Click

Ever meet someone and you just hit it off? You finish each others thoughts and find yourself laughing together, content to just sit and talk. Call it chemistry, call it spark, call it energy. Whatever it is, you just click and you feel like you've known them forever. It happens.

I'm the kind of guy that doesn't have a lot of people that I call friends. I know many, many people and get along with lots of folks, but to call someone friend, I have very few of those.

In fact right now, honestly I only have two really good friends. These are the type of friends that you'd do anything for. The kind that could call at 3:30 in the morning and know you wouldn't be upset. These guys have got my back (for lack of more current terminology), and I definitely have theirs.

But the interesting thing is, neither one of them I just clicked with. I've known one for 7 years, the other for 5, and it's taken a long time to call them friends. It's been a deliberate process to cultivate the friendships, concientiously taking the time and energy to build and foster the relationship. Maybe that's why those friendships feel hot and cold at times. When we do hang out, it's all good. But sometimes we go weeks without getting together. One is a police officer who works a ton of extra jobs, and the other is a facilities manager at a church. So I get they both have jobs that keep them busy. And they both have wives, kids, families. But our friendships definitely cycle a lot. It's nice when the cycles are opposite, but sometimes they synchronize, and that makes for some lonely times.

I'm not sure that it matters though, if the relationship is easy or hard. Both ways are valid. Looking back my relationship with my wife didn't just click straight off either. In fact she's told me she didn't find me terribly good-looking the first few times I sat next to her in class. And I remember that I deliberately decided I wanted to know her and initiated conversation every time I saw her. Slowly over the course of a semester our relationship grew. Sometimes I wonder if I hadn't been so adamant about getting to know her if we'd have dated and gotten married. Does that have repercussions in our marriage? I'm guessing probably so, but I don't know what off hand.

Anyway, I recently clicked with someone and thinking about it I just found it curious that outside of my kids, of my 3 closest relationships none are that natural, instant kindred spirit feeling. That probably says something about my ability to relate to the world, but I'm too tired to explore that part of it right now.