Direct answer: start with relationships that were genuinely meaningful, recover the shared context, understand whether the relationship is simply dormant or actively deteriorating, and reconnect as a human before turning the conversation into an ask.

Dormant is a relationship state—not a synonym for inactive contact.

RelationshipsIQ applies Relationship Weather only where enough relationship evidence exists to justify the label. Someone you connected with but never meaningfully interacted with should not be called a dormant relationship. A former manager, buyer or colleague with substantial shared history can be dormant even after years of silence.

1. Start with the history.

Useful evidence can include meaningful two-way interaction, relationship duration, shared work context, recommendations and user verification. The purpose is to establish that a relationship existed before trying to reactivate it.

2. Separate dormancy from deterioration.

A dormant strong tie may simply have gone quiet. A cooling or at-risk relationship may show a decline from a previously stronger interaction pattern. Relationship Weather makes those states different because the appropriate response is different.

3. Add current goal relevance without rewriting the past.

A strong dormant relationship can become more strategically relevant because of the objective you chose. If a later snapshot shows that a former colleague changed company or moved into a more relevant role, the product can show that change explicitly. A single export should not pretend it knows when that change occurred.

4. Recover the story before drafting the message.

What did you work on together? What did you appreciate about the relationship? What changed in your own life or work? Good reconnection begins with context, not with a template that pretends the gap never happened.

5. Reconnect before you ask.

If the relationship has been quiet for years, the first move may simply be to reopen contact. Reciprocity can reinforce that decision by surfacing when helping, introducing someone or sharing useful context is more appropriate than making a request.

6. Keep the queue small enough to act on.

The useful output is not “438 inactive contacts.” It is a bounded list of historically meaningful relationships whose current relevance, Weather and evidence justify attention now.

Do not automate intimacy.

Relationship intelligence can prioritize attention and recover context. It should not fabricate familiarity, claim a relationship that never existed or turn dormant trust into an autonomous outreach campaign.