What no system can do
On the difference between scheduled contact and being in someone's mind.
“We can schedule contact, but we can’t schedule being thought of and reached for."
For a while we had a system.
A photo for the day, a series we’d watch once a week over FaceTime, an online game we played together when we had a moment. Small things to keep connected, and we built the system together, for a good reason.
The geographic distance between us was real, life was full at both ends, and the structure offered something we both wanted: more of each other across that distance. More texture, more variety, and more of the small reaches that make two people feel like they’re alongside each other when they can’t be physically.
It worked for a while.
Then gradually, it stopped being a source of connection and became a set of tasks. The daily photo had to be uploaded. The game moves had to be made. Watching the series didn’t properly get off the ground.
What began as a way of feeling connected turned into something we completed. The thoughts of each other that used to arrive on their own got pushed aside by the components built to carry them. It was a little bit before we said something, as there’s not really a good way to tell someone that the system you created to stay close, has started to feel like homework.
And here’s my part in it, which I have to write down or this whole piece is dishonest. I watched the system. I noticed when the photo arrived at 11pm instead of somewhere in the middle of the day. I noticed a game move sitting unplayed for two days, and I noticed when the series watching got rescheduled, and then rescheduled again. The structure gave me data, and I read it for meaning, which is not what it was built for and not what either of us wanted from it.
So we talked it over and decided to drop the system.
Shortly afterward, it was a Sunday afternoon. No prompt, no protocol. And my phone began lighting up with warmth and reach.
Messages about an audition they had. Their dog demanding back pats. Someone falling asleep on the couch before dinner. The ordinary texture of their afternoon and evening, including me in it, three hundred kilometres away.
Connection built on structure might keep us in contact, but it doesn’t always keep us close. The framework tells us when, and how often, to connect. But what most of us are actually hungry for is the unprompted reach. The message that didn’t have to happen but did because we were on their mind and they made the effort to let us know.
What I had wrong for years, across various relationships of differing nature, is this:
I thought unprompted reach was a thing you could build your way to, to train into habit.
That if the structure was good enough, and we ran it faithfully enough, the wanting to reach would follow. That a person who checks in because you’ve asked for it enough will adopt it as habit.
When the warmth thinned out, my default was to reach for architecture. More contact, better contact, a system to hold it. Embed things and make them ‘normal’. And I’d defend that system past the point where either of us was enjoying it.
But the truth I have come to accept is that we can schedule contact, but we can’t schedule being thought about or reached toward.
We can say that we’d like more of it, and things might adjust for a while. After that, it can only be received. Someone reaches for us of their own accord, or they don’t.
Wanting to be thought of and reached for is healthy, by the way. We don’t have to be falsely positive or fiercely independent and try and convince ourselves we don’t need it. We do.
Wanting to be in someone’s mind, and wanting the evidence of it, is one of the most fundamental human needs there is. The need isn’t the problem. The problem is what we do when it isn’t being met.
Over time, that unmet need is real information, and we’re allowed to take it seriously. To notice how often it happens, how it feels when it doesn’t, and to decide what we want to do with that information.
That’s the uncomfortable end of this. There’s nothing to build. There’s only what arrives or doesn’t, and what we make of it.
Three things to try.
Notice what’s driving the reach.
The next time you message someone, ask honestly: am I thinking of them, or do I want them to think of me? Both are fine, but the distinction is worth knowing.
Look at what your systems are protecting.
Most of us have one somewhere. A standing call, a check-in, a contact ritual we keep. Ask what it’s actually holding up, and what you’d be afraid of if it stopped.
Follow the small thought.
When someone crosses your mind, follow it to a message. Not a long one. The dog, the audition, the person asleep on the couch. The content isn’t the point; expressing the thought of them is.
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