Is a friendship over when we stop talking as often?

Rabbi Landau teaches that “friendship never dies. It just goes quiet, and you think the quiet means it's over. It's not.” People say “we used to be close” as if something ended. “Nothing ended. It just got a new schedule.”

Picture two best friends. One gets married, has a child, takes a job that eats up his whole week, and stops calling like he used to. “So he's less of a friend now? No, he's the exact same amount of friend. You are confusing the schedule with the bond.”

With real friends, the check-ins get rarer, but when they finally happen, they go deeper. “One real hour with him now beats a month of the old daily text.” King Solomon said, “B'chol eis ohev hare'a,” a friend loves at all times. “At all times, the busy one too. Less time was never less friendship.”

Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level

Surface claim

Friendships do not die when they go quiet; they get a new schedule.

Fear, vulnerability, or tension

The sense that something has ended when a friend stops calling. In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau describes feeling it “sometimes without saying it out loud.”

What may be behind it

Confusing the schedule with the bond. In A Soul at Peace he writes that the bond of love and how often it shows on the outside “are not the same, and they do not have to move together.”

Deepest human truth

A friend loves at all times, including the busy times and the silent ones. Less time was never less friendship.

More questions from this teaching

• How should you measure the strength of a friendship?