Friction is part of the relationship

Technology has trained us to treat friction as a defect. If something takes too long, requires too many steps, creates uncertainty or demands effort, somebody will eventually promise to remove the friction. That logic makes perfect sense for booking train tickets or filling out tax forms. I am less convinced it applies cleanly to relationships.

Human communication contains enormous amounts of friction. We misunderstand each other. We use the wrong word. We pause too long. We have to ask what somebody meant. We write a message, delete it, rewrite it and still get it wrong. We learn that one friend goes quiet when hurt, another jokes when uncomfortable, another needs three days before they can explain what happened. None of this is efficient. But learning how a specific person communicates is part of knowing that person.

AI can remove a surprising amount of this friction, and sometimes that is a gift. But some of the awkwardness it removes is exactly where we used to meet each other. A relationship is not merely successful transmission of information between two endpoints. It is also the accumulated knowledge of how this particular human being hesitates, apologizes, misunderstands, withdraws, repairs and tries again. If we optimize all of that away, communication may become easier while relationships become thinner.