Friends Are Only There for a Season

Well... “Friends are only there for certain stages of our lives.” Perhaps I had come across this saying long ago, but back then I was unwilling to accept it. Though “unwilling to accept” isn’t entirely accurate; it was more that I didn’t want to concede that it was completely true. I used to believe that permanent friends really did exist in this world—or that, at the very least, one or two would stay with you for life. Even if such a thing was rare, surely it had to exist.

Outsider?

But over the past year or two, I’d already begun to sense that things were heading this way; I just kept avoiding the subject. Then one night a while back, scrolling through Twitter left me feeling emo. Seeing Twitter pals who used to know one another snuggling up, hugging, saying good morning and good night, and even replying to each other, I finally realized—maybe I was the one who didn’t belong... Everyone in that circle was still there; it was just that my circle of friends had long since ceased to be what it once was. Perhaps I was the “outsider” after all.

I haven’t been able to get this topic out of my mind all week; after thinking about it for a long time, I have to say that I must now admit friendships really are tied to phases—even cycles—or perhaps “events.”

Event-based

Before going abroad, I socialized mainly through QQ—group chats for all kinds of communities, along with a few friends I knew. Looking back now, this pattern of life unfolding in stages had already begun back then. I just didn’t think of it as a stage at the time; I thought it was simply life itself.

The ways I meet people are actually pretty limited. Basically, it always starts with something that suddenly comes up in a group chat, or with some kind of “relationship.” A relationship sounds like something that will last a long time, but honestly, many of them are sparked by events beyond my control: coworkers, classmates, or even people who are simply interested in the same thing or just happen to be doing the same kind of work. At first, we’re often forced to add each other, and then we just leave it at that. If the other person never reaches out, chances are we’ll never message each other again for the rest of our lives; but if one day they suddenly contact me because of some event, then chances are we’ll enter this phase.

Actually, there was another thread running through 2024 and 2025: on Twitter, the idea of a “contact” is different from the traditional kind you have on QQ. In theory, even if you don’t follow each other, you can still be friends in some sense, as long as you interact with and reply to each other. Those two years, I mostly became familiar with people on Twitter simply by scrolling past them over and over. 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 already a reborn one. I must have first tweeted in 2021, but for certain reasons that are rather hard to say out loud, my old account is completely dead...

Passionate Phase

“Phases” can roughly be compared to a romantic relationship: there is the novelty phase, and then the passionate phase. Interacting and chatting with friends works the same way. During the first few days after meeting, you communicate very actively and may even dig up their cringeworthy past; after that, you enter a stable phase of ongoing communication within a long-term situation. You might be working together or attending the same class at school; it might be a shared interest between people who met online, or someone might have approached you about a problem that cannot be solved quickly. It is as if two lines that never intersected suddenly became entangled, and that is how these people abruptly appeared in your life.

Growing Apart

So how exactly does this coldness set in? It usually is not a single moment. More likely, one of your contacts slowly drifts away from you: the messages grow fewer and contain nothing substantial, dwindling into nothing more than keeping a streak alive? Eventually, it deteriorates into being ignored altogether. Like a frog slowly boiled in warm water, they gradually turn cold and then disappear from your life. They may not delete you as a contact, but in truth, that is no different from disappearing from your world. If they come to you for something afterward, they will act completely differently from before; it will no longer be the kind of favor exchanged between people who know each other, but as though an invisible distance separates you...

(Similar things happen on Twitter, too.) Specifically, interactions gradually dwindle, and then these people slowly disappear from your timeline. Occasionally, you scroll through your following list and click on their profiles, only to find that they are still doing the same kinds of things and sharing the same life, but it is as though they no longer have any connection with you. Sometimes, even though you still follow each other, one of you ends up muting the other. You used to be so close, yet now they no longer appear around you; but because you once shared that kind of relationship, unfollowing them would feel too awkward, so instead they give you the coldest yet most invisible kind of silence...

Same here

But I’m actually the same way. After first realizing that someone had done this to me, I reflected on whether I had ever treated anyone similarly; looking back, I had. It may seem a little cruel to think about it this way, but as the saying goes, “time reveals a person’s true character.” Not everyone I happen to meet is someone I click with, and not everyone behaves in ways that make me comfortable. Out of politeness, I admittedly won’t immediately unfollow people I initially misjudged, but if they truly go too far, I’ll block them without hesitation. Sometimes a one-way mute that gives no visible notification and doesn’t filter @mention your messages may be the best choice at that point. Often, you may not realize that you’re making others uncomfortable—or perhaps this is simply the truest version of you: you see nothing wrong with your behavior, but others disapprove. Maybe the moment someone feels uncomfortable is the moment I get muted? (But if most people wouldn’t mute you, that person is probably just overly sensitive; or perhaps it’s the other way around.)

Cycles

So why do we call it cyclical? As mentioned earlier, a friend is a form of behavior connected to you during a particular phase. And a phase usually means a specific span of time, with a beginning and an end. Often, you do not realize it, but it is closely tied to a particular event in your life. Without you noticing, that cycle may have already run its natural course, after which you enter new phases, experience new events, and meet new people. When this timeline begins to change because of you, the cyclical nature of friendship naturally reveals itself.

Cyclical friends do not mean that the same person returns at regular intervals. It means that your best friend, your closest relationship, may slowly change over time. And usually, you do not notice. By the time you do, 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, it’s actually perfectly normal. No two timelines in the world are ever the same, and the fact that yours and mine were fortunate enough to cross paths is already a stroke of luck. It’s like entering a social circle and getting to know people—the people in that circle can also get to know one another. In traditional group chats, you wouldn’t know about it because those interactions happen in private; unfortunately, Twitter has broken through that barrier. With everyone’s tweets being public, you can usually observe this behavior very easily. When the relationships connecting others to you begin to shift in recurring cycles, the phenomenon becomes readily visible to you.

Humans are emotional animals, and it is perfectly normal to feel possessive of your friends; that does not mean you should actually possess them or control their behavior or thoughts, but rather that you care about them, and that you and they are close friend. But as I said, your friends are people too. They deserve lives and timelines of their own, so it is perfectly normal for them to become mutual friend with someone else. If anything is to blame, blame Twitter for tearing away the thin veil over this truth, forcing you to watch the process unfold. Yet that may well be a good thing. By showing you this process, it makes you sad, but also gives you more chances to meet people, perhaps? Leaving behind conventional socializing centered on private chats, with none of the pressure of maintaining a long-term close friend—just the simplest goodnights and posting in a burst of passion—may be socializing in its purest form. Whether seeing mutual friend actually makes you sad depends on you. Whatever the setting, even offline, you cannot stop this process from happening. As long as you can come to terms with it, perhaps it will no longer hurt; perhaps you will slowly learn to let go.

—Written to My Future Self