Rekindling Old Friendships: The Art of Reviving Dormant Connections

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Hi there,

We’re now 100 days into the year 2025, and I’m having this weird sense of déjà vu to five years ago when the world wasn’t yet a month into the COVID shutdown.

The news headlines back in April 2020 were overflowing with stories of the shutdown's catastrophic financial impacts, the devastation of our status quo, and the denialism of those who simply refused to believe things were as bad as the experts were warning.

My coping mechanism back then was to scan the headlines to find the stories that offered hope, that offered a path forward, and that pointed me toward connecting with other humans going in that direction.

The discipline required then was to block out the urge to click on the fear-inducing headlines and instead look for the headlines offering optimism so the algorithms would learn what I was after: connection with other hopeful people.

In times of crisis, the most beneficial thing we can do is strengthen our social ties: to remind others that we care for them and to feel the safety of being cared for by them.

We are safer in groups than we are alone.

As the pandemic played out in 2020, we saw the rapid rise of all kinds of technologies and systems that facilitated virtual connections while we physically isolated ourselves to prevent the spread of a deadly contagion.

We put up with a lot of technical shortcomings (crappy bandwidth, out-of-sync sound, crappy video)—things we would not have tolerated pre-pandemic—because the desire for connection with others was so strong. (Did anyone else buy ZOOM stock at the peak?)

We did all this because we need each other, especially in times of crisis.

And now, here we are in 2025, and the headlines are full of stories of an administration’s policies wreaking catastrophic financial impacts, the disruption to the status quo, and weird denialism that things are not as bad as they are.

We’ve seen tens of thousands of people have lost their civil servant jobs in the name of efficiency, and there’s no benevolent rhyme or reason why.

In the absence of logic, we’re left to assume malevolence or incompetence: a heady cocktail for uncertainty.

And we know how uncertainty plays out in the global market: it’s only a matter of time before the private sector starts contracting as it prepares for an economic downturn.

If past downturns are any indication, this means we’re headed for an extended period of social discomfort (via scatterings) as work lives are disrupted, which means the newly unemployed and those who care for them will find their social lives disrupted.

We can’t do much about this at the macroeconomic level (that’s by design, by the way), but we can do a whole lot at the local level with those literally within reach.

It’s time to remind those you care about that they are cared for. It’s time to remind those that you love that you love them. It’s time to make each other feel like we matter, because we do.

It’s time to strengthen our networks because networking is a practice, not a collection. I’ll show you how I’m doing it after a word from this week’s sponsor…

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Strengthen Your Networks through Reaching Out to Old and Cold Connections

I’ve been busy the last few weeks, practicing what I preach in this newsletter by reaching out to friends and former colleagues I haven’t spoken with for at least five years: since pre-COVID times.

In addition to putting myself in places where I can meet new friends, I’m reactivating my existing network of old and cold connections: people I was once close to but have lost touch with.

I want to revive connections with people I once considered close friends and associates to remind them they matter to me, to learn what’s happened to them since we last spoke, and to offer any help I might be able to provide them as the modern-day version of me.

I know I’ve personally accomplished and changed (and failed and learned) a lot in the last five years. My assumption is they have, as well.

So, what’s the harm in checking in?

At the very least, I’ll get to hear their story about how they’ve filled the time.

At the very best, I’ll spark a closer connection, and we can resume what was once a strong relationship that had faded for no reason other than “priorities changed.”

To make my list of people to reach out to, I scrolled through the profile pictures on both my Friends List on Facebook and my Connections List on LinkedIn and picked out a dozen people whose profile picture made me light up.

From that dozen, I managed to calendar nine thirty-minute calls over the last few weeks and did my best to take them on ZOOM but resorted to a plain old telephone call with one due to scheduling.

My ground rules for approaching each call were to

1. lead with curiosity (“What’s the most exciting thing you’re doing right now?” and “What have you been up to since we last saw each other?” and “What have you had to unlearn lately?”)

2. listen more than talk, and

3. end the call with a date on the calendar to connect again within 90 days to keep the connection alive.

I would consider the call a successful reconnect if we both had a calendared date to follow up with each other again (90 days out, max).

Based on whom I had selected to reconnect with, I expected to rekindle all nine relationships and strengthen my network accordingly.

That’s not exactly what happened, though.

On every call, I found that renewing our connection gave me a rush of nostalgia and uplift.

We often forget how good it is to hear from someone we haven’t spoken to in a while until their voice hits our ears.

Layer on top of this aural input the “instant aging” that we experience witnessing an old friend suddenly appearing at least five years older (and a survived global pandemic) than the last time we talked, and there’s lots of discombobulation coloring the mix.

Oh, and I’m sporting a beard for the first time since I was twenty, so that was a consistent source of comments in each call.

Some calls even lasted longer than the 30 minutes we had on the calendar. I feel good knowing that this touchpoint is the first of many more to come soon.

However, not every call met my criteria for success, as I only have six follow-up calls on my calendar.

Some Connections Are Meant to Stay Old and Cold

This is because, during three of these calls, I realized that while I enjoyed reconnecting and catching up, I didn’t feel a need to put extra time into the connection at this point in my life.

Being friends and maintaining close social connections takes time and attention to nurture the relationship. While I’d like to be good friends with everyone, I know I need to make choices and prioritize spending my social capital on those who will give as much as they receive in our interactions.

As a reformed people-pleaser, it still feels unkind to decide that a friendship no longer fits, but it’s the decision I have to make to hold space for new friendships that really do serve me well.

I’m old enough to have the discernment necessary to know that just because we can be close friends again doesn’t mean we should be.

So while six of my reconnections reaffirmed that they are the kinds of people I want to be more closely connected to, the other three did not, and here’s why:

• During one call, after we did the obligatory catch-up, I realized that while we’d been close colleagues back when, without the workplace proximity, we actually didn’t have too much in common outside that particular job.

• During another call, I was reminded that our differing political leanings, which had never been a sore spot in the past, were suddenly front and center.

• And the third call’s interaction was pleasant enough, but I could tell we are on diverging paths, and I can’t see the value in trying to merge our paths together again.

So, I made the judgment call during the conversation to just let our connection begin its gentle settling back into the “old and cold” pile.

Now, I’m emotionally intelligent enough to end a conversation nicely. Unless and until they find this newsletter on their own, they won’t know our call didn’t meet my criteria for success.

But I do know that if I change my mind, I can reach out to them again and pick right back up.

It’s all a good reminder that our friendships go through chapters and seasons as we age and mature and go through life changes.

Some of our friendship arcs are short because of our stage of life when we make them.

In some of our friendship arcs, we can’t even foresee an end coming.

But all friendships eventually come to an end.

After all, we’re mortal.

And if we want to extend our years here on earth, especially the enjoyable ones, we’ve got to keep making new friends.

What are you doing to make new friends this weekend?

What company of strangers have you decided to join?

Oh, and remember the small talk and eye contact.

Your (and our) future happiness is counting on you.

Transferable Skills between Dating and Friend-Making

I’m not going to lie, there’s a lot of overlap between the skills required to make friends and those useful to find someone to be more-than-a-friend with. As I find relevant podcasts and pieces that fit both spaces, I’ll share them here.

What’s been your experience reaching out to old and cold connections? Have you reconnected only to realize you need to leave it alone? Do you have something you think could help others? Just hit reply — your email goes straight to my inbox. 🙏