I knew my High School Best Friend was right. That was the embarrassing part.
When he told me I’d stopped calling, and that I had ‘sold out’ my high school friends, I didn’t need time to think about it. Even though I was having a crazy rocket ride career-wise, I knew I was ignoring my friends. So, I reached out, we started talking again, and we made dinner plans. Then an invitation to Sinatra’s birthday came along for the same night, and I canceled on my friend.
I understood the problem perfectly. My next decision was still the same.
That’s easy to miss when you’re trying to repair a friendship. You feel bad. You have the conversation. You make a plan. There’s some relief in that, and you can mistake the relief for having fixed something.
But the other person still has to find out whether you’re going to show up.
I think I was counting on our history to do work I wasn’t doing anymore. We’d been close since high school. His mother had been like a second mother to me. Surely a friendship like that could survive one more change of plans.
Except he wasn’t living through one change of plans. He was living through the whole pattern. I was judging my latest excuse. He had all the earlier ones to consider.
And this was a hell of an excuse. Sinatra. I went. Don Rickles insulted my hair, and it made my month. I’m not going to pretend the party was disappointing just to make the lesson easier.
The Sinatra thing was a great night. I still wish I’d kept the dinner.
The dinner has to be allowed to win
There will always be something you can make a case for. A work thing. An invitation you’re afraid you won’t get again. You don’t need my job, or Sinatra, to keep moving the same people to next week.
And sometimes you really do have to cancel. People understand that. But if a friendship matters, there have to be occasions when you turn down the other thing. Even when it’s good. Even when keeping your word costs you something you wanted.
Otherwise, what have you actually promised?
The people who knew you before your career took off remember a version of you that your new world may never see. You can make wonderful friends at work. I did. But being welcomed into a room doesn’t take care of the people you’ve stopped calling.
If somebody has already told you they miss you, take that seriously. Look at the last few plans you made with them. How many did you keep? How many became “soon”?
Pick one you can keep. Make it specific. And before the next invitation arrives, decide that this time the dinner stays on the calendar.
You can’t require somebody to feel close to you again because you’ve finally made an effort. I didn’t get those relationships back the way they were. But you can stop asking them to trust an intention and give them an evening you actually show up for.
I knew he was right. What I needed to learn was how to let that change my next decision.