Introduction
I used to think that adult friendships were simple. You met someone, you liked each other, and then you hung out together. But lately, I have been feeling like our friendships have become complicated. It isn’t just me; I see it happening to my friends too. And this new complication leaves me wondering what happened to the easy days of high school when all we had to do was spot each other across the cafeteria and make eye contact before making plans for Friday night.
We spend a lot of time worrying about friendships.
How much does the fear of losing friends affect our lives? We spend a lot of time worrying about friendships. Some of us worry about what our friends think of us, or whether we’re good enough for them. Others worry about whether their friends will still like them if they find out something bad about them—like that one time you went to the bathroom at school and washed your hands with soap instead of rubbing them on an alcohol-saturated paper towel first (gross).
That’s not even getting into how many hours we spend worrying whether someone is going to steal our best friend away from us, or who can be invited to hang out without causing drama in the group—which leads right back into those first two points: Am I good enough? Will anyone still like me if I wasn’t?
It all gets exhausting pretty quickly once you start thinking about it this way.
It isn’t the same as high school.
The first thing to remember is that adult friendships are a lot different than high school ones. In high school, you were friends with people because of who you were. You weren’t friends with everyone in your class, just the people who shared some common interests.
In adulthood, things change. You’re not only having conversations about what’s happening in your lives and the world around them (the stuff that matters) but also finding out what someone else’s passions are outside of work or family life—and then exploring those together as well. Adult friendships require more time and effort because they’re built on activities; it isn’t enough anymore to just be friends with your neighbour or co-worker—you have to actually hang out and do things together on a regular basis if you want this person to become an important part of your life now and into the future.
Friendships come with an expiration date.
We all have friends we’ve known for years. But friendships, like relationships, need work to keep them going. You can’t expect your friends to be there for you forever—even if they’re your BFFs. Friendships come with an expiration date: maybe it’s when you move away from each other or go off to college; maybe it’s when one of you starts dating someone else, or maybe it’s simply because the friendship has run its course and lost its energy. That doesn’t mean that you don’t care about each other anymore—it just means that life is changing for both of you and taking different paths (and hopefully toward a better place).
Adult friendships should be reciprocal in a different way than high school friendships were.
It’s not enough to simply be there when your friends call or text with major life events, like a promotion or engagement. You should also be there for them when they need someone to listen to their problems, as well as help them with tasks like moving furniture or finding a new job. If you’re going through something difficult in your own life that requires input from other people, don’t hesitate to ask them for it—and don’t expect them to read your mind!
Adult friendships can be complicated, but staying connected with old pals is worth the effort.
You will have to deal with new kinds of drama.
You may be accustomed to the drama that comes with being a teenager or young adult. But when you transition into adulthood, you’ll encounter an entirely new kind of drama: the kind that stems from trying to balance work, family responsibilities and maintaining friendships with people who live all over the country.
You might find yourself wondering if someone is keeping up-to-date on their social media feeds as much as they should be, or getting annoyed because your best friend only texts twice a week (which is fine; she’s busy). This kind of new age-y “drama” can be difficult to deal with at first—especially when it feels like it’s stemming from external factors like not having enough time in the day to catch up on everyone else’s lives—but there are ways of overcoming these challenges.
You might not get along with your coworker, but you still have to see her at work every day.
If you find yourself in a situation like this, it’s important to remember that not every person has the same sense of humour as you. Your coworker may have found a particular joke offensive; something that you thought was hilarious might have been the opposite for her.
You won’t always like your friends all the time.
You’re not always going to like your friends. This is a fact that you cannot change, but it’s also one that shouldn’t deter you from having good ones. Friendships are built on both the good and the bad, and sometimes we’re just not compatible with someone for reasons beyond our control.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing! Acknowledging that you don’t always agree with someone doesn’t mean you can’t be friends with them anymore—it just means there might be some things about them that rub you the wrong way (and vice versa). After all, if your friend hasn’t done anything to hurt anyone or cause any actual harm in their lives, why would it matter if they disagree with something? It might even just be something as simple as “I don’t go shopping on Black Friday” versus “I would rather die than go shopping on Black Friday.”
But here’s where things get tricky: In order to maintain friendships well into adulthood (which is what we’re aiming for here), there has to be some level of comfort when dealing with differences between people within your friend group/social circle/what have you—and this includes being able to accept when someone doesn’t like something about another person in their life.
Your friends might not understand your current situation.
The transition from “single person” to “partnered person” can be a difficult one, and if you’re not prepared for it, it can be downright traumatic. If you’ve found yourself in this position and are struggling with a friend who doesn’t understand your situation, the first step is to develop healthy boundaries around your friendship.
In the past few years, I’ve been lucky enough to find friendships that were able to grow along with my life changes while still respecting my history—but that wasn’t always how things were. As much as we want our friends to understand us at every stage of our lives, sometimes they don’t get things right away (or ever).
In these cases—and even when they do get it right away—it’s important that we actively communicate what’s going on with us without making them feel bad about themselves or putting pressure on them to change their behaviour when they aren’t ready yet.
There will be times when you have nothing in common as fast as you can make a new friend, life is going to plop some new challenge on your plate that needs solving and this new challenge could put a strain on the friendship no matter how close it was before, take the time to sit down and really listen to each other. hear each other out, do active listening and rephrase what they said to let them know you really heard what they said, just because we want our friends to forgive us easily doesn’t mean they should be able to leave their feelings aside as quickly as we can reference something that was a big deal for you when you were their age if you’re older than them or make sure they know that even though their problem seems small now, it’s still essential for them now and will have long-term effects on their lives in the future if it’s not handled well today.
The relationship between two people is one of the most unique relationships in life. You are constantly learning together, and you’re constantly teaching each other new things about living life to its fullest. It can be a mutually beneficial process that deepens your bond with each other while also helping you grow as an individual.
But sometimes, you don’t want to talk about how good your friend is at solving problems or how much they know about world history or geography. Sometimes, all you want from them is their attention. And if they give it to you, excellent! But if not… well then it becomes a problem for both parties involved in the friendship because there needs to be some give-and-take here for trustworthiness and bonding between two individuals who love each other very much but live worlds apart sometimes (literally).
The solution? Try talking less instead of more—and that means listening more than speaking!
Listening is key when it comes down to being able to communicate effectively with others—whether those people are family members like parents/children/siblings etc., friends from school/workplace etc., acquaintances such as neighbours or even strangers on buses – everyone needs someone else’s ear sometime during their lives
Conclusion
As you can see, there’s a lot more to adult friendships than meets the eye. The truth is that we’re all still figuring this out, and we might never be able to find one universal formula for success. But if there were ever a time to try something new and different—or even just go back to those basics from your childhood—this would be it!
