What you owe an old friend you have little in common with

Treat the sections below as a sequence. With friendships with little in common, getting the early decisions right makes the later ones much easier.

The friendship that has diverged

Two people who met at eighteen may now differ in income, politics, health, family situation and everything they do with a weekend. The friendship keeps working for years on momentum, and then somebody notices that they have nothing to say beyond the past. This is not a moral failure on either side; people change substantially between twenty and fifty and rarely in the same direction.

The awkward part is that both usually notice at different times, so one is dutifully maintaining something the other has already downgraded. There is no obligation to either continue or end it, and the useful step is deciding what you actually want.

What history is worth

An old friend holds a version of you that nobody else has, and that record becomes more valuable as the people who share it thin out. There is also a form of ease that only comes from very long acquaintance, where nothing has to be explained from the beginning. Continuity has its own value, particularly during periods when everything else in a life is being rearranged.

Across a decade, these are real goods and they are not the same as enjoying somebody's company, which is what causes the confusion. A friendship can be worth keeping for the history while being poor company, and it is worth being honest about which you are getting.

Obligation and what it does

Many long friendships are sustained largely by a sense that ending them would be a betrayal of the people you both were. Obligation is a poor fuel because it produces attendance without attention, which the other person usually detects. It also generates a low-level resentment that leaks into the meetings themselves, making them worse than they need to be.

The unglamorous truth is that the question worth asking is whether you would choose this person now, and if not, whether the history compensates. There is no correct answer, and people who conclude either way can be right about their own situation.

Reducing rather than ending

Most of these friendships do not need to end; they need a lower frequency and a clearer format. Two meetings a year with somebody you are fond of and have little in common with is a workable arrangement that costs almost nothing. Being honest with yourself about the reduced status removes the guilt that otherwise accompanies every unanswered message.

It also preserves the option of the friendship reactivating, which happens more often than people expect when circumstances change.

A friendship kept at low intensity is available later; a friendship formally ended usually is not.

When politics or values diverge

Divergence over politics, religion or ethics is different from divergence over interests, and it is harder to set aside. Some subjects can be excluded by agreement, and many long friendships operate happily with two or three permanent no-go areas.

Where the disagreement is about how the other person treats people rather than about opinions, exclusion is harder to sustain. There is no obligation to maintain a friendship with somebody whose views you find genuinely intolerable, and saying so plainly is more honest than fading. Equally, a friendship that survives disagreement is worth something, and losing every friend who thinks differently has its own costs.

Ending one honestly

Formal endings are rare between friends and are occasionally the right thing, particularly where a fade would be read as something worse. Most endings are better done by reduction, since a declaration invites a conversation about the reasons and those conversations rarely help anybody. If you do say something, keep it brief and about you rather than about their deficiencies.

The unglamorous truth is that expect to feel worse than anticipated, since ending a twenty-year friendship removes a piece of your own history as well as a person. Leave the door unlocked, because people and circumstances change and the friendship you cannot use at forty may matter at sixty.

The takeaway

Decide whether you are keeping the friendship for the person or for the history, because both are legitimate and they need different amounts of effort.

The apology that works is specific, unhurried and free of the word but.