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Some people become friends for life. At least for me, they were the people I became friends with during my formative years. From my teens and up until young adulthood. Looking back, we became friends due to shared interests (movies, books, music), hobbies, and just general chemistry.

Other people, you become friends with due to some shared situation. School, work, place you live, the places you go/frequent, etc. Once that changes (you graduate, switch jobs, etc.), your friendship can change.

And, of course, your other responsibilities will influence how much time you can use on people. Especially children can have a huge impact on that - kids just take up so much time, and combined with work and other things, it is really difficult to prioritize other things. It is not at all uncommon that once people get kids, they disappear for a solid 5-10 years, and will want to catch up again when things calm down.

As young adults, most people have few responsibilities, and impulsivity is high. What I miss about being a young 20-something was how easy and willing everyone were to do stuff. Go on a hike, go watch a movie, go on a pub crawl? Sure, just give me 15 minutes. Book a trip to some other country? Could do that just a couple of weeks ahead.

These days you'll have to check your calendar 3 months in advance to just shoot the shit.

I think the change started when me and my friends started nearing 30 / late 20s. That's when people were really bogged down with work, met their future spouse / partner, and started focusing on self-realization (working out, hobbies, side hustles, whatever), and of course - kids.

Now that most of us are in our late 30s, things are a bit easier. Those that got kids have more spare time, as the kids have grown older. Seniority at work means they aren't giving it all for the sake of promotions. More financial freedom. Things more stable, and people can catch up again.

With that said, some days I really do miss the days of youth.

This is a common sentiment, that your friends during formative years are those that are lasting relationships. I remember hearing a theory that correlated with my learnings: friendships are made stronger by having intense experiences. As a kid, you are constantly learning and doing things for extended periods with friends. You have way more chances to do something new or reckless or whatever. Similarly, many veterans are friends for life with their brothers in arms because, well, they were doing crazy intense stuff together for years.

As an adult, friendships are hard to grow for the same reason. Grabbing dinner with someone is not going to leave the same impression as, say, getting shot at. The adult friendships I have that are close I attribute to: 1. Friend's dad died shortly after we met, and we bonded throughout that time. 2. I went on an impromptu Vegas trip with friend 3. We went through grad school stress together 4. We spent a lot of time together at chess club. Nothing was intense, but frequently seeing this person solidified our relationship. Oh, he was teetering on divorce at one point, it could be that too.

> during my formative years

Here's your answer: your friends formed yourself, and you formed them. No surprise they are like you. Even if you think they are very different from you, that's only because the differences are more pronounced from up close.

Why does self-realization mean not having friends?

The article starts with:

> On a warm July evening, I dove into bed and grabbed my phone, giddy and anxious. As I scrolled through TikTok, attempting to calm my nerves, a Google Calendar notification flashed on the screen: “VIDEO CALL WITH SIMONE.”

> Before I could swipe the reminder away, Simone FaceTimed me.

That makes me want to build a "Tinder" for rebooting relationships: select who of your friends you want to talk to, and after they do the same, the app will schedule a video call, and you'll be connected with... a mystery friend from your past! For people who don't like surprises, if both parties vote to reveal their names, you'll know who you're reconnecting with.

Or if you don't get any matches, the app will connect you to a mental health/relationship councillor...

They already built the app for rebooting relationships. A few times. A lot of the enthusiasm about web2.0 sites like MySpace and Facebook came from the ability to reconnect with people from your past. If they’d kept Facebook what it was in 2007 it would still be a useful tool.

I have friends across the world. I talk with 7 of them every quarter.

We have scheduled video calls on our calendar. And after every call, we put notes on the call schedule.

Before the call, we get notified and we confirm if both parties will be available over text message.

Years ago, I met someone at a large company and they perused a friendship with me. I was always friendly, and I invited them to larger parties because I considered them part of my extended group of friends.

But, they really struggled at life. I moved away, and I never made the effort to keep in touch.

A few years ago they called me to talk. We caught up, and it was clear they still struggled at life. A few phone calls later, they got "stuck" on a topic and wouldn't converse, instead arguing with me when there was no argument to have. I ended the call, and I don't really want to hear from them again. (Basically, they were going off on their opinions about guns and not listening enough to me to know when I was agreeing and when my opinion differed.)

It became clear why they struggle at life, and it's disappointing that they don't have the insight into why they struggle.

Friendships come and go over the years is something I have learned in my life. We dont always have the same value systems and because of that, its natural to drift apart and not talk as frequently as we used to

This is something I am learning as a late bloomer in life, as I didnt have too many friends more so business acquaintances growing up

The hardest lessons I hace learned though is during major life transitions - sometimes you are off on your own, you have to manage that transition yourself and cannot rely on anyone in particular through it

Friendships require work but sometimes they arent on equal terms either, and when things shift away that created that strong bond to begin with, people drift apart. Thats something that is hard to cope with, that sense of loss in wanting that nostaglic connection again

There’s a lot of friends to whom I don’t talk much now and never occurred to me that they might think we’re no longer friends.

This article made me aware of that, not sure if I’ll do something about it though

> never occurred to me that they might think we’re no longer friends.

Me neither and the whole idea seems inconceivable. Unless there was some kind of breakup, why would anyone think that periods of disconnect equals no longer being friends?

> not sure if I’ll do something about it though

Is there anything to do? If someone truly believes you are no longer friends then you are no longer friends. No need to beat a dead horse.

Life Transitions 4

Lack of mutual effort 4

Diverging values 3

Miscommunication 2.5

Geographic distance 2.5

Emotional disengagement 2

(Since article is lacking a conclusion - or the conclusion is a weird direction, "should I talk to my ex" - I guess I'm not the target demo)

Diverging values I think is why it’s not a bad thing that marriage is being postponed closer to 30 now. Promising to be with someone forever when you don’t even know who you or they are yet is wishful thinking at best and lying at worst.

If we ever find a way to delay puberty without delaying formation of the prefrontal cortex, I think humanity will be in for a better time. You’ll get a few more years of being able to have kids after you know who you are.

The other way is that you make a commitment early and that you mold your personalities together as you grow older. Delaying marriage to “find yourself” is not always a good thing; I forget the exact term used in a very thoughtful essay on this, but it’s something like “my grandmother’s bookshelf”. By the time you’re in your mid-thirties, grandma’s bookshelf that you inherited is so important that anyone who doesn’t love it must not love you. In reality, grandma’s bookshelf is important - but so is building a life with another person, and you can’t let it keep you from that.

It’s not perfect, but nothing is. Life happens whether or not you’re paying attention.

There is a saying from my parents’ country that translates to:

Young tree branches are more flexible and able to bend than old branches, which tend to be stiffer and more prone to breaking.

Do people who get married and have children diverge in values at the same rate as unmarried people who live together? Or do they tend to converge rather and align their attitudes to the common interests of the family?

"Who you are" is not a stable thing, nor is it a mystery suddenly revealed at a certain advanced age: it is something you continuously construct and reconstruct all your life. I suspect that marriage and family play a massive role in that ongoing psychological construction rather than being independent states that might be invalidated by some sudden discovery of "who you are."

If the issue is immaturity I suspect they can diverge faster. Some people grown up when they have kids. Others don’t, and that becomes a frequent source of argument.

Others collapse their lives entirely, which can be shocking for the person who saw something in you that you’ve now abandoned.

> Promising to be with someone forever

It was historically more of a family obligation than a promise.

We have made it more about individual choice in the intervening years, so you might see that as a promise, but these days it still isn't so much a promise to stay together, rather a promise with regards to how to deal with division down the road (e.g. promising to split the assets 50/50). Not staying together is the assumption.

> You’ll get a few more years of being able to have kids after you know who you are.

I think the problem with that is: having kids both induces a lot more learning about who you are—as well as changes who you are.

~43% of first marriages fail, ~60% of second marriages, ~73% third marriages. Roughly half of all children will see their parents’ marriage end or them separate (per the CDC). Frankly, I think people should date, love, coparent, etc, but not get married.

Hm, 57% of first marriages not "failing" (presumably meaning that they last until one spouse dies) actually seems kind of comforting? It suggests that you and your spouse don't even have to be better at marriage than the median couple to avoid divorce.

(outside of cases of abuse) The venn diagram of people in my life who have gotten divorced and the people in my life who struggle to communicate their wants and needs is almost a circle.

You have to be open, honest, and willing to listen to the other person while laying your own ego aside. This is something that many people really struggle with. It becomes a power game and trying to prove who's right instead of trying to genuinely solve problems with each other.

I don't get it.

Source: married at 21 and decades later, we're very, very, very different people than we were, but still very happy together.

I have been married almost 20 years, and have seen the same. There's a whole lot of emotionally unhealthy people out there, which is understandable, but then they don't or can't get help to get healthy, which leads to relationship failure. Growing together requires collaboration and humility, which appears to be rare in the aggregate. Also, be lucky (which is unfortunately not actionable).

You can tell by looking at those numbers how much of "XX% of all marriages fail" is a consequence of how many people who get divorced 1x end up getting divorced 3 or more times.

There's a certain kind of Hollywood story where the person goes to the ends of the world to 'discover themselves' and comes back with a whole new life. Such as Eat, Pray, Love. I loathe this story arc with the fire of a thousand suns because if serial divorces teach us anything it's that wherever you go, there you are.

If you're not going into a second marriage with a narrative of, "I think I know what I fucked up last time and I won't do that again," then you're going to end up blaming your new spouse for all of your bullshit that you tried to blame on the first one.

Advice from someone in their 30s who has successfully kept the majority of their closest friends from high school and college (around 10 people) but also lost several key people over the years:

- Keep a semi-regular communication channel. For me this is easy, it isn't a chore for me to just text people. I know some people find this harder. If I see something I think they would find funny, I send them a link. If I start wondering about something I know they're knowledgeable about, I send them a question. If we have a shared hobby, I talk to them about it. Texting someone even just every other month can be the difference between keeping a friendship alive and letting it rust.

- Make sure to care about them and where they're at. Keep track and a week later ask "how did that interview go?" (for example.) Ask about their lives and sympathize with it, and make an effort to remember. Don't just tell them about you. One really easy way to make a difference is to keep track of people's birthdays, by the way. Just write it down in a text file somewhere if you have to. I know the birthday of everyone in my life - it actually takes borderline zero effort to write it down once and check that file once a month - and I think that makes a difference.

- Meet people where they're comfortable. Some of my friends are happy to jump in discord and just chat. Some would rather phone call every couple months. Some do neither but will respond to texts daily. Don't think like "this method works for my other friends, why are you being difficult?" Figure out what fits them. (And there are some people out there who won't want to do any of these things, and those people can be harder to keep up with. And that's just how it goes. But in my experience those people are very rare. I only know one, personally.)

- Getting along with their chosen significant other is paramount. I've lost two formerly-very-close friends to spouses who I'm not compatible with. You don't have to be good friends with them, but you do have to avoid insulting them or going against their values when you're around them. Eventually you may sometimes have to answer a question for yourself: do I value my friendship with this person enough to accept being around this person I really don't like? And sometimes the answer is no, and again...that's life.

- Over time part of why relationships fall apart is that you're not sharing experiences together anymore. You don't live together in college anymore, for example, so you no longer have that shared experience to bond over. You live a thousand miles apart and don't know any of the same people, so you only care because it's happening to them, not because you're experiencing it too. It can make a huge difference to plan trips together when possible. "Let's go hiking together." "Let's go to Disney together." "Come stay with me for a few days, I'd love to just have a guest. You can work in my spare room and we can hang out at night and make dinners." WHATEVER. ANYTHING. You don't have to go to Disney, you can just go grocery shopping together. That's still a shared moment. Maybe the cash register will be rude and you'll both be taken aback. That's a new shared memory.

And having shared memories is the biggest key.

As a fellow thirtysomething with plenty to say on this topic, I found your comment more interesting and more resonant than the article.

I'm in my forties and I'm still lucky enough to have friends from school.

My tips:

- Hobby group chat, group chats generally.

- Linked to the above, a lot of these friendships work because of the network effect. We're looser than we were, but we're still a crew. It's self-reinforcing, we can always (lovingly) gossip about each other! Do your best to keep the collective running smooth.

- Show up to stuff. I got on a plane for a friend's 40th the other week. So worth it.

- I don't do this enough, but I've gone through spells of having people's names in my calendar for calls. Had a friend contact me out of the blue recently, he was doing the same. My Mum used to do this and she was phenomenal socially.

I very much agree with all of this but do you find your friends reciprocate? Also mid 30s, I keep in touch with a few friends but arguably only 1 or 2 consistently reach out on their own.

There were periods of time - sometimes years - where they didn't. And there were moments I thought I wouldn't be able to keep it going. But they were people I valued enough and had so much shared history with that I just kept trying, and over the years they came to value it more and reciprocated much more. Sometimes people just go through phases in their lives and they don't have the mental space for it. I'm lucky to have always had a lot of mental space and very little stress, which is why it's easier for me personally.

There were cases where the lack of reciprocation was their way of telling me they were done with the friendship, and so it ended. That happens. Happened to me about 5 times.

But there were a lot of others who were just bad at it or distracted and just needed time and needed me to be patient and not hold it against them, and who came back strongly later on.

There was one who I could tell would never change, who just didn't care and didn't know how to be a good friend, and in their case I slowly stopped reciprocating myself and replied less and less until eventually it was just dead by natural causes, me having accepted the loss of the person I wished they were.

And lastly there was one who was going through such a bad time that they kept pushing everyone away during that period, and in the end they overdosed and died. I wish I had done more, even though I tried actively - I could have tried even harder.

I think it just takes life experience to tell the different cases apart without the benefit of hindsight. Life experience and charitable assumptions.

I used to be the one who reached out to everyone. Lack of reciprocity and a general frustration led me to stop keeping in touch with most everyone, which had the obvious outcome.

OTOH, when I see these people after years, it's like no time has passed. OTOOH, in order to be friendly, I have to overcome my general annoyance with their lack of effort.

IMO, this doesn't matter much. Ultimately, the only question that matters is "Do I get enough enjoyment/fulfillment spending time with this person to eclipse the work of organizing?" One of my best friends is a horrendous organizer. But when I invite him to things, I never have to ask twice. It's either an immediate "absolutely" or a "that day doesn't work for me, how about this day". And then it's a commitment. No flaking, no repeated rescheduling.

For me, It does bother me that some of my friendships I make most, or nearly all of the initiative, but I get so much from the friendship when we do talk / meet up, it's worth it for me to swallow my pride and ignore it. In 99% of cases they aren't deliberately ignoring you, they just got busy, etc.

The friends that make 0 effort however I cut out. You gotta give me something to work with...

As much as I hate Meta and its digital properties, I have to admit Whatsapp has been instrumental in keeping me in touch with my old friends. Now whenever I travel, I make it a point to let my friends in that city know about my trip and try to meet with at least some of them.

This. I could even say that whatsapp helps me a lot with my mental health by allowing me to talk to really distant friends almost every single day. It is my small village's piazza

I stopped speaking with my high-school friends in my 40s. I had realized at some moment that I didn't enjoy most of the discussions that we were having. I still met them and talked to them, thinking that that's still "friendship". But I was wrong and I shouldn't have done it! Not for so long! Since I stopped talking to them, I feel very relieved.

> Matt said a lot of wonderful things about me and our friendship during our conversation, but one thing meant the most. “In my mid 20s, I was really selfish,” he said. “But I’m currently at a point where I don’t really care about things for myself. Now that I’m almost 30, my loved ones and my friendship are all that really matter.”

Not to discount anyone else's story, but Matt's is probably the most prevalent. It's a shame we spend 18ish years making friends, then in our 20's more or less have to make a mad dash to establish a place to live, a career, a partner, etc. Everyone loses touch "temporarily" in what goes by like a blur, and by your 30's you still remember everyone, but it feels weird to reach out because of how long it's been.

In the US, I think we should consider that many people go through four socially traumatic transitions:

1. Moving away to college.

2. Moving for work.

3. Getting married.

4. Having kids.

Each of those tends to sever many friendships in ways that are more painful than a lot of us realize or acknowledge. We might even consider what it says about us as a people that we seem to value all of the points on that list more than we value being a member of a community with deep social ties.

When I graduated high school in Louisiana, I couldn't wait to get the fuck out of my small suburb. Then I dropped out of college and couldn't wait to get out of Louisiana entirely. I looked down on everyone who stayed in my home town and got a job at Shell or Entergy.

I still believe I did the right thing by leaving—the community there goes against many of my most deeply held values. But as I've gotten older, I realize more what the people valued and kept by staying there: a consistent set of close ties and community maintained throughout their entire lives.

5) Divorce

6) Rebuilding post divorce.

7) Lack of opportunities due to age.

I haven't reached those ones yet. :)

The upcoming one I really worry about is retirement. The statistics are grim if you look at retired men in terms of number of close friends, mental health, and suicide.

The whole "live in a high cost of living area with good jobs and then move somewhere cheaper when you retire" pipeline makes a lot of sense economically. But I worry that is disastrous when it comes to community and connection right at the time when people need it most.

Oh it is however, most of your neighbors will be in that very same boat so to speak so really it’s up to you to get outside.

Also retirement plans go out the window if you hit milestone 5. By the end of milestone 6 (if you make it) will be just a cabin in the woods with a dog, because that’s all you can afford.

5.5) Layoffs

6.5) Layoffs

8) War

But that can happen in any chapter. As horrible as it is - it’s probably the appendix or preamble. “Everything you’re about to read is due to X” warning label or something. Both as a solider in it, and as a civilian facing it. It’s awful. Maybe an asterisk on the end like they did for Roger Maris in ‘61 for beating Babe Ruth’s homer record in a single season.

    I still believe I did the right thing by leaving—the community there goes against many of my most deeply held values. But as I've gotten older

Nothing to look down upon. But some people just don't prefer that sort of "the community dictates your life" environment, while others may thrive in it.

Like, think, Sheldon Cooper if he had stayed in Texas. That weirdo atheist in a small Texas town? Not fun.

> That weirdo atheist in a small Texas town?

Yes, that was also me before I became a weirdo in Lousiana. I lived in a bunch of places in the South.

The religiosity I could deal with, but the racism, homophobia, and authoritarianism less so.

Hello fellow Louisiana folk.

Those plant workers make bank though. Esp the ones in Laffy, Lake Chuck, BR, or NOLA.

Are you from New Orleans or Lafayette? Edit: holy shit I had no idea you’re from Louisiana.

Lived 10 years in St. Charles Parish, then another 4 in Baton Route.

If you ever come to New Orleans, I’m sure the Tuesday night tech meetups would love to have you

>It's a shame we spend 18ish years making friends, then in our 20's ...

I think the thing we don't like to say out loud is that the "friends" we made as children and up through high school were really friends created by geographic proximity which is a shallow foundation -- rather than -- deep shared interests related to our passions.

So, yes, I remember the friends I went to the U2 concert with when I was 16. What was the true basis of that friendship? Why did we all drift apart? It was inevitable because our shared interests were based on shallow things like being in the same high school, liking U2, and all of us making fun of the same teacher wearing funny clothes.

The later adult friendships that are based on founders starting a business, athletes on pro sport teams, co-workers on intense projects, etc. Those are the types of friendships formed on deeper passions that can survive future marriages, children, divorces.

Of the friends I know, none of us are interested in reconnecting with our high school friends. The later adult friendships based on professions or hobbies are more "natural" to maintain.

Well, the same geographic proximity also shapes us so much when we are kids that it makes sense that it's a determining factor in friendship. It's not shallow at all since geography determines almost everything in our lives when we are young. And it used to determine much more in our lives in as adults before we had internet or even mass media.

I have older relatives who have lived in the same village all their lives. What they talk about with their friends is local stuff. Who opened that new restaurant in the village? Who is he related to? What kind of food do they have? What's going on with [some local guy they all know] lately?

I don't get how anyone can think that stuff is shallow. If something is shallow, it's talking work projects or office politics, etc. with friends you know from work. In a few years time, the work project has ended, one of you doesn't work there anymore, even the company might not exist anymore. I guess it's about what you value in life, but I find all of that work stuff so incredibly ephemeral and inconsequential that it's just boring to talk about it, let alone let it define your friendships.

I had some friends from 1st-6th grade, then when I went to middle school, I started from scratch. The reason was I moved out of parochial Catholic school to public school. The group off friends I made starting in middle school was a little more durable when I went to college. I still have two friends from college, plus some acquaintances. And now I’m a bit older, so death is a problem for my friendships. My father passed away 10 years ago, and one of his friends had no friends left after losing my father. So I thought, I hope I am not more selective than necessary.

Even as adults, the overwhelming factor in who your friends are is just proximity. Who do you see every day?

> is just proximity.

What I didn't emphasize enough is that the high school teen years is really _just_ proximity.

But adult employment adds more than proximity because you choose what kind of place to work at. (E.g. you studied 4 years for Computer Science so you end up at work alongside other programmers.) Many times, people undo the proximity effect by literally relocating across the country to find a job that fits their criteria.

Kids don't really choose their high school (setting aside isolated situations like magnet schools.) The randomization of interests caused by clustering kids into high-school district maps basically guarantees shallow childhood friendships that won't last into late adulthood.

Friendship to passion for sport will cease to exist once you are injured. Hobby based friendships will stop the moment you can't participate that much.

All friendships start due to proximity of some kind. But without additional effort, they all end up just temporary

> then in our 20's more or less have to make a mad dash to establish a place to live, a career, a partner, etc.

What is weird, from the historical perspective, is that we need to do all those.

I come from a rural village and almost all of my older relatives just continued living near where they were born (some even in their childhood homes) and having the same job their parents had (which was some kind of farming for most of them). They basically had their life figured out at the age of 20, after which they started having kids. Also, most of their friends and acquaintances are people they knew already when they were children.

If you think about it, it's not really surprising that friends get left behind when you move, change jobs, and basically everything in your life changes. If an old friend of mine used to know me at the age of 20, he doesn't know me anymore at the age of 37 since everything in my life has changed. We might not even like each other anymore.

I think it's partly also that a lot of people's 20s go at different speeds. Like, I was married at 24 and had a first kid at 25, so that put me on kind of a different track from people I knew in university and high school who started their families 3, 5, even 10 years later than that.

Yes, I'm now 39 and have indeed reconnected with some of those people, especially as they've started to "catch up" and we have contemporary experiences in common again, but basically it's really hard as a parent of young children to keep up with the social expectations of unattached or childless people; you just can't drop everything for that last minute beach day or road trip, and if you do make the extra lift so that it can happen, you can still end up feeling like you're holding back potential further spontaneity, if it's with a group where no one else really "gets it".

The instinct is to gravitate toward socializing with other people/families who are in a similar life stage.

a. people change b. you moved to Kenya.

It's okay to lose touch with former friends (that is, to not feel guilty). This is part of life and I'm always convinced that my friends, whom I lost contact with, will understand as well.

Plus, although we were friends at one point due to common interests, shared environment, etc., we grow up and apart. If chances collide, we will cross paths with some of them.

During my thirties, I felt a bit guilty about not keeping in touch with most of my friends from high school and college. As I reached mid-forties, I have learned to live with the above realization. I think I'd have a good chat with some of my old friends when I meet them by happenstance again.

Friendship requires proximity. Very hard to maintain a friendship or any relationship with physical distance or even just mostly disjoint social circles. Nothing to feel guilty about, it's how we work.

> Friendship requires proximity.

This is clearly false as plenty of long-term long-distance friendships exist. It does make it harder, but there's a difference between "harder" and "impossible".

I have several multi-decade friendships where we have no friends in common and either never met in person or met only a few times.

On my side, once we formed families we sort of lost contact gradually. We still gather around once or twice a year for Christmas and another holidays, but other than that we keep to ourselves. My wife doesn't really like staying with my friends so she always asked me to go alone, but I mean, it's usually family gathering, and going alone is really weird.

We do get a couple of new ones though, from my wife's side. They are very good people and very fun to stay with. I have to admit that I enjoy staying with my wife's friends more than she does with mine, but that's fine with me. Maybe I'll get a few days off and coffee chat with my side of the friends.

I appreciate the vulnerability of the OP in researching and writing that article. It can be pretty hard to reconnect with friends you’ve lost touch with or actually broken up with. And to do this publicly!

> Can anybody hear me? Do I matter?

No, almost certainly not. This is difficult for many people to accept but once you do a lot of weight comes off your shoulders. You're no longer thinking about what you do in terms of how others perceive it, and not seeking approval or validation from them.

Amazingly, even though this is perfect fodder for a self-absorbed attention-seeking post, it's actually quite good, focusing on the different perspectives people in a relationship have as contact fades

What is this article, she answers her own question in the first paragraph.

"Since I moved to Kenya why am I not still friends with people who are now 10,000 miles and 12 hours behind me."

Uhhh does that required 5,000 words to figure out?

One thing about the author, is that she's a traveler (not a Gypsy, but someone that has traveled a lot; even as a kid).

So am I. I spent the majority of my early childhood, bouncing around a number of nations.

It has given me the "ability" to drop even very intimate relationships at the drop of a hat. I've heard that this is a characteristic of "military brats."

I will not have talked to someone for a decade, then, when I see them again, I assume that we can just pick up where we left, and they are like "Who the hell are you? No way!".

I've learned to correct for this. It means that I need to make the effort to stay in touch, but I have also learned that some folks aren't interested in reciprocating, so I have learned to let those go.

Elderly people, particularly but not only men, suffer social isolation and loneliness. It is a social problem across the developed world.

That's because people tend not to make new friends in middle age. That trend begins in the mid 20s.

No matter your age, learn the trick of making, and keeping, new friends. Of all ages, sexes, cultures, types. It is extremely vital to your mental and physical health.

> learn the trick of making, and keeping, new friends.

The trick is having time and energy. The challenge is finding the time and energy in your mid-20s and beyond when things like your career, children, etc. come crushing down upon you, all while, at the same time, your body starts to lose is youthful vitality.

> "But eventually, we broke away—you, to join the funny kids, a group of hilarious and friendly people who could match your unparalleled wit and high-octane energy...

That is not how people actually talk in real life.

> ...and me, to join the kids at the back of the bus, literally and figuratively.

People really do not make other people the main character like this. "My crew were shy introverts who were hilarious once we got going" is how people describe themselves: more description, adjectives and familiarity. "You were doing your own thing with the party crowd" is how people describe others: vague and sparse in descriptive detail.

This passage inverts that.

Maybe it's a cultural thing as well. Boasting about yourself is really not something you do in many cultures. I don't really see a problem with that passage. They were just trying to praise whoever they were talking to while being quiet about themselves.

It could be cultural. I'm overthinking it. I did like the piece overall.

Thinking about it a little more, those high-octane funny kids sound insufferable. This may actually just be Celine's way of telling the author she finds her annoying.

It was over Facebook. Some people do /write/ that way.

That jumped out at me too.

Some people do talk like that. For example, the well-read humanities major analogue of "10x techbro" can effortlessly whip out a more sophisticated analysis or assessment, with better prose.

And some of those will say things like that with one or more levels on top. Such as if they know the person they're talking with will get the reference or archetype, or the allusion they're making, and they're really saying something more. Like (just one example) it means: "I like you, and there's some literal truth to what I'm saying, but you get the real thing I'm saying, because we get each other, like not everybody can, and also you should remember to have a sense of humor, and I think you needed me to say it this way".

(But I'm highly skeptical of people on social media, claiming "my young child just said: [something sounding like a speech crafted by the poster]".)

This piece is in Vogue. Could have been in Elle.

Ever wonder about why articles in Sports Illustrated go off on politics? Same reason.

These writers, by and large, went to Ivy League schools. Their classmates were hired at the New York Times (serious) or Saturday Night Live (funny). They want to point out hey, I have a great vocabulary and know art and such, too. Even if I just nominally write about clothes or baseball.

Clothes and baseball is a better occupation than making up rape stories to fuel a genocide at the NYT.

My wife hates the intrusion aspect as much as sports fans do. She reads fashion magazines to relax, not to get some political screed.

> the well-read humanities major analogue of "10x techbro" can effortlessly whip out a more sophisticated analysis or assessment, with better prose.

Such a person certainly can do so, but also really ought to know better.

was expecting to find boring navel-gazing solipsism, was not disappointed. one can easily see why the group drifted apart.

For a lot of articles like these, looking at the answers to see if they're interesting is futile. The real insight is in the questions. In this case, you can reflect on your own friendships, and how the other side of them might see them differently.

>Though I’m Kenyan by ethnicity, I grew up abroad, in the US and UK, and I’ve found that my foreign accent and perspective other me, even within my family.

I had to read this sentence four times before I even considered that 'other' could be a verb!

It's not, at least not in any dictionary I've consulted. Though in context it works, I guess.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/other

Added in November 2017 according to https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/other-as-a-verb

I've started hearing "x" be used as a verb as well... As in "We need to 4x our output!".

I hate it as much as I hate MBA wankers using "ping" as if they're ICMP compliant...

Perhaps you should try consulting Merriam-Webster then.

It’s slang, but I’ve heard it.

In Summary – What Was Learned • Friendship loss in adulthood is common and often tied to life transitions. • Direct communication with an ex-friend can be enlightening, even if the relationship doesn’t restart. • Personal growth often comes from understanding your role in the ending—not assigning blame or regret, but acknowledging patterns. • Reconnection does not guarantee reunion, and in many cases, the value lies in what you learn about yourself, not whether the relationship is revived.