Long-Distance Friends

Maintaining long-distance friendships is difficult.

• Different people have different preferred channels. Some people hate email. Others dislike talking on the phone.

• Feedback is ambiguous. If you send someone an email and they don’t respond, is it because they are annoyed, or did they enjoy receiving the email but were too busy to respond?

• Desired cadence can be uncertain. Do they enjoy receiving 10 texts a day, or would they prefer an email every six months?

• Content type and length are also ambiguous. Somehow, some people enjoy talking about politics. I don’t. I might prefer a medium email. But maybe they’d prefer a gif. A discord voice hang. A text. A gaming session.

• Sometimes people just need a break. I’m taking a break from a friendship right now. They didn’t do anything wrong. I feel bad about it. And at some point I’ll resume reaching out.

How much of this is solvable by the tools we use to communicate? How much of it is just something we need to ask each other about? And if we do, how do we do that in a way that doesn’t sound desperate?

“I sent you an email last week and you didn’t reply. Please select from this list of options on why you failed to respond in a timely manner.”

Hmm...