?! It’s the best. And we have intended this. Now, thinking about being empty nesters, we have decided to stay in this house because it would take us years to replicate the connections we have with neighbors here. So, we’re making a trade, choosing community over a house or setting that we might like better.
Proximity also ensures that those in our friendship circle might be different than us. We aren’t spending time together because all our interests, political views, and life situations align exactly. We are with each other because of convenience, and I think this ends up being powerful. And it turns out it might be better for things like disaster preparedness and climate resilience, too.
What about you? What do you think of these three elements? What would you add or describe differently? I hope you get some summertime connection, wherever you are.