Why Distance Can Create Intimacy in Friendship

I used to think the goal in friendship was to get closer—if a relationship wasn’t operating at maximum intimacy, something was wrong. But I’ve come to believe that friendship isn’t about closeness at all costs. It’s about finding the distance at which we feel closest to one another—the optimal level of intimacy.

For example, I wouldn’t travel well with some of my closest friends, and so I don’t. We have different styles. I like to go off the beaten path and they might prefer the resort route. Avoiding shared travel keeps the connection within its healthiest boundaries.

Friendships don’t have to be all-or-none but can exist in the grey. This means that instead of deciding we’ve “outgrown” someone, we can experiment with adjusting the friendships’ settings: seeing each other monthly instead of weekly, staying friends but shifting away from being each other’s confidantes, or spending more time in group settings rather than one-on-one. Some friends are what I call “low-dose friends.” We thrive in small doses, and that’s ok. Ironically, these adjustments can make us feel more connected to the other person, more at peace with the connection.

I’ve also had friendships where I’ve struggled with a lack of reciprocity. But when I’ve backed off, eventually, those friends have reached out. It wasn’t that they wouldn’t reciprocate, but that we were on different timelines for how often we felt the urge to. Perhaps, I realize now, they might have wanted a different level of connection than I did, rather than them not wanting connection at all.

Research finds that the more we customize our relationships, going to one friend, for example, to get pissed with us about the surprise parking ticket, and another to cry with us after a funeral, the greater our well-being. Expecting one person to do it all can harm us and our friendships. It can lead us to expect something from a friend that they can’t give us. Instead of assuming that our friend is withholding, or rejecting us, we can get that need met elsewhere. When we do, we feel lighter, and our friend escapes the pressure-cooker of our expectations.

We lose half our friends every seven years, research shows. I can’t help but wonder if we’d lose fewer if we approached our relationships with more nuance. Instead of ending a friendship that feels strained, we might simply shift it into a new phase.

So the next time a friendship feels misaligned—not just in a one-off way, but chronically—ask yourself: What level of intimacy feels optimal here?

As Edna St. Vincent Millay once wrote,

“The longest absence is less perilous to love than the terrible trials of incessant proximity.”

Reflection Questions:

Do you have an unmet need in a close friendship? Can you shift that expectation to another friend whose in a better place to meet your need, even if you sacrifice the intimacy you might have imagined for the friendship? 

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