These days, meeting friends feels like much more of an undertaking than it used to be. Friend dates have to be planned at least a month in advance, and it often takes a thorough rejigging of schedules before landing on what seems to be the perfect—or let’s be honest, most convenient—two-hour time slot. By the time you sit across from your friend in a restaurant, you’ve lived through job transitions, heartbreak and health scares. In between ordering mains and paying the bill, you try your best to condense half a year’s worth of personal development. But the clock eventually runs out. The cycle repeats.
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This is what friendships increasingly look like in adulthood: difficult to make happen, meticulously planned and ruthlessly efficient. Somehow, scoring tickets to your favourite band feels easier than securing a spot on your friends’ calendars.
Between imminent catch-ups, compiling personal highlights, juicy gossip and other newsworthy bits also takes work. Every noteworthy moment has to be filed away for the next ‘life debrief’. Yet, we feel strangely underwhelmed after catching up. Everything has technically been covered, so why doesn’t it feel as fulfilling as it should?
Friendship, optimised
Perhaps because friendship has become yet another thing to optimise. Professional counsellor Carmen from Talk Your Heart Out, a Singapore-based therapy and counselling service, believes that catch-up culture is nothing new. It’s part and parcel of adulting. When left with limited energy and time, it’s in our nature to choose the fastest and most efficient way of doing things. For most, work, family and self-care take priority.
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Thus, catch-up culture or structuring friendships around sporadic updates rather than shared daily experiences, makes sense. It’s a pragmatic option that allows us to feel like we’re investing in friendship—spending limited time together is better than choosing not to meet entirely.
But an imposed time limit means each session effectively becomes a friendship admin meeting. Instead of creating new memories together, the focus shifts to running through a checklist of life events. As a result, friendships become more superficial, says Sze Jin, founder of psychology and counselling clinic A Kind Place. “Closeness typically develops through consistent, repeated interactions over time,” the psychologist explains. “Without that regular contact, it’s harder to build depth, trust and familiarity.”
Knowing that a catch-up is impending also means we can curate our checklist of life events and choose to omit things we don’t necessarily feel like rehashing or opening up about. The spontaneity or authenticity that comes from merely existing and growing next to each other then disappears. “We get to present who we want to be in those two hours, and then for the next six months they don’t really know who we are,” says Carmen. “If we’re just catching up, then we don’t even know how a person has changed over time. All we see is this person in snapshots.”
The illusion of staying connected
Friendships haven’t always existed in this liminal space. Back in school, close proximity enabled us to share fleeting moments—a funny remark or knowing looks here and there. The minutiae are what quietly shape relationships. “When those shared structures fall away, maintaining the relationship requires more intentional effort,” says Sze Jin. Although texting or asynchronous communication may seem like the next best way to stay connected in adulthood, sometimes, it only exacerbates the problem.
Social media posts can also lull you into a false sense of being kept in the loop. But liking a story isn’t quite the same as experiencing an event and processing emotions together. In the end, the feeling of constantly having to go through things alone creeps up on you. “Catch-up culture can contribute to feelings of loneliness or a sense of not having real support, even if someone technically has friends,” Sze Jin illuminates. “The lack of ongoing connection may reduce opportunities for emotional sharing and co-regulation.”
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Part of this drift is structural. In Singapore, where a nuclear family dynamic is embedded into the social fabric and its policies, it’s only natural that more attention is given to the romantic partners you intend to build a life with. As romantic relationships come to the fore, friendships consequently fade into the background and with them, the quality communication you once had with friends.
Going beyond the calendar invite
As more people lament the isolating effects of catch-up culture, brands have responded in kind. Today, social and running clubs, art jamming, and other activity-centric third spaces provide low-pressure environments to spend time with your friends. But even those cost money and can become tiring and repetitive after a while.
To move beyond maintenance towards nourishing a friendship, both mental health professionals agree that intentionality is the key to forging deeper connections. “Things like running errands would be a good place to start,” suggests Carmen. “We’re already doing day-to-day activities like commuting and going to the gym or on a walk. Can we then incorporate our friends into this?”
By creating a friendship ritual, mundane routines transform into something to look forward to and eventually become a core tenet of your friendship foundation.
Ultimately, Sze Jin says catch-up culture isn’t inherently problematic—some friendships aren’t meant to exist beyond a certain emotional level. If you’re happy with how things are, more power to you. But if deeper connection is what you seek, you may have to vocalise your needs and make a conscious effort. “What matters is whether the level of connection meets each person’s relational needs,” she explains. “Relationships tend to feel more sustaining when there is a mix of both intentional check-ins and shared everyday experiences.”
If catch-up culture exists to maintain our friendships, perhaps everyday rituals are what allow them to grow. The goal isn’t necessarily to burn yourself out trying to carve more time, but to make room for each other in the lives you’re already living. The errands, the workouts, the walks home—the moments with no agenda might usually end up saying more than the catch-up itself.
