I am a great believer and practitioner of lasting friendships. But as I chart the course of my middle-aged life, I sometimes find it challenging tiding over the choppy waters of adulthood friendships. I wish friendship in adulthood was as simple, trusting and trouble-free as that of childhood. The Katti Mitti kinds where you share all that is in your heart and mind, complain when you are hurt and yet make up to continue with the friendship.
No hide and seeks, ghosting, blocking from social media, intentional long silences and purposeful casualness or the excuse of a busy adult life. Of course, there can be exceptions and it’s difficult to mend burning bridges when we have been grievously hurt by good friends, our trust irrevocably broken or intentionally humiliated and disregarded.
Here, I am not talking about social media friends or casual friendships, but long-standing bonds forged over years and ties embedded by common profound experiences and precious memories.
I have no shame in admitting that I still suffer the pangs and heartbreaks of friendship break-ups and negligence and mourn both abrupt and slow deaths of once-upon-a-time valuable friendships. I’m no perfect friend. We all get caught up in our own universe and don’t have enough time for everything and everyone. But yes, a constant goal in my life has been to be a better friend and it has lately got me thinking the way friendships in adulthood sometimes tend to drift, wither, and turn knotty.
Like every relationship, friendship too has its own ups and downs. Our good friends love us unconditionally, support us, care for us, and have our back in times of need. They sometimes disappoint, sadden, and hurt us too. But as we grow older, while some friendships withstand this roller-coaster ride, stick like the strongest of glues and stand the test of time, a few others get easily dented and shrivel despite the bond and shared memories.
Adult friendships are unique and valuable relationships with the potential to enrich our lives immensely, and yet they are frequently neglected and are hardly prioritised. When we grow up, our friendships do not naturally transition into lasting adult friendships. It takes effort, nurturing and intention to ensure that our friendships travel along with us as we age.
As I grew into my mid-30s and 40s, absorbing life’s small and big lessons, I began to realise that certain friendships do not necessarily carry on the same way it used to earlier. Naturally, it resulted in both hurt and disappointment.
I remember an instance, where one of my good friends and an ex-roommate — who later went on to become a flatmate as well — at a later period visited the same city I was in. She had not contacted me, but I did when I came to know about her visit. She responded with a “I am sorry, I’ve already left.” The same friend had met with a serious accident when we were staying together and I, along with other flatmates, had spent sleepless nights at the hospital during her treatment till her guardians reached. I had even withdrawn my meagre savings to pay for the hospital bills. Obviously, my friend had moved on from these memories or perhaps had genuinely forgotten to contact me. I will never know as I didn’t ask her even though we met a couple of times later.
I guess, these are the barricades that we erect around us when we become adults, which we easily skip as children and youngsters. Ironically, while we may bare our soul, share many other adult challenges and feelings with our close friends during adulthood, we hesitate sharing things our friends may have done or said to upset us.
As we turn to being responsible adults and life happens, friendships suddenly seem to plunge in the hierarchy of relationships. In adulthood, as people grow up and move away, friendships are the relationships most likely to take a hit. Our spouses, romantic partners, parents, children, families — all become priorities. As we age, friendships are usually sacrificed at the altar of life’s circumstances and priorities. Close friends who live in the same city despite scheduling opportunities to spend time together are unable to accomplish it. They fall through the cracks of our adult life.
Nevertheless, friendships are unique because unlike family relationships, we usually choose to enter into them. Friends want to be or choose to be in our lives. But it is this very choice that gives us the option to remain invested or to overlook a friendship. We aren’t obligated to our friends the way we are to our partners, our jobs and our families.
It is this voluntary and flexible nature of friendship which makes it susceptible to life’s whims and situations in a way that other formal relationships aren’t. And yet, research after research show how important friends are important for our happiness and wellbeing. Throughout our lives, we experience and gather the mental and physical health benefits friendships accrue. But as life moves on and people’s priorities, responsibilities and attitudes shift, friendships are often affected, sadly, for the worse.
As people enter middle age, they tend to have more demands on their time, many of them more ‘pressing’ than friendships. In any case, it’s easier to put off meeting with an old friend than to miss a family gettogether or a kid’s swimming class.
The passage of time and different paths followed by friends also impact the nature of relationships. We develop friendships at different stages of our lives and while at that particular time period the relationship may mean the world to us, it may not necessarily continue to remain the same as we go about our respective lives. As we grow up, we get jobs, get married, have kids, move away. We change, become different and some of our best friends do that as well and become distant memories to each other.
Moreover, as people move through life, they make and keep friends in different ways. Some maintain their old friendships, some prefer to go with the new ones, while a few others choose to remain distant. The new friends that people make in their middle age in all likelihood are embedded into other kinds of relationships — colleagues, parents of their children’s friends, friends of their spouses, etc. I know of people who are great friends with spouses of their partner’s friends but have lost their own friends down the line.
In the past few years or so, the Internet coupled with social media, have incredibly changed the contours of friendships, including those in adulthood. We all know how it has helped us in reconnecting with our old and long-lost friends and connected to new friends. At the same time, it has set in motion a vortex of complexities including the urge to immediately react, driving polarisation between friends over politics and other issues sounding the death knell on age-old friendships.
Close friends, childhood friends are now quick to counter, get easily offended, castigating, and labelling each other, spiralling friendship break-ups and social media embargos. A few months ago, a dear friend of nearly four decades chose to almost cast me out of her life over a perceived sense of betrayal in our school WhatsApp group, despite my explanations to the contrary and efforts of reaching out. Other friends in the group chose to be unforgiving and petty. I felt a deep sense of sadness and helplessness over it.
I had read somewhere that by middle age, people accumulate many friends — from school and college days, jobs, moving cities and activities — and these friendships fall mainly into three categories of active, dormant, and commemorative. Friendships are active if you are in touch regularly and you could reach out to them for support without feeling awkward and you are aware what’s going on with their lives. A dormant friendship has history where maybe you haven’t spoken in a while, but you still think of that person as a friend. A commemorative friend is not someone you expect to hear from or see, but was important to you at an earlier time and you think of him/her fondly for that reason.
Modern adult friendships aren’t just challenging to maintain but also at times lack articulation. Sometimes, meaningful friendships fall apart because we have no language or script to express our expectations and our feelings as adults. Like friendships in earlier stages, adult friendships are also affected by conflict, separations, feelings of betrayal and hurt. But adults prefer to remain silent and feel the need to be more polite and don’t demand much of their friends. In fact, those who speak out are chided for being churlish and immature.
We often get so caught up in our ‘super productive’ lives that we don’t actually take time to assess whether we’re living by what gives us happiness and contentment. I am grateful and proud that all through my life, except for a few times perhaps, I have tried to show up as a good friend. And as I get older, I have begun to value and prioritize it more.
Of course as we get older and approach mid-life, it’s natural to sometimes grow out of certain relationships including friendships. We tend to distinguish the people we want to be with, including friends. And so, we set boundaries. Our values, principles, opinions, and beliefs are much more established by then and we refuse to accept a friend’s viewpoint which we may have a few years ago. Sometimes, we don’t think of friends on the same level as we think of other important people in our orbit and are less forgiving.
But all relationships need nurturing and so do friendships even though it doesn’t fall into any formal structure. And it’s how we cultivate our friendships and navigate over the course of time that determine a truly fulfilling grown-up adult friendship. Understanding our overarching friendship dynamics and being open surely helps.
Interestingly, as people progress into their twilight years, there seems to be more time for friendship again. By the time people are in their fifties with stable marriages and careers and with kids not needing them in their lives as much, they begin to realise that they need to rekindle their friendships and fill their life with close friends.
Maintaining deep friendships in adulthood comes with a certain degree of vulnerability and honesty which we should acknowledge, address and be both accepting and forgiving. Friendship is a relationship with no strings attached except the ones we choose to tie. I deeply admire and appreciate people who manage to stay friends for life. It is indeed a valuable treasure to be cherished and celebrated.
