By Charlotte Wood, Guest Writer
My freshman year, a girl in my public speaking class asked if we could be best friends. I was a bit thrown off guard because, in my mind, this kind of thing only happened in kindergarten. You normally don’t just walk up to someone and ask to be friends. But she did.
It would have been really easy for this friendship to have faded after we no longer had class together. But, luckily, our paths continued to cross. The same social club. Another class together. More overlap in our schedules placed us conveniently around one another.
Those moments helped create our friendship, but what built it wasn’t weekly club meetings or even the ever-so-iconic field trip on Chinese New Year. It was the moments spent sharing our joys, our burdens, our lives. Very easily, this friendship could have faded after public speaking—but it didn’t. Because it wasn’t built on convenience, but on connection.
I think about other people I was friends with because of my classes—people I saw every day, sat next to, walked with, laughed with. And now, I haven’t spoken to them in years. Those friendships weren’t fake. They just existed because of convenience.
We were placed in the same spaces, living the same routines, needing the same people at the same time. Psychologists actually have a term for this—the propinquity effect, first studied by Leon Festinger—which explains that people are more likely to form relationships simply because they are physically near each other.
And when that convenience disappeared, so did the relationship.
But then there were other friendships. The ones that stretched past a schedule. The ones that lasted through different semesters, different routines, different versions of life.
I thought I understood the difference. Class friends are different than real friends. But that isn’t always true.
Life got more complicated. Schedules stopped lining up. Priorities shifted. And even some of the friendships that once felt like forever started to feel distant.
Researcher Brené Brown argues that real connection is built through vulnerability, not just shared space. And for a while, I thought that was the dividing line—convenience versus connection.
But it is not always that simple.
My high school friends are the clearest example of that middle ground.
We were inseparable. The kind of friendships where my parents didn’t ask who I was hanging out with because there was only ever one answer. Then we all went to different colleges. We became different people, living different lives.
We’re still friends. We still text. We see each other when we can. But the relationship isn’t what it used to be. It’s not a bad thing. These friendships have proven they are not just for a season—but in this season, the lack of convenience has softened the connection.
I think that’s where I was getting it wrong.
We like to talk about friendships as if they fall into two categories: convenience or connection. As if one is shallow and temporary, and the other is deep and permanent.
But most relationships don’t stay in one place. They move.
Some start out of convenience and grow into something deeper. Shared space turns into shared trust. What was once easy becomes meaningful.
And some go the other direction.
Some of the relationships that once felt like the deepest connection begin to drift when life no longer holds them together in the same way. Not because they weren’t real—but because they’re no longer sustained in the same way.
According to the American Psychological Association, friendships are often shaped by life transitions—moves, new environments, changing priorities—and it is normal for relationships to shift as those things change.
And that doesn’t make them less meaningful.
It just means they belonged to a different season.
I used to believe that real friendship meant consistency. That if something was truly deep, it wouldn’t change. It wouldn’t fade. It wouldn’t feel harder.
But maybe the depth of a relationship isn’t proven by how often you see someone—but by how they showed up when they were there.
Some people are meant to walk with you every day.
Some people are meant to walk with you for a while.
And both can matter just as much.
People move. Relationships move.
The goal isn’t to figure out which friendships will last forever—but to cherish them for the season you’ve been given them.
Because not every friendship is meant to stay.
But that doesn’t make it any less real when it was here.
