the proverb that i hate the most is "absence makes the heart grow fonder." this is a load of manure -- absence makes the heart forget, while presence makes the heart remember.
this is for quite a few reasons. first of all, people in general are more themselves in person. instinctively, we compare all of our interactions with people on the same playing field, so if we're talking only on the phone to some people and seeing some other people in person, the people on the phone will come off as less distinguished than the realer folks. (this cuts both ways; the fantastic people will come off as less so, while the people you can't stand will come off as more amenable, especially since you're unlikely to be communicating with them at all, which makes the forgetting even stronger.)
second of all, with that distance, you' re a lot more likely to overinterpret aberrations in people's personalities, aberrations that everyone has. you remember the last time you talked to someone the more strongly the rarer you see them. and so your image of someone ends up going through long periods of being inaccurate in different ways, while at the same time the person's evolution is interpreted as a jagged process. the result, i think, is to dehumanize the person, because you can't apply a smoothing process to conclude a continuous and also consistent personality. all you have are the snapshots, which don't seem like they could really be representative of a real person.
third of all, the bottom line is that it is much more productive to think about people whose lives you can affect more viscerally. some of my best friends are people i rarely think about, because i simply cannot affect their lives much from a distance. i'm always thrilled to hear from them and i love them incredibly deeply in those rare moments that we are together, but i think my emotions have finally come to some sort of terms with the fact that this distance makes the thoughts largely counterproductive (yes, counter-, because i think myself into circles.)
well, i guess i'm pining, so maybe not. but back to the thesis.
this general statement is a huge contributing factor into the inertia trap that i mentioned before. when you're in a life, you are constantly exposed to the things you are living, the people who are fundamentally entwined into your life (esp. significant others, of course), and it's very easy to see why those things make you happy. meanwhile, everything on the periphery of your life seems inconsistent and uncertain, and it's hard to remember why those things make you happy when they currently have relatively little effect. and furthermore, it's easy to assume that those things make you happy only as a diversion.
and i think a lot of people really do this. it's really just adapting to the world around you; your interests shift to align with what is accessible to you. obviously you like the stuff (i'm thinking of hobbies, things that you do more often now that they fit your life), or you wouldn't be there in the first place, but there's probably other stuff that doesn't occur to you as much anymore. and when it does occur to you, you feel less comfortable with it, and you have lost a bit of fluency, and so forth.
this last part is a wild overextrapolation, but it may be a universal feature of humanity that you always want to do what you're doing the best you've ever done it. i certainly feel that way; the most disheartening feeling i get is the feeling that i have done this better before, that i am on the downside of my life both generally and specifically. and of course if you try to pick something back up, or if you do something sporadically that you once did more frequently, you're not going to be as thrilled by it because you simply won't be doing it as well.
this applies to people as well as hobbies. so combined with the fundamental inadequacy of interacting with anyone aside from in-person is the fact that when you do see them in person, it probably won't be as fluent as it was before. (admittedly, i have two counterarguments here: first of all, the less frequently you see someone, the more things you have to talk about with them, which gives you an element of bursting exuberance, and second of all, i guess i do feel that with my best friends the fluency never goes anywhere at all. which really defines this set of lifelong friends. even though i'm always worried about it with them anyway, perhaps more so since it would be pretty damning to lose a lifelong friend, at least that's what i think my emotions are thinking. but it's wonderful -- somehow with these wonderful people i can't outthink myself, no matter what insecurities i have.)
and so you will always feel a letdown, which you can easily come up with many reasons for (you've exhausted what you have to talk about with the person, you two have diverged on the path of life, your friendship was a result of circumstances, and so forth.) and these reasons may be true. but a contributing factor is the letdown of not having the rapport that you once had simply because your heart has forgotten what their heart is like and vice versa. it shows up in subtle ways -- not completing each other's sentences correctly, slipping in references you've forgotten they don't know or modes of conversation that you've forgotten you don't synergize with them in.
and so it is that you continue with what you're constantly getting better at, which is the stuff you do. which is another input into inertia. and of course if you do break out of that box, you're not going to get that comfort level with the new life for a very long time, which is clear and daunting. you're going to have days like my last couple when you're inexplicably down, where your heart just sort of cracks for no good reason. and where you run back calling the person who understands you, the person who you have that completely fluent interaction.
not that this is in any way a bad thing or something i regret or whatever, i'm not saying that; i'm just saying that the transition from a fairly steady life to a highs-and-lows life is difficult, because while the highs are magnificent, the lows, no matter how infrequent, are periods when you can't help but remember that it didn't have to be this way. and during them it's hard to remember that they go together (not that i'm convinced that they do.) i guess the solution is to take the best parts from everything, to be perfect and continually evolving in all of your relationships and hobbies and whatever.