Relationship momentum

After you've been around for a while all the people you've met, - worked with, had fun with, played sports with, drank with, ate with, slept with, went on vacation with, - are going to be running around the world and sometimes you won't speak to each other in years. And then all of a sudden you get into contact again, either through pure coincidence, similar interests, MySpace, class reunions and... you always get the same couple of questions:

• what are you doing now, where do you work
• have you seen or do you still speak some mutual random person tm
• ... and that's basically it...

When people enter into any kind of relationship, be it friendly, business, sports, romantic, or adversarial, the roles, personalities and events that play around them decide how things go. Sometimes a relationship is established quickly, others take years or even generations to develop. All that is a matter of momentum. Some people have a lot of it with some, and nearly nothing with others.

Now when erstwhile friends meet up who haven't spoken to each other for quite a while, the relationship has to be rekindled. The longer you haven't spoken to each other, and the farther the distance, the more a previous relationship's momentum (if any) has died down. In this context people must regain momentum to move the relationship again to any significant level.

Of course some people gain momentum extremely quickly, no matter if it has been fifty years since they last met, or if they've never met before. There are also other factors that influence the speed that people can re-establish relationships with: similar interests or shared experiences, family bonds, institutions (marriage, birthdays, funerals, graduations, traditions) a degree of personal friendliness and being accepting to others, willingness to reset the relationship at all. A relationship with high momentum is more likely to get sustained and is more likely to get revived after an idle period, than one that has none.

So when it comes to relationships, momentum is key. If you are inclined to keep as many relationships alive as possible, then keep triggering those positive momentum changers.