03.11.2026
In my life in London, I keep on meeting new people. And these new people hang about for a while. Sometimes, one feels a connection with them. So we will hang out together. But then, the new people leave for somewhere else. And then? Do you ever see them again? Do they ever message again? Do you ever find out what happened in the next chapter of their lives?
The ones that I remember most clearly are three young women. One day, after hanging out together on several occasions, separately with each one, they just disappeared. They didn’t reply to messages any more. There was no reason for it. Nothing had happened. You can just get ghosted in a friendship.
For the most part, friendships in London are fickle. Once, I read a newspaper article about this. What people call their friends nowadays are usually their work colleagues, or the students that they studied with. Just people that happened to be around in professional contexts. These are all just friendships of convenience.
Yet, I have my real friends in my local area. Where did I meet these friends? It started off with a reading group in a library. We used to share readings, ideas and discussions together. Then, we started hanging out together in our free time as we enjoyed meeting up so much. One guy had lots of people that he knew in the area so all of us started hanging out together. Then we started making friends with friends of friends. And we’ve been hanging out now for the past few years. We go everywhere together. On long walks and cultural attractions. We meet up regularly in the pub. These people I have met in real life. Real life outside of work, volunteering and study. They are not friends of convenience.
In fact, these are my friends from when I did not have a job. I couldn’t get a job as a university professor. I didn’t have much money. And yet, none of them judged me for it. Nobody looked at my status before they made friends with me. They are the friends from the tough and the lean times. They are not fairweather friends.
The difference between a friend of convenience and a friend from real life is vast. You get much more support, care and attention from the friends from real life. Because they have time to do it. You don’t have to talk about work or professional contexts with them. You talk about everything else. And the real friends, they show up. They come to things when you invite them, instead of giving excuses. Even holidays abroad. They show up consistently to things and you keep in touch regularly and know what is going on in each other’s lives. There is no professional reserve. And you know that you are never going to get ghosted by them.
Still, the nature of a trusting and open person is that he will always invite people to be friends. The reality is that you are always going to be meeting new people in London, exciting people. And then you will want to be friends with them. And even though life shows you that you shouldn’t trust people, still you will want to trust them. The only thing that will show you who your real friends are is time. Behaviour over time. Performance over time. That is how trust, love and friendship is built up. You don’t know who to trust until it has been a while.
