we're just not all that interested in saving our closest relationships

I was perusing my lady friend Danielle's blog today and came across this little gem in her post about jealousy. Enthralled, I decided to click the link and start reading the article. Like the average digital media comsumer, I began to bore and start skimming the article after line 5, until I was stopped in my tracks by this:

we're just not all that interested in saving our closest relationships

Ugh. Fuck. Thanks, internet, for calling me out again. I like to blame my poor friendship skills on a busy career, busy social life, or development of hobbies that primarily require solitude. But the plain fact of the matter is, I'm forgetful, lazy, or a dreadful mixture of both. I don't text, email, write, Facebook post, etc. as often as I should (read: ever).

And while I still love and cherish all of my friendships, I do not make the proper investment of time and effort into them, and often they fall by the wayside. There are a sacred few who make it through my strainer of apathy:

1.) The Similarly Apathetic: This is the friend who doesn't have the time, effort or mental capacity to pick up the phone either. She feels my pain, and doesn't take my lack of communication personally. A gem.

2.) The Over Communicator: This is the friend who doesn't allow me to be lazy about my outbound communication, simply because she doesn't give me the opportunity to be lazy about it. She will call several times in the course of a week, never daunted by the lack of a return call. In the repeated absence of a return phone call, she will text something shocking about her personal life that will warrant a phone call within the next 12 hours. Eventually, even someone as awful at the phone as I will pick up the phone and grudingly punch in numbers and hit "send." This is the kind of person I need all my friends to be. Unfortunately, only my very best friends will send me "I just had the hottest sex" via text message on a regular basis.

3.) The Social Networker: This is the friend who doesn’t communicate one-on-one with me per se, but one-on-hundreds with the world. I am always aware of her comings and goings and innermost thoughts because she blogs, posts, tweets, broadcasts the fuck out of them on a regular basis. I get to be an amused bystander and comment or "like" at will, without necessarily needing to make the mental and emotional investment of a phone call. This works very nicely for me over here in my (lazy) corner of the world. I want her news to come to me, I can't be bothered to go find it.

But the problem with this is many of these relationships are one-sided. I'm not involved in them deeply enough to even classify them as relationships. They are agreeable ignorings, guilt-induced replies, or casual observations. In none of the above scenarios am I invested enough to make certain I am making an effort. And so it seems that I am just not all that interested in saving my closest relationships. The ones I have now are by no means my longest-lasting or deepest connections, but they're convenient. And so I revel in my day-to-day, without much of a glance backward (except for this overly verbose blog post).

I wish I could say I'll promise to change, but that's just too much of a commitment to make.