How friendships change in adulthood
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
The sad part is that it doesn't have to be this way. The notion that friendship is something you make time for (to the detriment of your other pursuits) seems to be very modern, very Western and an absolutely terrible idea.
Just anecdotally, the friendships where people rely on one another for assistance - helping one another achieve their goals rather than hindering them - seem to get stronger and stronger whereas the "let's catch up" friends seem to wither over time.
Somewhat counter-intuitively, doing simple things like giving a friend a lift when their car breaks down, providing them with meals when they're unable to cook for themselves or helping them move house actually cause you to value the relationship more.
Another aspect I think is how much you plan things in advance, and how willing the people in your circle are to do stuff last minute. One of my groups is some neighborhood dads and every week or so they're like "hey, tonight or tomorrow?" and then it's a hang for whoever can make it, with no expectations or hurt feelings because it wasn’t possible to find a weeks-away date that magically worked for everyone’s calendars only to have half of them cancel at the last minute anyway. You need people receptive to this for it to work, but it has that fluidity of college dorm socializing once it gets going.
Perhaps that's the differece: specialization. More contractors and take-out meals mean less working with friends.
Friends are good for unspecialized labor, but when you get into skilled labor it falls apart. The one plumber friend will get swamped with requests, and the quantum physicist may not find an opportunity to reciprocate.
I wonder if this alone holds a lot of explanatory power for why people in many increasingly developed countries tend to have increasingly fewer close friends in their personal lives. Labor gets increasingly skilled and specialized (and requiring facilities, supplies, and support staff owned by large companies) leaving fewer opportunities to directly help people who live next door. And skilled/specialized labor pays more, so people have the money to just hire out any help they need.
Thus fewer friendships form around a natural need for help from neighbors and the ability to meet such needs -- because both have decreased significantly. And along with less needing/helping, human connection and trust also suffer significantly.
In the past, local community groups, especially churches and social clubs, helped significantly with fostering human connection; but those also are suffering significantly.
If someone helps you paint, it might be months or years before you have an opportunity to really reciprocate.
And simple things have been specialized quite a bit. To do a good job painting (by modern standards) you need to prep the wall surface. It might be cracked or uneven or have bad (or out-of-style) texturing. Then you need to texture and paint, which is going to work out better with the right equipment.
Meal preparation is largely done today before the kitchen. Trimming and slicing vegetables, washing and filtering grains, cleaning and butchering animals, grinding herbs and spices, sauce and broth making, fermenting, etc., are all done already by specialists and machines. A modern dinner party at your home is closer to meeting at a restaurant for a purely social occasion than it is to traditional meal preparation.
I grew up with seemingly all my extended family working on their houses one way or another. I saw a lot of it. Plumbing, electrics, knocking down and building new walls, repairing floors, plastering, painting, wallpapering, carpeting, fitting windows, pouring concrete, mixing cement, gardening and remodelling the garden, erecting sheds, countless other things and that's just some basics that popped into my head.
Many of those involved a team of extended family and friends working together on a project.
As an adult I've rarely had the opportunity to do anything like that, and certainly never anywhere I lived myself, due to renting and most people I knew renting for most of it.
Even putting up a small shelf or painting a wall have been against the rules at most places. I don't own a drill because there's nothing at home to use it on. So I have neither the skills nor a friendship group that tends to develop with that sort of thing
It's not from lack of interest though. I miss it, having seen so much as a child that I've been unable to even dabble with as an adult.
It's one reason I rent a small office for work. Unlike homes, some commercial leases expect you to do things like put up wall furniture, paint as you likr, replace carpets and doors and so on. There are limits to that but not as limiting as homes in my experience.
It's hard to save tens of thousands of dollars unless you're lucky in your career or have a second earner dedicated just to that (and no school loans or other debt to service). Other than that you're waiting for a windfall or reliant on your parents re-mortgaging their place to give you your down payment.
I got lucky with my company's series A. But I know a lot of people whose parents helped them. And a bunch more whose parents can't— those people are still renting in their late thirties, waiting for a bus that may never come.
You are.
It's no judgment on those who feel differently, but I find value in picking up random skills and tools and really appreciate along the way the chance to break a sweat with friends and family over these types of situations.
And sometimes it really is a major savings— I spent ~$600 last year on materials and tool rentals that saved me what likely would have been a $10k plumbing visit (broken drain pipe under a concrete floor).
Maybe marriage is a nuisance if your life's ambition is to get an essay into The New Yorker, but if you have more pedestrian interests in family, it can be the best.
A disproportionately large portion of journalists for national outlets live in Brooklyn New York, which explains their biased view of the world.
Maybe overall we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss the wisdom of the ancients in favor of our modern obsession with data.
Everything else? Not so much; we are, after all, still just people.
I would define my wife as my wife and friend, because our status as friends could become shaky but she would still be my wife. Similarly a long time business partner could be someone I identify as a friend or not. Those are both relationships rooted in a common goal, but I think Aristotle's definition of friendship is a stretch here. I think the wisdom of "don't go into business with your friends" is more relevant in my life.
Why is friendship low-commitment and non-binding. In the Western world, this is an aberration. For most of Western history, friendship was often considered more permanent and requiring more commitment than even marriage. It was seen as a life-long arrangement, with duties between friends, etc. Slighting one's friend was the start of many bitter bitter disputes that lasted generations.
Yes -- and it is plainly the highest form of friendship as it is the closest to dissolving the individual into a greater whole.
Is that your idea of what a friendship is ? Friendship to me means far deeper than that.
Yes 100% the reason why I need and love my friends is because those relationships do not have the weight of expectation that other relationships do.
I don't think this is true at all. I'm not from a Western culture originally, and my friends (who i love) across a whole slice of society (from bus drivers to tech executives) have sort of diverged. Some of them always make time no matter what. Others, despite being super helpful when they can, 100% put other priorities over friendship first. Pretty sure that's not just my case and not really limited to the West at all.
Perhaps more evidence that catching up with the lads for a pint is less valuable than bringing over a casserole for a friend with a sick kid.
Homey. (With possible gender differentiation to homeboy and homegirl)
One of the reasons I won't read these articles - I don't want the content to become an excuse/prescription for me losing touch with friends.
Also who made the writer an expert? (May not apply to the author of this particular article, but I am generally skeptical).
It's an art form for sure, but working out who needs assistance and in what form makes it really easy to provide it.
Why wouldn't it though? Ultimately speaking time is a finite resource for an individual. If one's pursuits or responsibilities do not align with the pursuits of your friend, then why wouldn't one need pick between expending one's time with said friend vs other callings?
Pouring your finite and valuable time into assisting a friend achieve their goals implies that they will, at least to some extent, help you with yours. It doesn't matter if they're aligned as long as you understand one another.
Whereas with the "let's catch up" friends, the implicit agreement is that by making you sacrifice for the relationship, you get the right to make them sacrifice.
I guess the latter is better than nothing, as it beats being alone, but an optimising brain leads one towards putting in minimum effort and letting the relationship decay to the point of just being alive.
I have friends that I would do basically anything for, and they would do basically anything for me, and this has been proven many times over throughout our friendships. But being there when they need you (or vice versa) isn’t what constitutes most of the relationship, most of it just just normal friend activities. Additionally, the entirety of the time devoted to the relationship is time you cannot devote to something else, no matter how much benefit you derive from the friendship.
Time devoted to relationships with my friends has certainly dwindled a little for me over time. I’m still there for them if they need me, but I devote much less time to socialising with them, because there are simply too many other things in my life that take priority over that. Because again, not matter how positive and beneficial your friendships are, hanging out with your buddies simply isn’t going to take priority over the needs of your spouse/children/career very often.
The "always there to help" friends are valuable to me as well, but they're a larger part of my every day life, more like extended family, and so usually can't get me that "get out of my life and look back in" sort of interaction I can have with friends I have to break routine to go see.
Far more likely is you needing to accept that you will be doing most of the maintenance work around any of your adult friendships, and they might not have any "benefit" outside of being one of the few balms to existential dread.
When ny car broke down, I call my roadside assistance to get it towed and took Uber home when my wife was working.
When I need to move, I call movers. Same with home repairs. If I couldn’t cook for myself and assuming I wasn’t married (I am) I order in. I’m not saying having friends isn’t important for emotional reasons. But now, unless I lost my job and have lost my financial means, i usually “need” friends for emotional support.
That being said, when my wife had surgery a few years ago, I really leaned on her (and my friends through association). My wife knew I would be an emotional wreck and they came for emotional support.
Why do you find this counterintuitive?
In my experience, at some point there is nothing to talk about anymore, i have some of those long term friends but it's getting to the point where they come by my house, catch up in 10 minutes and then spent the rest of time in the couch on the phone.
I have a family and that's super nice, but I still never really experienced this. Reading about it just hurts. Sure, I had "friends"in college, but we don't keep in touch.
Nah. This is just a self-made bubble. Even without any activity outside work, you can still meet friends' friend and family's friend. There's always new people to talk to.
I've made a lot of friends outside work since adulthood, from various sources. Just last week, I made a new friend at a mutual friend's party, and played a duet together. We've scheduled to play another next month.
Another friend of mine just made 11 new friends outside of work last month, as he joined a baseball amateur league.
Just go do what you enjoy, and talk to people. If you share a common interest, and have no big clash in personality, that's probably a budding friendship.
The moment you get injured or sick, friendship is gone. Same goes for hobby groups.
Way more likely is that when people stop going for whatever reason, the relationship ends. Getting injured or sick or having new kid and less time or whatever all means you disappear.
If there’s currently nobody at all (outside work and family), go out with coworkers. Invite their friends. Go hiking or skiing or something. There are tons of activities out there.
A friend of mine moved to a different country last year, and is in a similar situation: living and working far away from her team; no coworkers in her vicinity. So, now she mainly hang out with her new neighbors, and friends made from dancing class.
I have been methodically taking turns trying all of their in-person events.
Hiking groups are dominated by retirees who have trouble relating to me socially. I have not found a reading club that meets IRL. The "philosophy meetup" is a bunch of 25-year-old crypto bro edgelords. I keep going to tech meetups, some for over a year, but everyone at them either goes with coworkers or is really apathetic and alienated.
This doesn't help if you're trying to bootstrap from nothing.
> just join a sports league
I spent solid chunks of childhood being forced into sports programs when I at best had below-average physical abilities. I even tried one summer as an adult to play in a league and I discovered that the physical gap had just widened and widened and it just helped isolate me until I quit going.
It's really great that people find things like sports leagues or meetups useful for this, but none of it overlaps with my mostly solo activities.
Unfortunately, that's how it is if you don't share interest with the extroverted crowds: you're just stuck looking for scraps.
There are also other events where you naturally meet people. I’m just throwing out some ideas, if case they are helpful.
For instance, taking group classes. My girlfriend made quite a few friends in her Muay Thai class.
Dog walking. My college friend recently adopted a dog, and has since known a lot of other dog keepers.
You can meet other computer people at conferences, too.
I myself is quite introverted, too. But being introverted doesn’t mean you are left with scraps. There are still occasions where interacting with other people is both necessary and natural. If you put yourself in those situations from time to time, you’ll find a few who fit your rhythm.
Another thing is to offer a helping hand to people. Owing each other favors is the most effective bonding agent in my experience. I have a personal rule of “always be helpful”, and I think that has earned me quite a few very earnest friendships, despite my being not very chatty at all.
I think this might be a self fulfilling prophecy.
I’m 40 and I’m still making friends. I don’t see why there must be some sort of magical age limit.
Imagine there’s another one of you. Wouldn’t you want to be friends with them?
Holy shit, that's a really thought-provoking question.
I wonder how many others would answer "probably not".
To me, this isn't about liking me, who wouldn't!
It's more about being identical. Even if a friend shares the same likes, interests, hobbies, they have a different view on it. Their brain thinks via a different process.
I don't want a mirror as a friend.
Most people are just really bad at it; some people here who I try involve in activities always cancel or have ‘better stuff todo’ and then cry, later, that no one invites them anymore or they have no one to play with.
It’s not that hard…
> Imagine there’s another one of you. Wouldn’t you want to be friends with them?
Nice one and yes, I would :)
Yeah but finding the other ones like you is incredibly difficult. People in their 30's and 40's with zero friends looking to make new ones are basically non existent where I live.
Interests connect and these guys hardly ever meet or met someone that intersects as much, so they clear their schedules (as do I) to foster a friendship.
I met most of my friends, business partners and clients this way. Overlapping interests and chance encounters.
I meet plenty people on internet in subreddits with the same interests and sometimes we meet up and then it clicks or it doesn’t.
Why would they need to have “zero friends”. It is not like people have a max number of friends they can have.
One person was really blunt with me: "you're a pretty cool guy, but I don't have time/space in my life for new people". Other people are less blunt but the same principle applies.
edit: But maybe that's my British instincts wrongly diagnosing a statement that I have no real context to judge better.
I just feel that if it were possible to track every time that sentence is said it would probably be significantly more often used as a polite excuse rather than as a truthful statement. (And even then, that's my gut feeling / assumption, I may even be wrong about which use is more common).
I've actually been somewhat surprised by how much random people desire connection upon the most tenuous of common interests.
Get involved in something, anything, that you like and slowly reach out to others with the same interests and you'll find friendships. Something I've found though, build them slowly lest they burn out quickly upon a pyre of previously unaware incompatibilities of opinion.
I seem to be an approachable person; being at least a superficially nice person, easy with a smile, seems to make a difference.
My few 'best' friends I see ever so rarely, but when we get together it's like no time has passed. I think that's a true test of deep friendship compatibility.
Basically I'm the guy who keeps in touch with everyone. I have a chat group with guys I met at age 4. Everyone who went to school with me asks me "where is X now" and I'll tell them I last spoke to them not long ago. I talk to my old teachers, across the spectrum from 1st grade to high school. People from various jobs I did 20 years ago, I still know.
So I'm rounding up people for a high school signal group, and even those guys who never say anything to anyone will join it because it's memes and news articles we can comment on. Kinda nice to have all your old buddies there, even with lurkers bring a thing on private groups.
But this one guy, I know him pretty well, been to his house many times growing up, visited his parents, went to each others weddings, etc... Doesn't want to join.
It's just too painful. He feels tormented by some of the other guys in the group. Apparently they tried this some time ago and the chat descended into bullying him like we were in school, except now we're grown up everyone thinks it doesn't hurt anymore.
I really wish there was a solution, but I think it won't happen. Sometimes relationships go off the rails and never come back. I'll still go see my buddy next time I'm near him, but he's cut off everyone else.
This sounds like a similar situation with some of my family. Individually they are OK but as a group they revert to to their childhood personas and can be quite unpleasant and hurtful to be around.
A lot of people from tiny country/rural towns I think end up in this situation, because we often end up fighting the "Crabs in a Bucket" phenomenon when trying to be better humans, and leaving can be easier. Whilst I do think about people from my childhood and that town, it feels like an entirely different life to me.
It sounds like you’re prioritizing quantity of friends.
Also it wasn't like he was just bullied and shunned, he hung out with those guys too. I even did a road trip with that group. So it was a complicated thing that probably also evolved after school ended.
I don't think I ever thought about quantity of friends as a thing. It's not like it's binary whether someone is your friend.
it sounds to me like OP wasn't a participant in this group (and is only after finding out about what happened), though I could be misinterpreting it
I'm not sure where you got that impression. At 51 I'm still making new friends, mostly by seeking people out who share hobbies that I'm interested in. It gives me a base level of conversation to start out with. I recently started up a great relationship with the curator at a clock museum simply by going to his museum and talking clock with him. I go visit him at least once a month now, and he's begun to introduce me to other museum curators in the area. I also made a new set of friends recently by answering a Craigslist ad for a classic car in the area, then going to look at the car and talking to the guy for a couple hours. He invited me to a Sunday drive with a group of local classic car folks, and now I'm part of the group.
At least you got the family part
That's a pretty big exclusion. It is like excluding friends you make at school when you are a kid.
Obviously, to make friends you have to meet them first and preferably spend some time with them. And during adulthood, work is usually where it happens, during childhood, it is school.
I think the reason it happens less often in adulthood is that many people already have an established group of friends, but if life changes break the group people will make friends again.
I had friends in college, but I don’t really keep in touch with any of them these days.
My closest friends are a few I’ve had since childhood, but mostly those I’ve made since adulthood through work and just striking up conversations outside of it.
Try a few new things and put yourself out there. We’re none of us that different and we’re all social creatures.
Prior to Covid I could go out to a bar, strike up a convo with someone (or vice versa) and just chat about stuff, sometimes awkward sometimes not. Now though, no one seems to want to talk, bot sure if something about my demeanor has changed or something. I hate going out now because it usually just involves me slamming down drinks to kill time.
says a lot about our nature, i empathize (even though unlike you I can blame myself a bit for failing this aspect of existence), good luck
Yes, I get it, people are busy. But they still have time. The average citizen spends several hours per day passively consuming entertainment. You may even have spare moments at work or in a commute.
You can call your friend. Or send a quick message to do some slow chat. And even in hectic schedules you can meet once a week or even once a month.
When you haven't connected to a friend in months, you're a shitty friend. You don't have a time problem, you have a priority problem. And that's the thing that people are unwilling to admit: it's just less important after a certain age, where we use time as an excuse.
I've found male friends open up much more about how they are when speaking and appreciate the regular monthly check-ins.
Needlessly harsh overgeneralization, I think.
I hate phone calls for the sake of catching up, and I have plenty of friends who are the same. We'll go months without talking until there's some reason to - maybe I'm going to be visiting their city, or I want to let them know that my wife is pregnant, or I just watched a new TV show that I think they'll love. When those things happen, I text, and we chat and maybe see each other, and our friendship isn't ever diminished just because we haven't spoken in months.
I'm very happy with these friendships, and my friends are very happy with these friendships, and yet you're telling me that we're all shitty friends. Maybe you need to be contacted regularly by someone in order to consider them a friend, but not everyone shares that need. Other people aren't shitty friends just because they don't meet your needs.
> "The saga of adult friendship starts off well enough. “I think young adulthood is the golden age for forming friendships,” Rawlins says. “Especially for people who have the privilege and the blessing of being able to go to college.”"
There are many different cultures and economic groupings, globally speaking, and they don't all devolve into isolated 'nuclear family' groupings over time, as this article implies. The majority of people don't actually have Facebook feeds from people they haven't seen in 35 years. Their friendships are based in the communities they live in - the people they trade with for food, clothing, and other necessities. There's a much greater sense of mutual interdependence, not so much the concept of isolated individual success followed by what, retreat to a gated community?
If you attempt to take an outside perspective, it's rather startling how class-stratified and wealth-stratified American society has become, very similar to the posh/prole divide in imperial Britain.
"The majority of people" is a pretty broad group here, from Portugal to the Russian far east, Namibia to Papua New Guinea, Chile to Mexico. So when you say:
The majority of people don't actually have Facebook feeds from people they haven't seen in 35 years. Their friendships are based in the communities they live in - the people they trade with for food, clothing, and other necessities. There's a much greater sense of mutual interdependence, not so much the concept of isolated individual success followed by what, retreat to a gated community?
Does that really apply to all non-anglo/american cultures? You would have to be extraordinarily knowledgeable of near thousands of human cultures to know this.
it's rather startling how class-stratified and wealth-stratified American society has become, very similar to the posh/prole divide in imperial Britain.
It'd be a challenge to claim that the "prole/posh divide" in Imperial Britain was anywhere near as strong as some of its contemporaries - say the Qing Dynasty or Ottoman Empire.
Or you could find out how many users facebook has, and subtract it from the world population. If you're left with "the majority of people," you've easily proved it.
This fits me and my friend group to a T, but the bits about Facebook don't land because me and all of my friends have abandoned that platform.
Not from a good source. As GP put it:
> I do expect The Atlantic to explain these culture groups to me in a language I understand
I ascended to that class from a working class family (and no college) and y’all have just as many problems as any other social group.
At no point did I say I do not wish to understand other people's opinions. But I don't speak in their culture, so I need it explained to me. That's literally what liberal humanities are all about, from the Renaissance on: trying to understand the world around you.
Are you somehow assuming, for example, that to truly understand Russia I should only read Russian newspapers and talk to Russians and speak Russian? I shouldn't have say how absurd that is, but here we are.
> y’all have just as many problems as any other social group
I never said we didn't. Don't put your shit on me.
This attitude is so toxic and the reason why many Americans feel as if the 'elites' are talking down to them. Why do you presume the Atlantic, owned by Steve Job's widow, has any incentive to accurately portray these foreign cultures or even domestic subcultures? What a wild belief.
You might think it's absurd, but that's precisely how you obtain deep knowledge of another culture - you learn the language or, at the very least, listen to first-hand accounts of people belonging to that culture who speak your language.
Otherwise you're essentially asking to dumb it down for you.
This is especially valid in the case of Russia.
I wonder if you are exempt from the judgment you put on others.
While I agree that one can obtain a deeper understanding of a culture by exploring it thoroughly, your suggestion that any translation is "dumbing it down" is as absurd as your first argument, and an insult to every teacher.
This purity argument is destructive, as it reflects a powerfully deep elitism that is so exclusive, it appears to be an obvious volley against truth. I also wonder if you are capable of that kind of deep cynicism, or are just blathering.
(In anticipation, one easy argument against this purity is that people who speak English, live in America, went to college in America, got degrees in America ... STILL do not understand incredibly large parts of American culture until it is explained to them in their mode and register, and not even then in many cases. As my citations I'll simply point to our elections. So, yes, one can obtain deeper knowledge by full immersion--which is the point of deeper intellectual understanding--but ultimately that is an approximation, and even full assimilation does not bring enlightenment. Unless you are the thing, you are speaking through translation suited to your cultural comprehension.)
I didn't suggest that, otherwise I wouldn't mention first-hand accounts of people who speak your language.
I'm eastern European and I've seen my share of people trying to explain Russia to others without an appropriate understanding of the topic.
They're often hilariously off the mark and I'm surprised anyone would prefer them over sources closer to the matter.
> In anticipation, one easy argument against this purity is that people who speak English, live in America, went to college in America, got degrees in America ... STILL do not understand incredibly large parts of American culture until it is explained to them in their mode and register, and not even then in many cases.
Do you consider yourself such a person? I mean, that's real some self-awareness, but at the same time you're condemning yourself to reliance on people who may or may not know what they're talking about.
You will also miss large parts of Russian history, because it was nit sage to talk about historical stuff like purges in there for years.
What I usually don't have at hand is insight regarding what's the current mindset and attitudes - the most revealing conversation I had about that was with a Russian who moved out of the countery and her reasons behind this decision (not money since she was from Moscow).
The most striking is always what a person considers normal.
You make it sound like they are just talking out of their rear end, making things up based on their own privileged and unrepresentative personal experience, but my impression is that their opinion is formed by their own research, which might be a couple decades old, but is probably still relevant.
If there's anything to complain about here, is that Americans tend to forget that there is a world outside of the USA.
The sense of community and day to day lives are very different and much more enjoyable. The only problem is that due to exploitation by distant corporate actors that community is played with violence, obesity and drug addiction.
?
> played with obesity
plagued maybe. but also, no, corpos don't make people fat, and crime rates per pop are not as us/them as one might expect: https://i.redd.it/zzbhmc3gd4u31.png
The article itself talks of life stages in terms of how things change, with college life being a case study as a small aside in the middle of the article. It's written as though these insights apply to everyone, even mentioning the "International Association of Relationship Researchers" at the beginning.
It's a very common problem in sociology-type sciences, where they study college students because they're easy access, then extrapolate to the entire population.
Reinforced by the apparent reality that mostly what people outside the USA want to talk about is the USA. Even on HN, where we have a large contingent of Europeans participating, we don't hear too much about Europe. It's almost always about the US.
I'm from Europe and sure, one of the main reasons why I come to this US-based site with a majority of US readership is to find American viewpoints on issues, and engage in discussions about the USA.
This doesn't mean that I spend my life wanting to talk about the USA, though. I talk much more about my own country but it's on sites with readership from that country (and in real life, of course) so you're not aware of it.
And many of my compatriots don't talk about the USA at all, you just don't see them because they don't hang out in sites like this at all.
(Maybe this is already what you meant, that when an American interacts with someone from outside, they often want to talk about the USA -which is not the same as saying that people from outside often talk about the USA in general-. But it's not clear from your wording).
Of course this is a US-focused site to some extent, but the US just has a big contiguous language community. It's comparable to all of Europe, not individual countries.
And still now as an adult in my early thirties who moved to Tokyo a few years ago, socially my environment is dominanted by friendships, which is true for many people my age. The article points to friendships being voluntary as one key distinction between say marriage and friends, but statistics will tell everyone that many of those marriages nowadays aren't that permanent.
Article sounds a little bit like it was written by someone who lives in American Beauty still.
If I have to guess, what I think you're actually talking about is
1) after middle-class suburban kids leave home to go to college, then
2) graduate and move into gentrifying areas to take internships/jobs in big cities, then
3) get married during that period in their 20s while their income is rising into six figures, and
4) they purchase their starter house in the latest gentrifying neighborhood, then
5) get pregnant and get a dog at the same time, so
6) muggings and property crimes in their new neighborhood turn them extremely reactionary, then
7) they move to a massive palace in the suburbs either shortly before or shortly after the kid pops out.
i.e. the universal American experience.
How is this consistent with #3? $100k incomes are 80th percentile.
All others are renting or not moving into a “massive place” after their initial purchase, which itself was probably barely affordable.
Claim made without evidence, and there is plenty of evidence that there are other larger factors at play.
I have two close friends. All three of us are in similar life circumstances. Married, kids in elementary/middle/high school, programmers, in our 40s or early 50s, etc.
But, our entire friendship revolves around boardgames. We get together every Thursday night to play games for 3-4 hours.
Someone to talk to? Well, we don’t talk outside of boardgame night and we don’t really talk at boardgame night, other than about the game.
Someone to depend on? Well, pretty much all we depend on is that we will all show up.
Someone to enjoy? Well, frankly, we probably all enjoy boardgames more.
> Someone to talk to? Well, we don’t talk outside of boardgame night and we don’t really talk at boardgame night, other than about the game.
So you never, ever mention any personal event at game night? I don’t think so.
> Someone to depend on? Well, pretty much all we depend on is that we will all show up.
If one of them moved to a new house and needed help, would you go? Yeah, you would.
> Someone to enjoy? Well, frankly, we probably all enjoy boardgames more.
Nonsense, the secret ingredient of a good game is good company. So yeah, you big fluffy, you enjoy your friend’s company!
We really really don’t. We are there to play games, we don’t have time or brain space for small talk. We play heavy games that take a lot of deep thinking.
Also: have you considered the possibility that they might not be "close friends", as you describe them? What makes you say they are? Just interested in your answer, not wanting to demolish your point of view.
They are my only friends. Since I don’t have any closer friends, I consider them to be my close friends.
I may be imagining things but when you live in a small place where you have no choice but to share the load and pleasure of life (granted the group is emotionally stable), you don't suffer from that. You're a jolly bunch making your place nicer, finding and cooking food, and being goofy at night around the fire.
No group is emotionaly stable. We just deal with all the problems that come up more, or less effectively.
It was frustrating and discouraging for a long time and then suddenly I found myself with people to call on and spend time with. Half a decade later I moved and had the opportunity to try the experiment again. This time secondary connections made finding my network almost trivial. Maybe age helped too, being further removed from the university cliques.
I was relieved to find out, albeit way after the fact, that many have this experience. One friend recently quit his job to start a company focused on this phenomenon [0]. I hope he can displace the zombie of Meetup.
Otherwise, previous friends knew people and put me in touch. And finally there were 1-2 people who had also moved to the same city at some point, making it easy to plug into their networks
Anecdotally here's what's worked for me:
1. Intramural sports- even if you're not sporty, some leagues have zero barrier to entry (Bowling or sand volleyball 6's). There are usually pickup sports apps as well that you could probably find based on your city (i.e. JustPlay)
2. Volunteering- especially neighborhood / trail cleanup groups that you can find on Instagram or Meetup. These are low commitment and people tend to be friendly. Habitat for Humanity was another one that had lots of young people new to the city.
3. Free Fitness (or any other hobby) Groups- you can find anywhere. November Project, for example is in most cities
American society doesn't have social norms like many other countries which compel people to include others out of habit. I lived in Spain for a few years - turning down invitations was a legit hassle. And you've probably heard Brit comedians constantly complain about having to make excuses to avoid social gatherings. Americans don't have that problem - we assume you have your own things going on and don't want to bug you, and no one wants to presume to invite ourselves. And who knows what sort of nutjob your neighbor might turn out to be - you're stuck with them for as long as you live where you are, best to just avoid eye contact. The only times in my life I've gotten invited out of the blue to some event was to religious things. "The barbecue will be great - we all head over after the service..."
So we need an excuse. Some irresistible reason to force ourselves upon each other. Alcoholics don't want to drink alone. Athletes need teams or opponents, druggies need their dealers, etc. It can't be a hobby. You have to need to do whatever it is you're doing, to get past the barriers of American distrust and to have a ready rationalization for spending time with people who aren't your family.
Depends where you are in life. For me as a single guy in his early 30s, friendships are absolutely at the top of the hierarchy for me.
> Friendships are unique relationships because unlike family relationships, we choose to enter into them.
And this is WHY friends are above family for me. Admittedly, if I had my own family (as in wife and kids), they'd be my top priority in life for sure.
However, unfortunately I do notice that it's getting harder to meet up with friends as their obligations in life increase. One of my best friends has started university again while still working part-time, and so even though he lives in walking distance, we don't see each other very often because he's extremely short on time. Two other of my closest friends live in a different country, but somehow we're managing to meet up 3-4 times a year for at least a week each. That might change though when you'll eventually have kids.
To be honest, I won't read the whole article, but I just wanted to say that it can be different. At least I really hope that my friends will be a high priority for me even if my or their life situations inevitably change.
I am in the same place, I while I logically understand that it's probably easier to find a girl friend if I had a friend or two first, I still have a much stronger desire to have a romantic partner that just a friend.
Also not all single guys in their early 30s are eager to find a romantic partner. I am also in that age bracket and I am avoiding having another monogamous relationship for at least some years
If possible, try to time it with your closest friends because otherwise you'll rapidly run out of both 'lifestyle in common' and time.
(Tangentially: I've been thinking a lot about the theme of 'lifestyle in common' ever since both my parents and in-laws have retired and almost instantly assume that, because they can schedule 100% of their day, that we can too: my mother organised a family gathering for a Tuesday lunch - "Mum, I'll be at work, in the city, and the kids are at school...". This extrapolates in interesting ways as well)
friendships in a college-like environment durring the PhD was a bright point for me and many others and one of the best experiences of my life.
I have a couple friendships like that. Not all friendships look the same.
My life has become so much better when I cut all contact with all people I used to know - turns out they weren't friends anyway.
That being said, I limit my contacts to strictly business. If something does not benefit me, I don't engage.
No more stress, no more drama, more free time, more enjoyment.
Perhaps this is just due to the fact that I've never had a friend, but I'm not sure what the difference is between what the professor is describing and say a sex worker or escort. So long as the client can afford to, all of those criteria are fulfilled.
Is there something I'm missing?
Yes, but it's difficult to describe in words.
Part of it is the reassurance of knowing that there's someone you can depend on when times get tough. An escort wouldn't help you back onto your feet if you lost everything; they'd just move onto the next client.
The "talk" you get from a paid relationship is different too. For starters, they're not going to risk losing your business by telling you a difficult truth that you need to hear. This could cause you to become offended, after all, and isn't their place to tell you.
Dogs are pack animals, just as humans are, and part of the reason we like them, is because they have and bond via traits we... wait for it... like!
And while dogs have a very specific place in our society, that does not mean human friendships, built upon the same ideals and core fundamentals, are the same.
But you knew that, I presume?
I love my dog as much as I love you
But you may fade, my dog will always come through
Bribing and rape? Explain?
Also in fact it is often not even a bribe, in cases of sex slavery and human trafficking. The john is paying someone else to organize the rape for him.
I find it hard to believe these women have no other options than to sell their body.
I've been thinking a lot about this recently, and if it's possible to slow my perception of time. Life moved really fast during covid for me, I've tried to jump into new opportunities to learn things recently, and that's helped slow down my perception of time, and least I think for right now.
Friends come and go and are as reliable as Italian sports car.
People who I've thought of as good friends don't return texts or calls and when they do, the answer either is one party putting out all of the effort to spend time or worse an, "I'd love to see you but there are other people on tryong to see too."
Last person who said that to me was met with a, "well darn sorry I called, go ahead and delete my number."
Here's a fun challenge to test the value of your friend ships: stop initiating contact and see if they'll put forth effort to maintain the friendship. If no, then they really weren't your friend.
Family (at least the ideal functional family) as portrayed in media, and that I have seen in my parents' generation is supposed to be the fail-safe support system that has your back no matter what. True friendships are supposed to be "almost as good". I can point to several instances where family members rallied together to bail out another family member from a crisis. I have never seen this happen in my friends circle.
Not that I think it is not possible, some of us have been friends since middle school, and we regularly keep tabs on each other over phone despite many of us being in different locations. But in a time of crisis, how far would they go to help me out? I really don't know. And looking at history (my own family's history and general anecdotes), I'm going to guess nowhere near as far as what family would do for you.
I obviously still value the friendship and ensure I don't miss meet-ups (real or virtual), but I have come to the conclusion that even "strong friendships" have hard ceilings. These ceilings are almost impossible to breach and I imagine only something like literally saving your friend's life could promote you to the next tier. I agree with the saying "Blood is thicker than water".
There are many people for whom going to college was the direct result of hard work, self agency, and determination.
We could spontaneously decide to do the same things if we saw someone go out in the morning.
Since my old friends are now on the other side of the world, we have to make do with the new friends/parents that actually live in our street.
It helps that the houses are small, so we actually have like 10 families on a 25 meter stretch of road.
What my "friends" care: Money, more money, more money.
That's why i'm still lonely.
I got lonely/depressed in 2020 and started a hiking group. It was a cool experiment that failed. I was not able to monetize or scale it. I was bummed for awhile, but upon further reflection I examine the Pareto 80/20 in action. Because I started this group I met some amazing people that love adventure and plan/invite me to their adventures. I also met a very good friend who is focused on business/start up life. So my life has improved a lot even though the outcome was not what I was hoping for.
I'm still on the journey to understand and operate in my zone of genius. Though I think money is important (to the extent that bills are paid and 9-5 can be avoided) I value experiences and creating impact.
Let me know if you'd like to connect.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CFKIbIghK5t/?igshid=NDk5N2NlZjQ=
I'm not trying to use satire. My attempts at building community in a busy and fragmented world. :)
You're the bait with which you're fishing.
COnsider this as a confession, no need to up/down vote.
Friendship isn't an all or nothing proposition. You don't have to be perfectly aligned with another persons' morals and values to be friends with them. Sometimes just having one or two things in common is what is needed to keep those bonds going.
I’ve found friends through work, university, cycling, kids. I’ll need to ramp this up and be proactive because it won’t just happen without effort, given the demands on our time. But I’ll miss the 30-year relationships that take zero energy to be around, where you can take a mental snapshot of pure contentment.
The first issue is your friendships begin tracking your life stage. Using a normative example, single people will tend to be friends with single people and married people will tend to be friends with other married people. Likewise, people will children will tend to be friends with other people with children.
This acts as a shared experience just by proximity. If people aren't in the same life stage that friendship tends to be trasnactional or unstable. By "transactional" I mean you might be friends with people in your softball league or who play basketball with on the weekend but mostly those friendships will tend to revolve around that common interest or activity. maybe that'll develop into a deeper friendship but the odds are against it.
Likewise, you will develop "work friends" by virtue of spending so much of your time at work. For the most part however these aren't friends at all. If you leave that job, that shared shared experience ends and you will likely never see them again. Maybe you'll promise to catch up. Maybe it'll happen once or twice but again it's now in an unstable state and won't tend to last.
As time goes on your friends will be replaced by family.
The only way friendships in adulthood tend to survive (IME) is by scheduled activities. You set the expectation that that's what you'll be doing at a particular day and time. That's why you'll see sports so often here because a softball game needs to be played at a particular place and time. Pick-up basketball however is less the case for this so you'll likely see the same people less.
It's also why parenthood tends to spell the end for many such friendships. If you have 2 young children at home it makes it harder to maintain a scheduled activity long-term. There'll be times your children will be sick, you'll need to go to school or whatever.
This has been the hardest thing about being in my 30s as a single (and not particularly looking) lesbian woman. It's an unusual enough life choice that there just plain isn't a friendship pool. Most single people my age are low-key using their friend gatherings to look for partners. So my options for friends are either much older or much younger. I have more in common with the kids (gaming, techy stuff, etc.) but society says you're a creep if you do that so I'm basically alone. It sucks.
I don't want a partner, but man I wish I wanted one.
A major cause of first marriage ending was emotional infidelity on both sides.
I work remotely in consulting (full time job in the consulting department at $Bigtech) and teams only last as long as a project last.
It’s even harder now that my wife and I are “digital nomadding” flying across the US and not setting up roots anywhere.
My one close friend that I’ve kept in touch with since high school 30 years ago has small kids now. We try to squeeze time in. But it’s hard.
This urge dissolves in most of the people towards adulthood and maturity, when we are learning to find inner support, to form our own opinion about ourselves and to rely on that opinion more than on an external judgement.
I was always shy in grade school (heck, who are we kidding, I'm still shy). We moved around a bunch and after we left what I consider the closest thing I have to a hometown, making friends was rough. There's only 4 people I talk to (occasionally at best) from childhood/adolescence. It's weird. People talk about having friends as adolescents and discovering themselves through their friend groups. Article calls out learning to be intimate as well. I honestly feel like I missed out on that. My self discovery was honestly done mostly alone for the most part as my passions formed a kind of constant I could depend on. I only really had surface level connections, mostly through video games.
College was a huge breakout moment for me. I was surrounded by people who were interested in the same kinds of things I was! I ended up building a major social presence on campus through our computing clubs. I just liked talking shop with people and would help with homework and personal projects. Made a lot of good friends. Now here I am, in the last months of my 20s, and I'm rather proud that I'm still in contact with the vast majority of them.
Being in a California school studying CS, most of them ended up in the Bay. Some immediately left for Seattle or Austin, others did later. I ended up in Irvine as I did an internship at the socal office of one of the tech companies.
It was hard. My entire social world imploded over a few months. Dozens of people to talk to on campus immediately went to zero once I started working. I liked my coworkers and it was fun to talk shop with them, but there was a big age gap that made it hard to form personal connections. There's only one in or two coworkers who I became close enough to to, say, ask for a ride to a doctor.
I'd wake up, and it'd be quiet. I'd get home from work, and it'd still be quiet.
Thankfully a few months in, a friend suggested we put together a discord server of all our collective friends from school. Started at 10 people nearly every night playing games and talking about work and life. Not everyone joined, as this was fairly gaming focused. I swear this Discord group was the only thing that kept me sane over the 4 years I was down there.
Then the pandemic. Work went indefinitely full-remote and I was still living alone (27 years old and I was still not happy enough with myself to try dating). I moved back in with family and cancelled my lease once it became apparent that it was going to last awhile.
That saw me back up near the Bay. I didn't see anyone in 2020 because we all took COVID seriously (discord group was our coping mechanism), but after the vaccines in 2021, work was still fully-remote so took advantage of my location to start regularly seeing friends I hadn't been able to see much since college.
I hadn't been that happy in a long time.
2022 comes around and offices start to reopen. I'm looking at the logistics of moving back to Irvine. One of my friends asks why I'm moving back to SoCal if I was clearly so much happier in the Bay. I was close to friends, close to family, etc. Why not try to stay.
Considering many at my company seemed to prefer remote work anyways, I figured that I should ask about making my relocation permanent and moving to the main office up here. Approved immediately with zero resistance - and I on top of that I got a sizeable raise for the cost of living increase.
So I found an apartment in city with good access to public transit. I see friends multiple times a week now. We have a weekly movie and game night, regularly meet up for dinner in the week or weekend, etc. People's spouses, girl/boyfriends, etc. are part of the friend group.
I feel like I regained something I thought I'd lost forever. It's been a surreal and happy six months since I've moved here.
Friends are important, at least to me. No one should tell you any different. There's a reason some call them found family.
I think it's the worst feature of HN. This is a good example of a title that becomes far worse when "how" is removed, IMHO.
I hope this feature gets canceled.