This blog post comes about 4 days too late as a result of my senior-like memory and child-like responsibility levels, however this time I want to discuss something that most of us have probably expereinced at least once in our lives - a fading friendship.
Imagine you're really good friends with this guy John, you met him in middle school, say in 5th grade, and you've been friends ever since. You've sat next to each other for the past 7 years, John even transferred to the same high school as you and you intentionally picked out classes so you'd see each other more often in school. Your friendship has gone through all possible phases of what can be considered a friendly relationship and you're virtually brothers at this point. Anyway, senior year of high school comes and both of you are excited that school is finally over and you can move on to be adults from now on. It all sounds great until you realize that you and John are going to two different universities a few states away. You don't really talk about it because Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and all other kinds of social media exist, and you can easily keep up your friendship and even visit each other.
Well, it's not as easy. Most friendships are based on a deep emotional connection with a perosn, and that connection is built on a fundamental need to share common interests, activities and constant engagement between two people. We live in a digital society that is a fingers tap away from communicating with anyone, even thousands of miles away in an instant. So how come friendships, and even relationships fail under the distance?
When we are separated by distance for extended periods of time, we lose the "fundamental connections" that we build with our friends. For example, your imaginary friend John no longer sits next to you in class, you no longer go out on weekends, therefore you lose meaningful topics to share. If there's no connection made beyond the day to day and direct physical contact, then friendships start fading quickly over long distance. In the beginning, they might even reach peak, however in most cases it is just the two people trying to save their friendship while realizing that day to day they are losing interest in conversating with each other.