Adult life friendships
Today I saw a post on Twitter that said, “Harsh reality of adulthood: realizing that our parents don’t have any friends.” In the comments, people were arguing about how we can be surrounded by many colleagues but not many friends, and it made me think about how I, for example, have always had a great relationship with people. People would often tell me that I had many friends. However, when I think about it, despite always having several topics to talk about with people or knowing many aspects of their lives, I can’t really consider all of them friends, and vice versa.
In the end, my adult life consists of only a few close friends. No matter how much I talk to someone or know details about them and their personal life, that person isn’t necessarily a friend. Meanwhile, I have a true friend who works with me, and sometimes we don’t talk for days, even though we sit ten meters away from each other.
I just think adult relationships are funny and sometimes strange, because when I was younger, I always had expectations of having many friends. But as I grew older, I changed that mindset and started cutting off meaningless “friendships,” or things I thought were friendships. I’ve noticed that this is usually a common pattern.
Why does that happen? Why do we crave numbers when we’re younger, but as we grow older, we tend to go in the opposite direction?
Why do we distance ourselves as time passes, even when we have a connection with people? Why do we distance ourselves from people who were once so important to us at a certain moment in our lives?