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"Low maintenance friendships", aka friendships. Can't remember who I heard it from, but someone put it in a way that resonated well with me. If it needs constant work, it's not a friendship. If you're friends, you can meet after not being in touch for five or ten years and continue exactly where you left off.
Edit: "constant" being the key word. It takes a lot of work achieve that level of friendship, but it may also be the only type worth having
This idea that any kind of relationship should be effortless and easy is, frankly, incredibly absurd. Good relationships (of which friendships are) take real effort and work. If you don't want to put that work in to it then you need a pet rock, not a friend.
Friendships take effort and work absolutely, but once you've made friends for life, they stick. I feel you've misunderstood what I was trying to say. People that are in constant need of you serving them or they say they'll stop being your friends were never your friends to begin with.
Probably doesn't work the same for everyone, but I've never been one to have a big circle of occasional pals or "friends" to hang out with. For the most part, with the people I connect with I develop very deep, lifelong friendships that work through thick and thin because they're not based on what one can gain from another.
once you've made friends for life, they stick
People drift apart. Actually making the effort to communicate and meet up occasionally is important for maintaining those relationships. If you're not in the place where you're can stay aware of major life changes (marriage, divorce, kids, major career changes, moves between cities, major illness or injury, deaths in family, etc.), were you really "friends for life"?
Even making brunch plans in my 40s requires consulting a calendar. That naturally shrinks the number of close friends in the mix. I'm closer with my friends who live close than the ones who live far, simply out of inertia, that maintaining those relationships takes less effort.
I'll give you an example of what I mean. A couple of weeks ago I saw one of my best friends throughout my life for the first time since covid. He's never been much for messages and calls, so staying up to speed that way has always been unreliable anyway. But I always made sure to visit when I was visiting our hometown, where he still lives. But since he remarried they were traveling a lot and he wasn't often at home. When I wasn't getting replies to my messages I started to wonder if I'd done something to anger him. But I kept sending messages whenever I were coming to town, and dropping a box of chocolates at their porch every Christmas, since they were never at home when I went by their place. Well, the last time I rang the doorbell they were home - and what ridiculously bad luck it is that it took so long to catch them. They were in fact packing for a several weeks long trip. Anyway. We picked up where we last left off. No, not angry at me, they just got used to a bit of a hermit lifestyle during covid. He said that apart from one visit from his sister (and they literally share a backyard), I'm the last the person to visit them.
Anyway. That's a pretty weird and extreme example. But neither of us, in our friendship, is the kind of person that requires constant attention and reaffirming the friendship. We were separate for a very, very stupid long time. But that didn't erode the friendship we've had for the past four or so decades.
I've had high maintenance friends, mentally needy, those whose friendship requires constant sacrifice for upkeep. They can be good friendships. But in my experience they don't last.
You described a lot of effort on your end to keep that relationship going. That's what I mean. Relationships require maintenance.
Yeah, active relationships take effort. However, the true friends I made growing up, I can hit them up or they can hit me up, after any number of years, and we pick up right where we left off... It hits different.