Audit · calculator
Relationship decay calculator
Every relationship cools when you stop touching it — some in weeks, some over years. Enter how long it's been, how deep the relationship got, and whether you ever exchanged value, and get an honest read on whether this contact is still warm, cooling, cold, or effectively a stranger.
Still in each other's world
Estimated warmth
This contact is cooling — a low-effort, value-add touch now keeps it from going cold.
A rough estimate, not a verdict — warmth decays faster for shallower ties and slower for ones built over years. Runs entirely in your browser.
Why relationships decay silently
Warmth isn’t a fixed property of a relationship — it’s a running balance that drains every week you don’t touch it. The drain is invisible: nothing happens, no one tells you a tie went cold, and by the time you need it, the context that made reconnecting easy has already faded. Shallow ties drain fast; ones built over years drain slowly; value you’ve exchanged and a shared world both buy you time. The mistake is waiting until you need someone to notice the balance is gone.
What to do with the score
The point of a warmth read isn’t to grade the relationship — it’s to decide whether to act now. A cooling contact is the cheapest one to save: a single specific, low-effort, value-add touch resets the clock. A coldone needs a real reason to reconnect, not a generic hello. And a contact that’s become effectively a strangeris best treated as a fresh introduction, with honest context for why you’re back in touch. Whichever band you land in, the move is the same: reach out before it slips one band further.
FAQ
When does a relationship go cold?
There's no single deadline — it depends on depth. A one-off acquaintance can cool within weeks of silence, while a relationship built over years can survive a year or more of no contact. The pattern is the same: shallower ties decay fast, deeper ones decay slowly, and value you've exchanged buys you time.
How long before a contact forgets you?
People rarely forget you outright, but they stop holding context about you fairly quickly — often within a few months for a light acquaintance. What fades first is the specific detail (what you discussed, what you offered), which is exactly what makes a warm reconnect feel effortless versus a cold one feel like starting over.
How do you revive a cooling relationship?
Reach out before it goes fully cold, and lead with value rather than a generic 'long time, how are you.' Reference the specific shared context, send something genuinely useful to them, or acknowledge the gap honestly. A small, low-effort, value-add touch resets the clock far more reliably than a big ask.
Does staying in touch really matter?
Yes — most opportunities, introductions, and help come through warm ties, not cold ones. A relationship you've kept warm costs almost nothing to draw on; one you've let go cold takes real effort to reopen, and sometimes can't be reopened at all. The cost of a periodic light touch is tiny compared to losing the tie.
What counts as a touch?
Any genuine, low-friction signal that you still hold them in mind: a reply to their post, a relevant article, a congratulations, a quick question, a short note. It doesn't need to be a meeting or a favor. What matters is that it's specific to them and asks little — that's what keeps warmth from decaying.
Is this calculator accurate?
It's a deliberately simple, deterministic estimate — not a measurement. It models the well-documented pattern that warmth decays over time, faster for shallow ties and slower for deep ones, adjusted for reciprocity and shared context. Treat the number as a prompt to act, not a precise score.
How Wend handles this
The hard part isn't reviving a cold contact — it's noticing it's cooling before it goes cold. Wend watches the relationships you care about and flags the ones drifting toward cold while a small, well-timed touch still keeps them warm.
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