Closeness vs relationship health

Grenier shows two things about every contact that look similar but mean different things: their closeness and their relationship health. Closeness tells you how close someone is to you; relationship health tells you whether you're keeping up with them.

Closeness is a stable level you set — or that Grenier suggests from your message history — and it sets the target keep-in-touch cadence. Garden is your closest people at about 30 days, Orchard is regular contact at about 90 days, Cornfield is occasional but real at about 180 days, and Meadow is rare or one-sided at about 365 days. Closeness doesn't change unless you move someone.

Relationship health is a tier — Mature, Growing, or Fallow — scored from how recently and often you've been in touch, the give-and-take balance of your messages, and recent signals. Crucially, it's measured relative to the closeness cadence: Mature means well-tended and on track, Growing means active but needing attention, and Fallow means slipping or overdue. Health shifts over time as you do (or don't) reach out.

Because health is measured against the closeness cadence, the same gap means different things for different people. 60 days of silence pushes a Garden contact to Fallow — you're overdue against a 30-day target — but leaves a Meadow contact comfortably Mature, since that is well inside a 365-day target.

So the two work together: closeness tells you who matters, and health tells you who needs attention right now. The most urgent person to reach out to is a Garden contact who has gone Fallow.

One pairing that often looks confusing: Meadow (a closeness level) and Fallow (a health tier) feel like the same thing, but they aren't. A distant contact you've also stopped tending will usually show up as both — that's two true things at once, not one label measuring the other.