Is catch up culture killing your friendships?
Journalist Anja Zauer looks at the cost of 'catch-up culture', and how we can build our own communities.
There's a certain trend growing amongst friendships, and chances are, most of us are guilty of it.
Picture this: you’re finally catching up with a friend. Yet within minutes of sitting down, you’re already pulling out the calendar to schedule your next meet-up. Unfortunately, the next available date is six weeks away. Maybe even more.
So, you launch into a deep 90-minute speed run of the highlights of your life, be it family updates, work woes, relationship struggles, trying to compress an entire season of your life into a single sitting.
You promise, "we won’t leave it so long next time", and yet, you always do.
Somewhere along the line, our friendships started to take a back seat in our lives, feeling less like a shared life and more like a quarterly review. I say this as someone completely guilty of it myself.
Not through neglect or lack of care, but because life has a habit of crowding out the things that don't demand our immediate attention.
No one is neglecting their friends on purpose; we’re simply just stretched thin. Between the business of work, side hustles, relationships, family obligations and the general exhaustion of everyday life, our friendships stand as the most flexible option in the diary. But why?
According to Annie Lavin, Relationship Therapist and Relational Consultant, friendships are uniquely vulnerable because they tend to operate without deadlines or consequences.
"Work demands an immediate response, family often requires us, but friendships quietly wait in the background. The problem is that what feels non-urgent can slowly become deeply important," she adds.
"We've become incredibly efficient at managing our lives, but not necessarily at nurturing our relationships," Annie further shares.
"Previous generations often had built-in communities through neighbourhoods, family and shared routines. Today, connection has become another item on the to-do list rather than something woven into daily life."
Add in hustle culture, burnout, and the pressure to be constantly productive, and it seems we’ve started to treat rest, play, and connection as rewards to be earned rather than as essential human needs.
"The irony is that the very relationships that protect us from burnout are often the first things sacrificed in the pursuit of success," she notes.
Of course, many of us are lucky enough to have successful low-maintenance friendships, the kind where weeks or months can in fact pass without contact, yet when you finally do reconnect, it feels as though no time has passed at all.
Those friendships are often a testament to a deep and lasting bond. But they can't always provide the day-to-day sense of connection and community that humans need. Maybe that low-maintenance friend lives in another county, country, or simply occupies a different chapter of your life.
While those relationships remain important, they don't necessarily replace the people who are part of our everyday lives. That’s where community comes in.
Beyond our closest friendships, a sense of belonging to something larger than ourselves is fundamental to our psychological well-being.
"Humans are wired for belonging, not independence," explains Annie. "We often celebrate self-sufficiency, but psychologically we thrive when we feel held, witnessed and supported by others. A strong village isn't a luxury; it's one of our greatest protective factors for mental and emotional wellbeing."
And if we’re only catching up with our friends every once in a while, rather than living alongside them in the everyday moments, how can we expect them to show up when we need them most?
Recognising the problem is the first step toward strengthening your friendship. After that, it's about starting small and rethinking what your friendships actually require. There's no need to commit to three-hour coffee dates or elaborate plans squeezed into an already packed schedule.
More often, it's the small acts of connection that matter most. So instead, lower the bar and be realistic about what you can offer.
"A voice note, a 10-minute walk, sharing a thought when someone crosses your mind or creating a recurring monthly ritual can be enough," Annie believes. "Consistency matters more than grand gestures."
So rather than waiting for the next big catch-up, consider building small-low effort rituals into your existing routine. That could be a morning co-working session, going to the gym together, taking a midweek walk, sending a photo dump of your week, or even doing your weekly shop together.
Over time, these small touchpoints can create the foundation for bigger traditions. Perhaps it’s an annual girls' trip, quarterly game nights, or a yearly vision-board evening. The goal here isn't to fill your calendar with more commitments but to create recurring moments that bring people together.
Before long, those simple meet-ups stop feeling like events that need organising and start becoming part of your everyday life. Perhaps that's how we begin to rebuild the villages we’ve been missing.
At the end of the day, friendship is a two-way street and more often than not, drifting apart happens gradually and without intention on either side.
Whilst it’s easy to assume we're the ones who let time slip away, the other person has more than likely been just as caught up in the demands of everyday life.
"People often wait for the perfect apology or the perfect amount of time to reconnect, but relationships are surprisingly resilient when approached with sincerity," Annie says. "A simple, 'You've been on my mind, and I'd love to reconnect,’ is often all that's needed. The longer we wait, the bigger the hurdle feels."
Maybe that's the cost of catch-up culture. It's not that our friendships disappear. The milestones still get shared, the promotions, breakups, family news all make it into the conversation eventually, but friendship was never supposed to exist solely in the highlight reel. It's built in the ordinary moments too, the ones that might seem insignificant at the time but end up meaning far more than we realise.
We all talk about wanting a village or people we can rely on, but those things don't happen overnight. They’re built slowly, through consistency and showing up for one another. The reality is that most of us don't need more friends, we need more friendship.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
