A friendship can be organized around a place neither person especially likes.

Friendships often organise themselves around a place neither person actually likes. A mediocre pub, a bad café, a particular route: what makes it valuable is not the location but the fact that it removes the need to decide anything. The unloved venue is doing the work of making the meeting effortless.

This is worth protecting rather than improving. If a friendship has a default place, resist the urge to upgrade it, since novelty adds a decision and decisions are where regular meetings die. And if a friendship has drifted, the fix is frequently not a better plan but a fixed and unremarkable one.