Maintaining Intimacy In Friendships

Strong relationships based on reason and personal openness either need or deserve to have their intimacy preserved.  Active engagement and the feelings of intense intimacy might become far more difficult to sustain, even when both parties are of course willing and eager, because of miscellaneous life trials, the need to take care of oneself or one's family in adulthood, and the perhaps diminishing mental energy someone experiences as they age.  Some of these obstacles are personal or natural and some only take their current form because of the delusions of broad society, professional work's role in America being among the latter.

The trap of the workplace, which so many unfortunately rely on just to survive, already can demand a large amount of time every single week, which not only fills that time and typically prevents meeting with any friends outside of the job, but also can leave people so exhausted for the only days they have off that socialization seems overwhelming.  Then, though not a mere social construct, there is the desire many have to date or marry, which can occupy another enormous amount of time each week even if it, like the workplace, turns out to require a massive time investment to often tread in place in a mediocre or terrible relationship.

One can and should balance marriage or dating with established friendships without sacrificing one for the other, though, given that all the friends and the significant other are rationalistic equals (not many people are rationalists, so finding such equals can be highly challenging).  Even so, between the needs of practical and personal life such as labor or sleep and the surprise trials that might spring up, it is not necessarily easy to maintain every friendship that deserves one's devotion.  Time and energy can become more and more strenuous a thing to give with work and exhaustion weighing down.

One way or another, it is vital that one engage in persistent communication and seize what opportunities to meet and celebrate the friendship that one can.  Although geography and other factors might interfere with seeing friends in person, technology permits people to hear each other's voices and see each other's very faces.  This is a wonder that many appear I take for granted across their lives.  No, it is not the same as being in the physical presence of a friend or other loved one and seeing their face or hearing their words, but it is no minor thing to have this capability in the present era.

Maintaining intimacy in friendships as the pressures and distractions of life, particularly adult life, roar into prominence in early adulthood is not always the easiest accomplishment, depending on the individual disposition of the friends involved.  However, it is one of the only social interactions worth persevering in seeking out.  Lesser relationships might come and go, never reaching the same quality and depth as rationalistic friendships--which a truly great marriage ultimately is another example of--and the sometimes socially constructed demands of adult or modern life might drain one of energy, but rationalistic relationships are not something to be allowed to casually slip away.