Well... “Friends are only ever there for a season.” I may have encountered this line long ago, but back then, I refused to accept it. “Refused to accept” isn’t quite right; it was more that I couldn’t fully admit it was true. I used to believe that lifelong friends really did exist—or that, at the very least, one or two people would stay with you for life. Even if something like that was rare, surely it had to exist.

Outsider?

But over the past year or two I'd already half-sensed this drift, and I kept dodging the subject. Then one night a while back, scrolling through Twitter until I was down in the dumps, I saw people I once knew, Twitter buddies snuggling up and hugging, saying good morning and good night, even replying to each other — and only then did I realise: maybe I'm the one who's surplus... That whole circle is still there. It's only my own circle of friends that stopped being the one it used to be, and I think maybe I'm the「outsider」.

I haven’t been able to get this subject out of my mind all week. After thinking about it for a long time, I have to say that I’m now forced to admit friendships really do come in phases—sometimes even in cycles, or are “event-driven.”

Event-based

Before going abroad, I socialized mainly on QQ, through group chats in all kinds of circles and with a few friends I’d met along the way. Looking back, the way relationships came in phases had already begun back then; I just didn’t think of them as phases at the time. I thought that was simply life itself.

The ways I meet people are actually pretty limited. It usually starts with something that suddenly comes up in a group chat, or with some kind of “relationship.” A relationship sounds like something meant to last, but honestly, many of mine were sparked by circumstances beyond my control: being coworkers or classmates, or even just being interested in the same thing or happening to be doing the same kind of work. At first, we often add each other because we have to, then leave the connection sitting there. If the other person never reaches out, chances are we will never exchange another message for the rest of our lives; but if they suddenly contact me one day because something has happened, we will most likely enter this phase.

There was actually another thread running through 2024 and 2025: on Twitter, the idea of a “contact” is different from the traditional QQ kind. In theory, even without following each other, you can still become friends in some sense, as long as you interact and reply to each other. The people I knew on Twitter during those two years probably just became familiar faces as I kept scrolling. For me, that period was probably when I was gaining followers—or expanding my social circle, I guess? But the Twitter account I use now is itself a replacement account. I think I first tweeted in 2021, but for reasons that are rather difficult to talk about, my old account is as good as dead...

Honeymoon Phase

"Phases" are probably best compared to a romance: there is a novelty period, and there is a passionate period. It works the same way between friends. In the first few days after meeting, you talk eagerly, even digging up your embarrassing past; then it settles into a stable phase of exchange around some long-running thing. It could be working together, being classmates in the same class at school, a shared interest between people who met online, or someone coming to you about a particular problem that cannot be solved quickly. It is as if two lines that were never going to meet suddenly twisted together, and just like that, those people appeared in your life.

Growing Distant

As for how exactly it goes cold? It is never a single moment. What is far more likely is that one contact drifts away from you bit by bit: messages get fewer and fewer, with no real substance left in them, until they turn into something like keeping the streak alive? And in the end it degrades into being ignored entirely. Like a frog in slowly heating water, the warmth drains away, and they vanish from your life. The contact may never be deleted, but that makes no real difference from their having vanished from your world. And if something does bring them back to you afterwards, they will put on an act completely unlike before — no longer the easy favour between people who know each other, but something across an invisible distance...

The same thing happens on Twitter: your interactions gradually dwindle until they slowly disappear from your timeline. Sometimes you browse your following list and open their profiles, only to find that they are still doing the same kinds of things and sharing the same life, yet somehow no longer seem connected to you. Sometimes, even if you still follow each other, one of you will simply mute the other. You used to be close, but now they never appear around you; held back by your shared history and the awkwardness of severing that tie, they will not unfollow you, but instead give you the coldest, most intangible kind of silence...

I Do It Too

But honestly, I'm no different. The first time I noticed someone doing this to me, I did stop and ask myself whether I had ever behaved the same way toward others, and looking back now, I have. Thinking about it feels a little cruel, but as the saying goes, "time reveals a person's heart." Not everyone I happen to meet is someone I click with, and not everyone's behaviour leaves me comfortable. For the people I haven't quite figured out yet, politeness does keep me from unfollowing them outright, but if someone really crosses the line, I Block without hesitating. Maybe sometimes a mute — one-directional, silent, and still letting @mention messages through — is the best option available. Maybe you often can't feel it when you make someone uncomfortable, or maybe that just is the truest version of you: you see nothing wrong with what you do, while other people are unimpressed. Maybe the moment someone feels uncomfortable is the moment I get Muted? (Though if most people don't Mute you, chances are they're just too thin-skinned — or maybe it's the other way round.)

Cycles

So why call these friendships cyclical? As I said earlier, friendship is a form of interaction that connects someone to you during a particular stage of life. A stage usually spans a specific period of time, with a beginning and an end. You often do not realize it, but it is closely tied to some event in your life. Before you even notice, the cycle may have naturally run its course; then you enter a new stage, experience new events, and meet new people. As your timeline begins to shift along with you, the cyclical nature of friendship naturally reveals itself.

Cyclical friends aren’t the same person returning at regular intervals. It means that your closest friend and strongest relationships may gradually change over time, usually without you noticing. By the time you do notice, it is often because you have already lost them.

Someone Else’s Friend

Especially on Twitter, I sometimes find myself lamenting that my friend has become someone else’s. But when I think about it carefully, this is perfectly normal. No two timelines in the world are identical to begin with, and the fact that yours and mine were fortunate enough to cross is already a stroke of luck. It is like joining a circle and meeting people there: those people can also get to know one another. In traditional group chats, you would never see this happening because those interactions take place in private messages; Twitter, unfortunately, has broken down that barrier. Among everyone’s public posts, you can usually observe this behavior with ease. When the relationships others have with you begin to shift in recurring cycles, the phenomenon becomes readily visible.

People are emotional creatures, and wanting to claim a friend as your own is usually the most normal thing in the world; it doesn't mean you actually want to own them, to control what they do or think, only that you care about them, that the two of you are close friend. But as I said, your friend is a person too, with a life of their own, a timeline of their own, so becoming mutual friend with someone else is entirely normal. If anything is to blame, blame Twitter for tearing through the paper over the window, for forcing you to watch it happen. And maybe that isn't a bad thing. Letting you see the process hurts, but doesn't it also give you more chances to meet people? Drop the old private-message-first world, drop the pressure of maintaining a long close friend, and what's left is the simplest exchange of goodnights and unhinged gushing, and that is the purest form of socializing. Whether seeing mutual friend actually makes you sad comes down to you. By whatever channel, even offline, you cannot stop this from happening. As long as you can make peace with it, maybe it won't hurt, and maybe you will slowly learn to let go.

—To My Future Self