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I asked four former friends why we stopped speaking (2023)

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Re: I asked four former friends why we stopped speaking (2023)

#51

Post by edm0nd »

munificent wrote: post #17
silisili wrote: post #13

> 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…

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 th…

Hello fellow Louisiana folk.

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

Re: I asked four former friends why we stopped speaking (2023)

#52

Post by mikepurvis »

silisili wrote: post #13

> 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…

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.

Re: I asked four former friends why we stopped speaking (2023)

#53

Post by specproc »

windowshopping wrote: post #15

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 sta…

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.

Re: I asked four former friends why we stopped speaking (2023)

#54

Post by Adrock »

SoftTalker wrote: post #39
oniony wrote: post #16

>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

Re: I asked four former friends why we stopped speaking (2023)

#55

Post by jasode »

SoftTalker wrote: post #45
jasode wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 wa…

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.

Re: I asked four former friends why we stopped speaking (2023)

#56

Post by terribleperson »

SoftTalker wrote: post #39
oniony wrote: post #16

>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.

Perhaps you should try consulting Merriam-Webster then.

Re: I asked four former friends why we stopped speaking (2023)

#57

Post by skystarman »

valzam wrote: post #48
windowshopping wrote: post #15

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 sta…

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.

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...

Re: I asked four former friends why we stopped speaking (2023)

#58

Post by vjk800 »

jasode wrote: post #41
silisili wrote: post #13

> 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…

>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 wa…

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.

Re: I asked four former friends why we stopped speaking (2023)

#60

Post by windowshopping »

valzam wrote: post #48
windowshopping wrote: post #15

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 sta…

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.

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