Rekindling an old friendship is just as scary as talking to a stranger, a study suggests.
Researchers found most of us are hesitant about contacting past friends amid fears of being rebuffed or it being “awkward”.
Analysis of 2,500 participants revealed 90 per cent had lost touch with someone they still care about, yet 70 per cent felt neutral about reaching out.
The team, from the University of Sussex and Simon Fraser University in Canada, found people were surprisingly reluctant to reach out to past friends.
Dr Gillian Sandstrom, at the University of Sussex, said “With research finding it takes 200 hours of contact to turn a new acquaintance into a close friend, we wanted to find out if and why people were overlooking another pathway to meaningful connection – reviving pre-existing close friendships.”
The study, published in Nature Communications Psychology, found that when people practised social connection with current friends, they became more confident about reaching out to an old pal.
Professor Lara Aknin, at Simon Fraser University, hopes the findings “prompt other people to send that first message to someone they miss in their lives.”