From the earliest memories we think about those withwhom we have shared our life journey. Friends.
One of the things you realize as you age is that your requirements for friendship changes. When you were young it could be as simple as someone who liked to play on the seesaw with you, or you would push each other on the swing.
Then tween years meant that you would huddle about the mysteries of adults (mainly what the heck is sex) and talk smack about those that you didn’t like. Ah, the ever present beginning of the cliques. Grouping, categorizing, and shunning of those that don’t belong.
Listen, there is nothing as mean as a 12 year old girl, except her 16 year old counterpart, both female and male. Well, maybe their adult parents who are assholes, who egg on their children or even worse, those that are so ignorant of their children’s amoral behavior, that they have no clue what their child is up to.
(I remember when my oldest son, who is on the autism spectrum, was graduating high school, he had been terribly alienated in school because the “in” group did not like him. [This had been going on since middle school.] When I got a call from the PTA because I had not paid my school dues for all 4 years of his high school, and they wanted to do the typical end of school parties for the graduating seniors. I totally lost it and yelled at the woman about how my son was treated. She said she had no idea. Our school is very small. How did she not know what is going on, or better yet, maybe she didn’t want to know that her child and their friends were simply little shits. Oh, and no, I didn’t send a penny.)
Luckily, I grew up, and so did my children, in the age before social media. Bullying was bad then, but today it is at an extreme not seen before. Social media in the hands of sociopathic children is not a good thing. (Quite frankly, the push to limit phones in school is a move in the right direction.)
I just read an interesting point about phone use among the young and parenting… to paraphrase;
Helicopter parents, who have to plan every aspect of their child’s life and require safetyism on every aspect of their child’s existence, have no problem handing them the keys to a computer /phone without any supervision at all.
And society wonders why there are so many children with mental health issues.
Unfortunately, a lot of things also do not change through life either. Mean girls/boys remain mean adults, bullies remain bullies, and dumbasses remain dumbasses. Jealousy is a reality and frenemies abound. Something you learn the hardway.
Well, at least I did.
It is important to remember that you are not required to care about your “friends” more than they care about you. It is not your responsibility to save someone who is not able to save themselves. It is also not your responsibility to give up your happiness because someone you consider a friend is jealous of your happiness. Your “friends” do not own you. These are frenemies, not friends.
(Just as an aside, a parenter/spouse/significant other does not own you either. They need to be your true friend, and supporter as well, and allow you to blossom in life.)
Over the years you learn that the people who support you, look out for you, revel in your happiness are the ones you need to attach yourself to. And if that means, you need to spend some time alone, without another person there, until you can find a group that loves you and deserves you, then so be it.
I never understood a group that were friends from birth or from kindergarten through adulthood. More power to them, truly. But my question is, don’t you change and grow, and sometimes don’t you outgrow people? Do these people who are friends forever stay constant in the likes, dislikes, wants and needs throughout their life?
Not everyone has the exact same life experiences. Sometimes you need a group that understand you at the moment that you are living. Not someone who remembers that you put the red crayon up your nose in 1st grade.
Life, has a way of changing people. It definitely changed me.
There are those persons that move away from you for any number of reasons (I can’t say that I haven’t been ghosted by people that I thought were my friends). But to think about it and try to figure out what the issue is a a sign of adulthood. Sometimes it is something you did, something that you don't necessarily want to fix either, or it isn’t about you at all.
I figured out if someone really was your friend, they would tell you what the issue is and see if you could work out the problem. If they are too immature to tell you, then perhaps they weren’t your friend in the first place. Sometimes, people just have their own problems and honestly, it was most likely a good thing that they no longer take your calls.
Seriously, you wake up one day and you have been unfriended on social media and your phone number blocked on their phone. This person is not someone you need in your life.
One of the other aspects of adult friendships that I also see alot, is the loss of friendships because you are a parent of a special needs children.
Yes, you are consumed by the needs of your child. No you do not go out to lunch, or necessarily know the latest fashion, you do not contemplate which summer camp to send your child to (if there is even a camp that would accept your child), you cannot partake in weekend team sports because your time is taken up with all kinds of therapies, your future plans are much different than the norm. And many cannot handle the reality that you live with.
People move away from you because they also don’t want to hear about the struggles, the upheaval, and the loss with which you live. Are these bad people? I don’t think so. They just can’t handle your day to day. Were they ever your friend? Well at one time you were, but whatever bond you had, was simply not strong enough to hold the friendship together in a time of crisis.
What you can do though is create a new group of friends.
In truth, that is simply what being an adult is all about as well.
You need to find your “people” at every age.
It took time, but I have found mine.
We go for walks and bitch about family, issues with our children, and plans we need to make for the future. We understand each other’s next steps.
We facetime on Friday nights, for cocktail hour (long before it became a thing because of COVID by the way), because one of you moved cross country, but you are and will always be friends.
Listen, the thing that is of utmost import when discussing adult friendships is that you understand each other without having to explain everything you are going through each time you talk. There is a shorthand in your discussions. An understanding of how things work without having to draw a diagram.
Meanwhile, I just got this from one of my friends…
Seems like we are destined to be partners in ghost crime….
I certainly relate to finding ‘your people’ at the different stages of life. Some of us undergo changes that require making new friends and letting go of the old ones. But, as you describe, kindred spirits are the type that lasts through the many iterations of life.