As I left my hometown for my freshman year at Cornell, I was somewhat involved with a boy from home. He was my boyfriend from freshman year in high school, and while we broke up after only a few months of the relationship, we were still very close throughout the four years of high school. We had both agreed that we would attempt to start a relationship again if neither of us were involved in a relationship after the first semester of college.
Once at Cornell, I kept in touch with my friend regularly. We mostly used AIM, but we also called each other every few days. However, after a few weeks of college, I was absorbed with both the new college friends I had made and the workload at Cornell. After just a few weeks, I felt like I connected more with my college friends than I did with my friends from home. My friend from home, on the other hand, had a hard time adjusting to college life. He tried to contact me often, but I usually ignored him because I was too busy with other matters.
Like many long-distance relationships, my relationship with my friend eventually dissolved. We never got back into a romantic relationship because I had found someone new at college. My friend and I stopped keeping in contact with each other, and now I rarely speak to him.
The eventual division between my friend and me could be attributed to a couple of Wallace’s attraction factors. Lack of proximity probably played a large role in our relationship falling apart. Because I became so busy with my college activities, I went on AIM less, which made it harder for my friend to keep in touch with me. When he did IM me, I often ignored him, distancing myself from him. Our interaction frequency steadily became lower as time went on. Physical proximity was also a factor; since we were no longer in the same town, it difficult to see each other without making plans in advance. Since we interacted less, we were less connected.
A lack of common ground was also a factor in the detachment between my friend and me. I loved college life, but my friend was having a difficult time adjusting to it. In our conversations, I would often talk about my friends and the activities I was doing, while my friend would complain about how he was doing at college. We soon ran out of things to talk about since our lives were so different. I became frustrated with my friend’s complaints, which was part of the reason why I stopped making the effort to keep in touch with him. We no longer shared the same interests, which made it difficult for us to have a good conversation.
The combination of lack of proximity and lack of common ground led to a downhill spiral in the relationship between me and my friend. Since I was far away and leading a different life from my friend, we had less in common. If we had still lived in the same town and still saw each other regularly, our relationship may have ended very differently.
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2 comments:
It’s unfortunate that things ended sour with your friend. I have also lost many friends in similar situations where we both went away to college and just didn’t see eye to eye anymore. Each person takes on a different path and the paths just don’t seem to cross anywhere as much as we try. Wallace’s Law seems to have played a major role in this situation. It’s hard to keep in touch when that common ground is lost. You don’t have the same beliefs and attitudes especially when adjusting your life to a major change like going away to college. Without that physical attractiveness it’s hard to remain as passionate about the other person as well. Especially when the stresses of life are your only interaction with that person, it is just a huge turnover. Looking back at now would you be willing to get back in touch with this person?
It’s really unfortunate with how things ended up between the two of you. Fostering and maintaining relationships with others is hard enough to deal with, throwing distance and lack of common ground into the mix only asks for trouble. It’s hard enough being in a relationship, with a person you see every day, I can’t even imagine how hard it must be to be so physically separated from one another. No matter how long you spend on the phone talking to one another, it will never measure up to simply being in a person’s presence. There’s a bond that is established when you spend time with them and share experiences with one another. It’s really difficult to deal with a situation where you know things are headed downhill, given that you didn’t have common ground any more and no longer lived nearby. Its easy to simply ignore a phone call or IM, rather than confront the issue and deal with it head on. Its hard to come to terms with the fact that you are no longer in love with the person who once made you so happy. Given the time that has elapsed have you spoken or would you consider re-fostering a relationship with him?
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