Issue #11: The Ebbs and Flows of Friendships
It was a surprisingly tepid December afternoon. The sun peeked shyly behind grey clouds. Farouq, myself, and one of our mutual friends were in Peckham to eat àmàlà at one of the popular Nigerian restaurants there. Farouq and I hadn’t seen each other nor had we spoken a lot in many months, so after our meal, we talked, with toothpicks in our mouths, about everything. However, our conversation was cut short when Farouq realised it was prayer time. Luckily, we found a mosque nearby. When we stepped in, I noticed how supersoft the carpet was, so when Farouq went to perform his ablution and say his prayers, I lay on the rug and stared at the white ceiling. My thoughts wandered, and it finally settled on how nice it was to see Farouq again and why we had fallen out months before.
I met Farouq on Twitter around 2015. I had just started my Master’s in Data Science at Lancaster University when I connected with him. He shared tips and resources and was very helpful during an arduous year when I was battling Statistics and Mathematics assignments. Over the years, someone who started as a stranger on Twitter became a good friend. Farouq doesn’t talk a lot and rarely shares his affection through words, but he constantly does things for his friends to show he deeply cares. I know he cares about me, but then we fell out over something silly (mostly my fault) and didn’t speak for months. We were in Peckham that day because he had reached out to me, told me he was visiting London and offered to meet and talk if I was keen. That was an olive branch, and I clung to it. I was ashamed that I didn’t reach out to him first, but I was happy nonetheless, happy for the opportunity to reconnect with my friend. That was what occupied my thoughts as I lay on that carpet until a face with a shiny head interrupted my view of the white ceiling. It was Farouq’s face. I sat up, he was crouched in front of me, and then he asked, “How are you feeling, really?”. He said that with so much softness that it melted my heart. He doesn’t speak much, so those words meant a lot to me. That singular moment made me regret the months we had been estranged, but on the other hand, it made me realise how much I value our friendship.
Since that day, I’ve spent considerable time thinking about friendships and how they often wax and wane. I have lived in 4 cities and schooled in 3 universities and have met many amazing people along the way. Some of them have become super close friends, and some that were close friends have become distant friends. I used to agonise about the friendships that have waned, but I now realise that it is inevitable. It is the nature of friendships to ebb and flow. Because of the number of people we meet on the journey of our lives, it is impossible to maintain a close relationship with everyone. Our capacity to maintain multiple close friendships is limited.
Anthropologists have attempted to quantify this limit - the maximum number of meaningful friends that humans can maintain at a time. The most popular is Dunbar’s number. Proposed by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, the idea is that humans can only keep stable social relationships with 150 people. I am not concerned with the validity of that number in this article. What interests me is the idea that our friends are situated within concentric friendship circles with us at the centre.
The innermost layer is the most intimate, which has to do with romantic relationships. The next layer is our close friends circle. Those are the friends we call on when the chips are down. They are our support group. The radii of these circles get bigger as we go outwards, and the strength of our relationships with people in those circles gets weaker. Again, I am not interested in the validity of the numbers in each of those circles proposed by Dunbar. I am only interested in talking about why the friends in our lives move between these circles. I have people who have moved out of my inner circles and into the outer circles. Some even fall out entirely of my reachable radius, and our friendships never recover. I have come to accept that as part of life. For people like myself who have emigrated from our home countries, it is natural that some of the people who were close friends have moved into the good friends circle. You still have the occasional FaceTime calls, but distance sometimes is hard to bridge with technology. It is even harder when you live in different time zones. The less you speak with them, the weaker your relationship gets.
There are also close friends I’ve had silly squabbles with. We stayed away out of anger, and then one day became one week, one week became one year without talking. You wake up one day and realise that you’ve lost a close friend.
People’s priorities in life also change. Some of your friends get married. They start giving birth, and their focus entirely changes. They get a mortgage and begin to have serious life challenges. They don’t have as much time for your friendship as they did before. Things slow down, and the relationships wane. That’s life. I struggled to accept this in the past, but I now understand that it is what it is. People will move in and out.
To my friends that the tides of life have washed us far apart, I hope that the tides will one day wash us close together again. To the friends I have fallen out with, I always leave the door open for you. I will never shut the door of friendship. I will forever cherish every moment I spent with you and the memories we made together.
To my friends Rosebud, Abimbola, and Didun. You were the main pillars during a tumultuous period in my life. When COVID-19 ravaged the world and lockdowns were being announced worldwide, you were there for me. We laughed, shared moments, and when I was really sick and thought I wouldn’t make it, your love and prayers kept me going. Our group bond may have waned, but I know we will find our way back ❤️