The Evolution Of Friendship As You Age
Friends—how many of us have them?
Friends—ones we can depend on.
As the years go by the meaning of friendship continues to change. The definition of friendship is drastically different in grade school versus your thirties. It’s hard maintaining relations with your friends and even harder to make new friends as you age. It’s an obvious evolution, a normal process of life that your parents warned you about. You grasp at old times and events, reminiscing about them, wanting to relive those moments, only to realize that life is different now, your friends have moved on to new lives, as have you. But it remains difficult to accept that you and your friends have evolved to something new, something different. It makes you question why? Have you moved on from your friends, or have they moved on from you? Do they even think about you still or are you just some nostalgic memory that comes up every so often? As I get older I see my friends less and less. Is it me? Is it them? Or is it just a normal process of life that everyone goes through?
Going back to high school, I can honestly say that I keep in touch with only a handful of people from that era. Keeping in touch meaning more than just following them on social media. My college and medical school group of friends is still very much intact, but we are dispersed across the country and seeing them is a special occasion once a year, if we are lucky. After graduation we began our careers and time became a limiting factor. Environments and geography changed. Some moved to the East coast, some stayed in the West. The phone calls shortened and became less frequent. Conversations even became superficial at times, filled with small talk. But still, these guys who I grew up with are the definition of friends and will continue to be so until my last days because we once grew up together. It is different, however, as times goes on and you befriend people who you did not grow up with. Whether it be friends made at your place of work or meeting people randomly, maintaining these “new” relationships are often times difficult as the strong ties of your youth aren’t there to fall back on.
As life continues, school finishes, careers take off, your friends start finding partners. You are now married. This is great, as now there will be an endless amount of dub-dates planned, right?….Wrong. Reality sets in and you realize that your friends have less time for you after they find their significant others. Maybe they think the same about you since you got hitched. Then you start to wonder: are your friends changing because of their new partners? Have you changed? Even figuring out a time to play basketball or watch the new Marvel movie involves more than just your own schedule, but is that anyone’s fault?
As adulting progresses, your friends are now living completely different lives than you in regard to family. Some are single, some married and some with children. Life is drastically different amongst these three groups. Finding common ground becomes frustrating. You have tried to intertwine the groups but realize it’s difficult and at times awkward. Does that mean we can’t be friends unless we are all single, all married, or all have kids? Finding this new balance seems to be a real challenge though not impossible.
When you think of making friends the memories that flash in your mind are often from when you were young, when it was easy. You befriended people in class, teammates when you joined a sport, housemates when you moved to college and medical school. As you age and time continues to be a limiting factor it becomes harder to hold onto old friends and build new long-lasting relationships. But even while focusing on our careers and family we can still carve out time for those who matter. We can fix past relationships that we may have neglected, continue to build on longstanding friendships, and keep an open mind to new friends going forward.
So, who wants to go on a dub-date?