“When you hang out with your friends, can you actually call it a friendship? You say to someone ‘let’s catch up’ and every six months you go to dinner or something. You ask the same questions- ‘How are you?’, ‘How’s work?’, ‘Still in a relationship?’, ‘Still hitting the gym?’. The evening ends with ‘Yeah we should do this again, let’s not make it six months next time.’ Rinse and repeat. Are you actually their friend or just hearing about each other’s lives without any memories being built between the two of you?”
A few weeks ago, I received this message on the WhatsApp group chat I have with a few friends from university. He was reflecting on the nature of his own friendships becoming what he called “catch up friendships”.
Coincidentally, this was something I had also been thinking a lot about. After graduating university, I noticed that everybody’s lives started to look very different from each other’s. Gone are the days where you could all share the reality of being a student. Now one of you is working hard on a startup. Another is settling down with their partner. Someone is travelling the world. Someone else is continuing to study. You get the idea.
With everyone doing such different things, you naturally see each other a lot less. Once upon a time, you saw each other every day. Now you have the joy of performing calendar gymnastics, trying to find that one evening in three months time where you are all free to meet for dinner. In my eyes, this transition is what has led to the emergence of “catch up culture” amongst adults. Friendships become less about making memories with each other and more about keeping up to date with each other’s lives.
This was something that unsettled me for a while. I was feeling increasingly distant from my friends that I, once, felt so close to. The worst part of it was that it felt seemingly inevitable; something to get used to and live with as I grew as an adult.
The message from my friend made me and the rest of us think. Do we just have to get used to our friendships being “catch up friendships”? Are they inherently bad and something to change? What even is “more” than a catch up friendship and how can we make more space for that in our (already busy) lives? We all gave our thoughts. What follows is a summary of the discussion that we had.
Is a catch-up friendship a bad thing?
On the surface, a friendship that lives through once-every-six-month catch ups can feel “less than”. Less important. Less valuable. Less meaningful. This feeling is particularly common if you once felt a strong bond with that person; a bond created through spending a lot of time together, experiencing memorable moments together and each learning more about the other person.
Despite getting upset from this feeling myself, I realised that a new or existing friendship being in “catch up mode” does not devalue it. Part of growing up is accepting that it is impossible to go beyond the surface with everyone you know. In some cases, other people are just busy with their own stuff and can only make time for that once-every-six-month catch up. The same probably applies to you. It certainly applies to me. And that’s OK.
But does being in “catch up mode” with your close friends make growing apart inevitable? In my experience, not necessarily. Building a bond with a friend can also build the trust that that bond is present even if you see each other less often. This is by no means an absolute truth; people change (including you), situations change and the foundations that a friendship was once built on may no longer apply as time passes. However, the friendships that last are the ones where this trust remains as you both continue to grow as individuals.
What if I want to do more than just catch up with my friends?
I want to be updated on what is going on in my friends’ lives. That is certainly important to me. However, sometimes I want to hear less about their life and instead do something to be a part of their life. Here are two things that I am trying to do in my life to help with this.
Friendship rituals
A friendship ritual is quite simple- something that you do with a friend/a group of friends on a regular basis and is planned beforehand. Planning ahead of time means that other events in your life fit around it rather than the other way around. Examples are:
Wednesday Waffle: Every Wednesday, everyone in the group sends a voice note of what is going on in their life. This simple message once a week keeps everyone in the loop and updated. When you do meet up (which may not be often), often the “catch up” portion of the conversation is shortened because you are all already quite caught up.
Holidays with friends: The truth is that you can only catch up with someone for so long. Spending an extended period of time with friends creates room for everyone to be an active member of each other’s lives instead of merely hearing about their lives. With this dynamic, memories are bound to be made and bonds strengthen. Note: I have found that the quality time spent with the group matters more than the holiday’s destination or itinerary.
Being intentional (and sometimes intentionally unintentional)
The easiest way to catch up with someone is over dinner after work, especially those who work in the city (after all, you both need to eat at some point!). While there is nothing wrong with a good dinner with a friend, consider if you could spend that evening doing something else. Do an activity you both enjoy or used to enjoy. Try something new. Do something that one of you is experienced in and the other is not. Whatever you choose, make it about experiencing something together rather than simply engaging in life updates.
Counterintuitively, doing the opposite can also open the opportunity for meaningful interactions. I meet up with two really good friends roughly once a month and we go on a walk in the local area. No activity, no plan, nothing material for us to focus on. Instead, we let time pass and we fill it as we see fit (while getting in some steps). I always enjoy our walks because the conversation quickly moves away from being about any of our lives and moves towards random things we are thinking about. The discussions always end up being interesting and thought-provoking (at least to us). Personally, knowing I can have these kinds of conversations with them is what makes me feel close to them. But one of the reasons I know this is because there is rarely any pressure to use the time we spend together “well”. In short- sometimes being deliberately unplanned is what ends up creating the memories I hold onto the most.
In the end, maybe the question isn’t whether “catch up friendships” are good or bad, but whether we are willing to be intentional about the kind of friendships we want to have. Life does get busier. People do drift into different paths. And yes, sometimes a dinner every six months is all that fits. But within that reality, there is still room to choose; choose to create rituals, choose to share experiences, choose to show up in ways that go beyond simply exchanging updates. Because at some point, what we will remember will not be the updates. It will be the moments. And the moments only come if we actively make space for them.