A few nights ago, I was hanging out with Katie, my best friend since childhood, and her little sister, Jane, with whom I’ve recently become friends (since a seven-year age gap matters less in your 20s and 30s than it did when we were 6 and 13). I was telling them about the wedding I had just attended, and Katie referenced the bride — my cousin — by first and last name and explained to Jane that she is my favorite relative.
Katie knowing these oddly specific details about my life made me feel known, loved, and cared for in a unique sort of way. It brought to mind a line that I had read recently in Ann Napolitano’s poignant novel, “Hello Beautiful.” One of the characters, William, says to his new wife, “You and your sisters have so many reference points, such a dense history. I never get used to it.”
I have a long history with Katie — we met when we were 3 and 4 years old — but reflecting on the topic, I’ve realized that you don’t necessarily need time to create “density” in a relationship. What you need, as William points out, are shared reference points, which I think of as common memories, detailed awareness of each other’s life stories, and a mutual sense of history (for instance, going to the same pool throughout your childhood summers, or both knowing which elderly man at church always had a pocketful of candy).
Throughout any relationship, this sort of familiar knowledge often develops naturally, but like many other things in life, a little intention and attention can go a long way in facilitating their creation.
Here are a few ideas for ways to cultivate a denser history with your friends, for the sake of closeness and connection.
Learn about their loved ones
Among my group of high school friends, we not only know the names of each others’ brothers and sisters, but also what sports they played, if/when they got into trouble at school, and whom they dated as teenagers. When you grow up in each other’s backyards, invite yourselves to each other’s family dinners, and spend hours carpooling in each other’s parents’ minivans, you pick up on a plethora of information.
Realizing how much this shared knowledge helps me connect with old friends, I firmly believe in making efforts to develop the same understanding with new friends. I ask about their sibling dynamics, I learn where their parents are from, and I listen closely when they tell me how they spent their childhood summers. I’ve discovered that specificity matters more than broad strokes. For instance, remembering that Eliza is third-born is good, but recalling that her older sister has twin toddlers, and her younger sister just completed her medical residency is even better.
RELATED: Keeping Friendships Strong, Even When Your Lives Move in Different Directions
Develop and utilize a shared language
One of my closest circles is a group of women with whom I attended a two-week spiritual retreat meets feminist writing workshop a couple of summers ago. Given how relatively new our friendship is, and the fact that we live plane rides away from each other, it’s impressive that I feel as close to them as I do, and I attribute the closeness to both the foundation of our friendship (we spent an intense two weeks together, summer-camp-like in the level of time and vulnerability shared) and the regularity with which we talk (we’ve done every-other-week-or-so Zoom calls since pre-COVID days).
Both the foundation and the regularity have allowed us to develop a shared language of inside jokes, catchphrases, and terms that summarize aspects of our lives. For instance, during our initial two weeks together, the expression “darkness is its own garden” — for reasons too complicated to outline in a 700-word essay — became known by all of us, and now we weave it through our conversations, our text threads, our emails, and even, sometimes, the work that we bring into the world (e.g. articles like this one). Whenever the phrase is seamlessly integrated, we all burst into laughter, giving us both a dopamine hit and a feeling of bondedness.
RELATED: Deeper Friendships: Why We Need to Cultivate More Meaningful Relationships
Embrace experiences together
One of my worst qualities is that I’m cheap, and as such, I’m usually the last person in my friend groups to suggest taking a trip or going on an outing together. Why not just go for a walk or talk on the phone? Lucky for me, most of my friends are much more inclined to plan weekend getaways or long-distance friend reunions than I am, and I’ve found that out-of-the-ordinary experiences lead to a higher proportion of memorable reference points than routine activities. Novelty fuels memory, and so while sitting on the same porch swing talking for the umpteenth time is wonderful in its own way (the ease! the price! the ritual!) going someplace new, trying an unfamiliar activity together, and having unique experiences enriches a friendship history.
Popular psychotherapist and writer Esther Perel says that “the quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives.” A lot goes into the creation of quality relationships, but one aspect is having a shared ground to stand on. By putting effort into developing knowledge, language, and memory, you make progress toward creating that ground or a dense history.