on low-maintenance friendships
(and the people who still text back after three months)
Every few months, I remember I have best friends. not in a bad way, in the way where one of them sends a blurry 2 am mirror selfie with “look at this man” and I instantly know the context. The context is ten years of being alive at the same time.
You know how people say, “If they wanted to, they would”? Yeah, well, sometimes they want to, but they just don’t have the energy to.
And that’s okay.
I’ve been thinking about friendships lately, which don’t expire when you move cities, switch time zones, or forget birthdays. The kind where you don’t talk every day, or even every month, but when you do, it’s like you just walked into someone’s home after 7 years and the WiFi just reconnected.
My college best friend and I hadn’t spoken in six months. One Tuesday, she texts me a photo with: “boyfriend.” That’s it. no “hi,” no “how are you,” just the announcement. We last talked when she broke up with someone, and we ranted about how no man is worthy of us. Six months later, she just sent me a picture of a boy I have no context for, and we got on a two-hour call to debrief like we were never not in touch.
Another friend went for her MBA and disappeared into group projects and your typical MBA. Months passed. Then she texts: “coming home for Diwali, keep 14th free.” No check-ins, no guilt, just I am coming, be available. And I dropped everything to be available. Because it didn’t matter that we’d been absent from each other’s lives for a while, the second I saw her, it felt like we were kids again, the same jokes, same hugs, same warmth, just in slightly older bodies.
Last week, I wore a saree I hadn’t worn in eight years. I posted a story thinking no one would notice. Five minutes later, my best friend texted: “That’s the saree you wore for the Noida party, right?” and I sat there, smiling stupidly at my screen, thinking, this is what it means to be known.
Psychologists call this kind of bond secure attachment, a relationship where distance doesn’t translate to doubt. Where presence isn’t measured in frequency but in reliability. It’s the grown-up version of friendship Aristotle described in Nicomachean Ethics: not one based on pleasure or utility, but on goodness, where both people want the best for each other, even in their absence.
Maybe this comfort with silence comes with age. When I was younger, I equated love with presence, constant messages, constant plans, and constant reassurance. But as I’ve grown, I’ve realised some friendships are more like self-sustaining.
Sociologist Rebecca Adams once wrote that adult friendships often survive on “voluntary neglect.” You let the other person live their life without constant validation because you trust the foundation you’ve built. You know the love doesn’t fade just because the conversation does.
such friendships are basically rebellions against the hyper-connectivity of our time. They reject the algorithmic demand for constant engagement — the idea that love must be performed, timestamped, and made visible.
“We live in an age of ‘excess positivity,’ where everything, even relationships, must be productive, responsive, measurable. Maybe that’s why friendships like these feel sacred. They exist outside that framework. They resist urgency. They survive slow.” — Philosopher Byung-Chul Han
A few years ago, my dad said something that’s stayed with me. He looked at me and my closest girls, six years into our friendship then and said, “Your friendship will last. Because all of you are growing, changing, becoming new people every few years and still choosing each other every time.”
This year marks ten years of that friendship. Ten years of growing apart and growing up, of heartbreaks, cities, bad haircuts, and new beginnings and somehow, still finding our way back to each other.
Last month, I met one of my girls after two and a half years. I thought it would be weird. What if we’d changed too much? What if the gap had grown too wide to cross? But within five minutes, we were the same, laughing over nothing, finishing each other’s sentences, just muscle memory. like I don’t need you to prove you love me every day. I already know that you do.
It was like we were little girls again, sitting cross-legged on the floor, talking over each other, sharing snacks.
I think about it often now, how we once lived in the same pin code, went to the same cafes, cried in the same bathrooms, and now live different lives across time zones. We see each other once a month if we’re lucky, once in two years if we’re not. But it doesn’t feel distant.
And maybe that’s what lasting friendship really is, not constancy, but return.
Not the people who are always around, but the ones who always come back.
The ones who still text you after six months with a blurry photo and say, “look at this man,” and you just know everything again.
Media I consumed instead of doom-scrolling:
Video - WTF is Fueling India’s Beauty & Skincare Revolution?
Article - If I Work Harder, Will You Love Me?
Article- The Woman Who Always Paid for Dinner
(On some days, I’m only writing because I know the 5 people who will definitely read this and write back to me. I love it when you write back to me and tell me how you feel, what you like or what you think can be improved. You can just reply to this or drop a text on any of my socials, and I’ll get back to you soon, Promise.)
Drink some water and buy yourselves some flowers.
See you later,
Pure and magical love!!