The visit planned for months can feel pressured to represent the whole friendship.

Where time together is rare, the occasion gets asked to carry everything that has accumulated. Every meal has to be good, every conversation has to matter, and an ordinary flat hour starts to feel like evidence about the friendship itself. The pressure comes from scarcity rather than from either person. Friendships built on frequency are allowed dull afternoons, and the ones built on visits often forget that they are too.

Plan at least one unremarkable stretch into a visit, a walk or a shopping trip with nothing riding on it. Being a little bored together is part of what closeness is made from.