Share about reconnecting with people from your past - not really relationship or sexual thread

I moved on myself. I added a ton of people from my past that I hadn't seen or spoken too in 20-30 years. Just like you said, initially it was kittens and rainbows then silence. Or it was just add them and silence. I guess I quenched my thirst about wondering what had happened to them because when I was done I just removed them all from my social media and got on with life. haha.

 

Whenever I’ve had friends who came and went it made me sad too but I moved on eventually. Because it game me the determination to make new friends, or I was lucky enough that new friends did the work for me by introducing themselves.

 

It's funny that this topic comes up now, since I've been doing a bit of this myself. I find it varies from case-to-case: Some people, even if we parted on good terms, I have no wish to reconnect with. I figure for some of these, it's because it's been too long and their role in my life was too brief, so it would be awkward if I attempted. Of these individuals, some of them I still have on social media and have had for a long time, so I usually keep them--even if we basically never talk. Conversely though, there are individuals I don't have on social media or haven't had for a long time, and oddly enough, I find myself sometimes wanting to reconnect with these individuals, however big or small their role in my life has been.

Largely, I find the people I'm most inclined to seek out are those I can connect to a specific feeling, experience, or event. For example, I've sought reconnections with women I knew when my husband and I first moved in together in our late teens; this was at a time when I'd be on long day shifts and come home just as he was leaving for his night shifts, so I wound up seeking their company to wile away the hours (our first apartment was downtown, where there was lots of activity thanks to the bars and food joints, so it could be a bit nerve-wracking to so much as set foot outside on my own at night; company was a must). These were also girls he'd gone to school with, and as our relationship was fairly new, I wanted to get to know his friends better and build friendships of my own with them. Incidentally, one of them was also bi, so I often think about how we connected (platonically) despite my closeted-ness at the time.

In sum, I usually prefer to leave things as they are, because I know things change a lot over time--but now and again, I am seized with this need to reconnect, especially if we shared more of a connection. I've also noticed the same effect as you, of course, in that things do fizzle out. For a handful, I can go months or a couple years without talking, but have it pick back up when something interests them (or vice versa).

 

I definitely noticed my own attitude to reconnecting changing as I get older.

When I was young, all of my friends were current, and even the thought of losing one made me sick (as I had only few friends in the first place)
When I prepared to come out, I also prepared to lose a few friends over it, and I was over the moon to find out all but one stood by me.
When I went off to uni, I felt betrayed by the friends who went off to form their own new friend groups. How dare they so much as suggest I wasn't the only friend they needed for the rest of their lives?

When I was in my 20s, and facebook first started becoming a thing, I was so happy to reconnect with a few people I had lost contact with after starting uni/work, and very distraught when this did not lead to a permanent renewal of the close friendship we had before.

And now... it all starts feeling more like one of the natural cycles of life. You meet, you connect, you drift apart, you reconnect, and sometimes it sticks and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes you discover after one droink together you have nothing in common anymore (at least for the time being). Sometimes it sticks for two years and then you drift apart again. Sometimes it sticks only after two or three reconnections.
People marry and build houses and have kids and family and work emergencies and sometimes they need to attend to those over their particular friendship with you.

So apart from a core group of friends I do believe I will keep seeing forever, there is a revolving door of people I am reconnecting with, or who I am drifting apart from again.

If there's any conclusion I can draw now, it is that this is not a bad thing. This is maybe just how life has to be?
A friendship does not need to be eternal to have value. A moment does not need to stretch out for a lifetime to be authentic. Moments of reconnection can be savoured in the moment and you can take "the future of the friendship" one step at a time.

 

Hmm interesting subject. I have considered attempting to track down old friends. But after I had my gender revelation in 2020 I thought 'do I really need the added grief?'

I mean, were I to meet up with them it would be awkward. In such situations people tend to treat each other as they were when they last saw you. That's why school reunions are so absurd. In the intervening years all parties concerned have (hopefully) grown and matured and changed, so the people they are now hardly resemble the children they once were. Yet there are always some people at such things who remember daft things you did as a child and insist on dredging them up..

There's another factor as well - for long periods during my teens and twenties and even thirties I was deeply unhappy. Why would I want to revisit those times?

Beth