When Changes bring a Lack of Closeness into your Friendship

I have definitely already written a lot about love and friendship, about closeness from the heart and physical closeness as well. I am sure that every time I have written about such topics, I have mentioned that it's more important to be close with the heart than with the body. Unfortunately I have recently noticed once more how important this fact is!

I have a friend with whom I have always been close. We have known each other for a long time and have gone through different stages of life while being friends, sometimes living closer to each other, sometimes spending long periods of time apart from each other as well.

Even while we were not together and didn't only not meet but even not talk with each other on phone for months, we were nevertheless close. There were years during which we only saw each other once in twelve months! Throughout this time I still had the feeling that when we met, we were connected and that closely.

Now however the situation is different. There have been a lot of changes in me and in life and now we are actually living close to each other, see each other twice a month but unfortunately I don't feel this closeness anymore.

I mentioned a lot of changes and of course one of these changes is a change in feelings. The topics that are important to me are those in which we have very different opinions. So different that we cannot agree at all and so we skip them. For a while, this seemed to work just fine.

Over the course of time however, one notices how a difference in the basic attitude and view on life influences every other topic you talk about. And finally, the meetings and talks seem to remain nothing else but a ritual.

A ritual which I will keep up for the sake of an old friendship.

I believe in expressing my emotions and I did not shy back from expressing this lack of closeness to my friend. His answer just showed me that I was right with my feeling: He said no, everything is fine, we both have changed, so it is normal and alright.

This means it doesn’t matter to him that this closeness is gone – or that I feel this way. This in itself proves that there is no closeness. And it does matter – but that feeling, too, will pass.