Maybe We Should Stop Getting Coffee With People We Don’t Actually Like.

Lana Kamal

12 hours ago

4 min read

Catch-ups are turning friendships into speed dates and interviews. That line we’re all guilty of pulling out at the end of those random bump-into-each-other conversations with friends who aren’t in our close circle: “We should really do something soon, I’ll text you!”

We both covertly know, and appreciate, the fact that we’re not actually going to have that coffee, yet we keep saying we will again and again and again. Why can’t we just end that quick conversation with, “Oh, I have to run, but it was nice bumping into you!”? It’s honest and still a nice thing to say to someone, instead of spreading empty words and promises. That little white lie we innocently throw around may make us feel better in the moment, but it actually just shows the lack of effort we both put into said friendship.

Now, don’t get me wrong. With the right people, I love a good catch-up, because I know that, with certain people, they are regular catch-ups where we don’t only talk about boy drama or the latest gossip. Although we may not see each other as often as we’d like, there’s a mutual effort, consistency (to an extent) and understanding that, while we aren’t obliged to see each other all the time, when we do, we pick up right where we left off. Those types of friendships are what we need to keep nurturing in life.

That’s why I love meeting new people and getting to know them beyond a superficial level, where we bounce between random topics, share little anecdotes and compare experiences. That’s when I feel like there is an actual bond being formed, naturally and effortlessly. These kinds of catch-ups are worthwhile because there’s a sense that the friendship will blossom the more we see each other, and I love that. You’re never too old to make new friends!

But there are other people where I feel like we are only catching up to get gossip from each other, whether it’s about ourselves or other friends and people we have in common. And it’s not like we’re getting the gossip and spreading it, but something about only seeing each other for the rare catch-up just seems a bit superficial to me. Unless I feel there is mutual effort being put into maintaining the friendship, I don’t see why we have to tell each other we want to see each other when we actually don’t.

It may seem like an act of politeness, but it really isn’t. If anything, it leads to false hope.

The art of the meaningful catch-up feels like it’s fading. Instead, we’re basically speed-dating our not-so-close friends, trying to summarise months’ worth of our lives over a single coffee date, all while on a ticking clock. No conversation really has the time to go anywhere, so everything ends up staying surface-level and over-exaggerated.

More often than not, it leaves me feeling slightly off, like I’ve been rambling on about myself too much or feeling bored listening to them do the same. And I’m not saying this in a shallow way. I mean that what we speak about often doesn’t have any real depth to it. It feels forced to sit with certain people when we both know this is the last catch-up we’re going to have for a while. So what’s the point in speaking about anything that actually has depth to it if the friendship is just going to be cut off at the end of the hour?

So we end up giving them a highlight reel of our lives, and for many of us, that means the drama. Whether we’re aware of it or not, these infrequent catch-ups often turn into a performance, where we swap stories for reactions rather than actually connecting with one another.

It’s like we’re all collectively chasing something: an adrenaline rush that comes from reliving and retelling stories about who we’re seeing, where we’ve been or what’s happened in our lives recently. But we’ve already shared these stories with the people closest to us, so now we’re just trying to relive it all, chasing a reaction rather than a connection.

This made me realise something. With certain catch-up friends, the conversations always pick up where we left off, but not in the positive way I mentioned earlier. It’s more in terms of updates. We end up circling the same conversations and stories instead of actually moving forward into something deeper. It’s like we want a continuation of the saga we shared last time because it was the last piece of entertainment we got from one another.

And often, while these are the people we can share all these interesting and exciting stories with, they’re not the people we can sit with for hours and have conversations about nothing and everything. They’re not the people we can sit silently in the same room with, each doing our own thing while simply enjoying each other’s company, feeling a sense of comfort just from knowing they’re there.

There is more to people than their drama, but we’ve all lost sight of that. It seems like we’ve replaced genuine, meaningful connection with efficient, surface-level interactions.

Real connections and relationships that last a lifetime require both time and depth. Neither can be rushed.