The Guardian

When did we become so bad at friendship? | Johanna Leggatt

It’s not that we have stopped communicating with friends. In fact, we’re all in constant contact, if that is what you would call it
‘Many people struggle to put away their mobile phone for the length of a dinner party, which, unless you’re waiting on a genuinely important call, is akin to giving your date the middle finger.’ Photograph: Rawpixel/Getty Images/iStockphoto

Occasionally I will get a nagging sense that I am missing a fundamental piece of me. It’s as if I have misplaced a crucial something along the way, but I’m not quite sure where, or how far back, I dropped it.

Weeks will pass until eventually I find myself engrossed in a face-to-face catch-up with a friend; a conversation that bypasses pleasantries and verbal backfill, where new worlds and possibilities seem to open up and schedules slip away.

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