Why we lose our friends as we age (2023)

ge96

It is sad I had a best friend who I just lost out of touch with when we both entered college. I don't remember if I did something wrong or what, I remember he even lived with me at one point when he was having problems with his parents in highschool. Yeah I only have 4-5 really good friends (keep in touch with often) and then a bunch of acquaintances/work people. Contrast to high school when I had tiers of friends/different groups. It is an exposure thing, more people in education settings.

mattw2121

We become less social as we age...

wxw

https://archive.ph/uF6WC#selection-773.5-780.0

avgDev

I've lost many friendships because I grew out of things. My friends were a bad crowd involved in street racing and just being a nuisance. No real direction and involvement from parents. I was that too. At some point I realized I need to improve my life and went back to school for CS. Got a good job and got my life together. My "friends" are still doing the same things, they just got older. If we met today, I would never befriend them. I did however meet new friends, but they are not as close to me. I like keeping distance. I'm mostly focused on spending time with my child and just teaching him things. I also try to learn about sports and things he is interested in. Therefore, time for friends is limited.

lom888

It's just gonna be chatting with sockpuppet AIs from here on out. Someone needs to set up a social network where our AI agents (who for many of us, know us better than our families) sort out who we'd be best set up to socialize with and then set up play dates.

bjelkeman-again

One thing I try to do is cultivate new friendships through new hobbies. Some of them develop to become lifelong friendships. It takes time and effort, and to me it is worth it.

MarkusWandel

A lot of friendships aren't that deep. I've had work colleagues I really liked and even socialized with outside the workplace, and yet, if they left the company or retired... faded away. If it takes real effort to keep up contact, you get a lot more choosy. COVID also hit pretty bad. Speaking from personal experience, several friends that we saw once or twice a year at informally recurring BBQ/brunch/etc. kind of occasions have faded away as that series was interrupted and never restarted. And finally... you learn who you are as you age. Friends who seemed cool, who seemed to have the answers... may not be so great from a mature perspective.

gsky

a lot of people see friendships as a source of free labor.

oaweoifjwpo

I've found it to be very obviously the case that the main reason this happens to me is that everyone is moving around all the time. People scatter to all corners of the country (or even the world) and time zones and travel times just make it impossible to meet and maintain friendships. None of my friends growing up live in the same state as me.

everdrive

I'm in my early 40s, and my social life has been collapsing. I've always been weird, but haven't had trouble making at least some friendships most of my life. Like others in this thread, I never recovered after COVID. It's interesting to think of this strictly in terms of aging. I had been thinking of it as strictly a "bowling alone" or "loneliness crisis" problem. Perhaps it's like a modern forest; the same old stressors can be too much when forests are dealing with pollution, parasites, ecosystem collapse, etc. ie, the old stressors are still there but everything is in a much weaker state.

SunlightEdge

I've gotten into my 40s and honestly I've dropped about 25% of my friends - as they are also in their 40s but drink a lot and worse do cocaine. They also are really into making fun of each other. Maybe I'm an old bore, but none of that appeals. I haven't burnt my bridges but I much prefer to spend time with people that are healthy, into reading, are positive. I just can't be bothered... Still I may change my mind in time - but I am aiming for a long stint of not seeing the boys. I am married now and with my first kid (10 weeks old) and that has definitely made me time poor. But I only now text the friends that actually matter to me now.

nwhnwh

Because the real you discovers that they were never real friends.

elchief

put everyone's birthday in your calendar, and wish them a happy birthday (at least a text) every year like their stuff on social media friendships ebb and flow, as people get married, have kids, get divorced, kids become independent, move away, move back. don't give up on a friend even if they disappear for a few years when they first have kids try to arrange at least an annual in-person meet up, if in the same city try to involve them in your interests, and try to take up their interests, or at least be curious fantasy football is helpful. golf as you get older. baseball games. meet for lunch if you're in their part of town. host parties for events like super bowl, the oscars, stuff like that

tristor

As I've gotten older I struggle to make new friendships, but I still keep up most of my older friendships. The friendships that I've dropped or let fade away are mostly because they were toxic relationships in some regard or alternatively that I'm simply in a much different place in my life than the other person. I still have multiple friends that I've known for more than 20 years, but nobody left from high school or earlier that I keep in touch with. My path just diverged so much from others once I left my hometown, and while one of my long-term friendships is with someone from the same home town, we both live in the same city now over a thousand miles away. It's harder to make the time for new relationships when you're older, and you frankly just have less patience for people who should know better and nearly infinite patience for those who couldn't have known better. Ironically, I'm at a point in my life where what I'd like to do the most is teach younger people useful skills that I've learned, but that's a difficult thing to do as most younger people have no interest in interacting with people significantly older than them, and the social context has changed so much now compared to the past that it's socially frowned upon unless you are directly familial related. I've guest lectured at a local college a few times, and I've actually considered doing full-time teaching after I retire from tech, but the types of things I want to teach aren't really a focus in school (think stuff you'd learn in shop, home-ec, or stuff that was never taught). I have a young niece I teach things and there's neighborhood kids that come around when I'm doing project car stuff in the driveway, but generally it's fairly disappointing to me how most adults stop wanting to learn by the time they're just 20-25, and people are fully stuck in to their ways by 30. I'm still learning new things every day, and I have never lost my desire to learn or to self-improve. I am a different person than I was 5 years ago or 10 years ago, and I think better than I was. There's no reason I should ever stop getting better and learn new things, but just knowing things doesn't make anything better, it helps to also teach others or use your knowledge to help people. So many folks are just completely resistant to the idea of learning something or accepting help.

sylens

Having kids really changes the game in a lot of ways. For me to consider doing something now, its not just that I'm interested or if I have the money, I also have to make sure childcare is lined up - either my partner or a family member. It makes you very judicial in what you choose to do as you have a finite amount of childcare to spend (unless you are really lucky and have a family that is always available to watch your kids). I don't really see movies in theaters anymore because I'd rather use the childcare to go out to dinner with my wife or take in a baseball game, for example.

jonbaer

Some of this has to also do w/ the environment. If you have a solid weekend pickup game of any kind and a park/rink/court closes it is pretty much the end of that group, as much as you might try to find another spot it is never the same.

nphardon

Ah, I'm one of the outliers, I have more friends now and a richer, healthier social life than I've ever had before. I'm 45, I do have a 7yo kid and wife, two dogs, a full time job, just like everyone else on here for whom these are reasons for not having friends. I have too many friends, actually, but that's a good problem to have. I make a point not to make friends with coworkers and feel bad for some of the people I know who only have work friends. It reminds me of Colin Robinson "I'm gonna go hang out with my real friends, my work friends."

nuancebydefault

Having friends is a bit like a love relationship : you have to work at it and sometimes you get hurt. Things that are worth the effort mostly take effort.

smurda

How much time is required to spend with someone to become friends with them? If you assume 20 hours, that's 5-10 hangout sessions with someone. During a working life, that might take over a year. University life offers large windows of disposable time to forge those friendships. In work life, we don't have as much disposable time to spend building friendships.

NoSalt

Maintaining relationships with other humans is a giant PITA. It's just not worth it.