Saying Goodbye (Or So Long) to Geographically Convenient Friends
Not all friendships are meant to run at full volume forever — and that’s okay. Here’s what I’ve learned about letting go of convenience-based connections with gratitude, not guilt.
When I was younger, I thought proximity meant friendship. We were taught that the people around us were our friends — classmates, neighbours, cousins — because being polite often took precedence over discerning who really belonged in our lives.
And for a while, that worked… or at least, it didn’t cause too much friction. You share a lunch table, a locker row, a neighbourhood. It’s friendship by default.
But that kind of thinking gets messy in adulthood. Who hasn’t been burned by a betrayal of trust, or realized too late that someone you poured energy into was only ever there when it suited them?
In midlife, the stakes feel higher. We’ve got less bandwidth for performative friendships and more clarity about what real connection feels like. It’s not about who’s nearby; it’s about who truly shows up, who listens, who gets you.
Proximity might spark a friendship, but it takes shared values and mutual respect to sustain it. And in that sense, closeness doesn’t necessarily translate to closeness.
At the same time, not every relationship needs to go deep to be meaningful. Some people are just fun to hang out with: coffee companions, coworking buddies, neighbours who make you laugh during dog walks. They might be the other parents at the kids’ school, the people you meet in mutual interest activities, or colleagues at work.
Those light-touch connections matter, too.
You don’t need to trust someone with your deepest secrets for the relationship to be rewarding.
A wise friend once told me, “Miranda, you let everyone right in to your core. You’ve gotta learn to keep some people on the outside layers.”
Human relationships are like an onion, she said — layered and nuanced (but ideally, not entirely made of tears).
No wonder I felt hurt by people who didn’t understand why… I was putting all of the weighty expectations of close friendship on people who’d never signed up for it.
That realization can be lonely at first. When you stop confusing access with intimacy, the true nature and depth of your relationships are laid bare, and some inevitably fall away.
But what’s left behind is richer, more grounded, and infinitely more nourishing.
Some friendships travel with me. Many don’t. Some will pop back up later on. As a somewhat nomadic person, I say goodbye (or so long) — again and again — to people who’ve become my coffee buddies, co-working comrades, and 3 p.m. walk-and-talk companions in whatever place is “home” for a time.
That used to feel like failure… like I hadn’t been a good enough friend, or I hadn’t tried hard enough to “keep in touch.”
Like I was letting go too easily.
But I’ve come to believe that not every friendship is built to span years, continents, and time zones at full volume.
Some are meant to bloom in a single season and teach us something during that exact stretch of the journey.
Some friends will walk beside you for a few months, a couple of projects, or a month of perfect Saturday mornings spent sipping coffee and solving the world’s problems.
When the time comes to part ways, you can let them go with gratitude instead of guilt (and hope we’ve left them with something to be thankful for, as well, until we meet again).
There doesn’t have to be a big blow-out about who didn’t call, or which one didn’t live up to the other’s expectations. Maybe this is my small town upbringing talking, but I feel like we were made to believe there had to be a reason for a friendship to end.
There had to be closure (whatever that means); a resolution of some kind. You didn’t just drift away and fall out of touch.
But what’s wrong with that, anyway? What’s wrong with keeping the door open for reconnecting later on?
We don’t have to leave people behind, but we may move on from the version of our lives where their constant presence made sense.
There’s peace in learning to honour that. And freedom, too, in not dragging every relationship with you out of obligation. You get to decide who travels with you into the next chapter. You get to be intentional about who you bring into your core.
It’s not about building walls to keep everyone out. But I’ve come to understand that building gates and being more thoughtful about who gets let through to the inner layers is a good thing.
Not everyone deserves front-row access to your life, and that’s okay. That’s not coldness. It’s clarity.
If you’re in a season where you’re saying more goodbyes than you expected, or noticing that some friends aren’t showing up the way they used to, it’s okay. You’re not broken, and your friendships aren’t either.
You’re evolving. And as your life expands beyond the easy and expected, your relationships will, too. Some will deepen. Some will drift. And some will dissolve entirely.
But none of that means you’re failing at friendship. It means you’re finally prioritizing the ones that fit, not just those who happen to be close by.
How do you navigate friendships that don’t travel with you? What’s worked — or not?
✌🏻 Miranda
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