Friendships are vital to our wellbeing, but in midlife, they are not as easy to maintain. When you’re in school or college, you see your friends all the time, make plans, and are generally inseparable. Even during your twenties and early thirties, it can be relatively easy to make and maintain friendships because of the shared proximity of work and children’s schools.
As we age, however, maintaining friendships can be more difficult. People continue on in their lives, get divorced, or move away. It seems despite all of the connectivity of social media and the internet; it can be pretty easy to drift apart.
Friendship Is a Two-Way Street
Friendship is a two-way street, however, and you cannot absolve yourself of all the responsibility for maintaining relationships as you age. You don’t have to watch life get in-between you and your friends or languish alone on the couch for another weekend. With a little effort, you can maintain and strengthen your relationships, mend old ones, and make new ones.
Why friends drift apart
Assuming that friendships don’t usually dissolve because of some huge blowup or drama, it’s pretty normal to drift away from some people. Maybe you had kids, and they didn’t, or they have a family member to care for and that eats up their time. It’s also possible you just enjoy being alone. Lifelong friends are typically easier to sustain than those we meet later in life since we have invested more effort in them.
Distance is often the big one. We move across the country for family or work and we don’t have these people in our lives nearly as much. Young people have dozens of friendships since they’re forced to be around students or coworkers. When it’s not a function of everyday life, it definitely gets more difficult.
Different Life Stages
Sometimes we drift apart because we’re at different stages in our lives. If you find yourself extremely successful, it can be embarrassing to peers who are struggling. Many people lose track of each other when work or family life changes drastically. Simply having kids when your friend group is largely kid-free can make it hard to stay close. They may feel you don’t have time, or they don’t want to bother you, and eventually that leads to you not getting invited anymore. It’s not usually intentional, you’re just in different places.
The first step in repairing relationships or forging new ones is to figure out why other friendships have failed or are struggling. Once you identify those difficulties, you can address them, but you have to be frank with yourself.
Seeing the reason is the first step; taking responsibility is the next one.
The COVID effect on friendship
Remember lockdowns and how that feels like decades ago but was actually only back in 2020? During that time, we relied heavily on digital means of communication and a lot of friendships actually got stronger for this. We craved connection, and even though we could only get it through our screens and phones, the brief moments of communication felt all the more powerful.
I think that, despite how brief lockdown was, that it affected our ability to understand how much we need connection. We had grown accustomed to electronic communication being meaningful, and when lockdown ended, we found it difficult to return to seeing people in person. It was just as easy to communicate electronically, but it didn’t carry that weight anymore.
However, one thing Zoom calls did do, is allow us to connect with new friends all over the world. Communicating electronically opened up the possibilities of new friends. It also allows us to still be connected when we are away. My friend who winters in Florida can still attend our monthly book club meetings!
Putting in the effort
Despite how you feel about connecting to people, whether virtually or in-person, the effort definitely seems to be much more significant than before. It’s exceptionally easy to blow off plans or say no when we’re invited to places, but each time you do it hurts your friendships. Eventually people will stop inviting you to things, and you’ll be left wondering where everyone went. You may even find yourself asking “why don’t people like me?”
Reframing how you view engagement with other people can help. When someone asks you out for dinner, or to a trivia night, consider that they went through the trouble to think of and invite you. You’re not just saying “I don’t want to do this”, you’re saying “I don’t want to see you”. If you don’t want to do what they’re inviting you to, you can always suggest an alternative activity. If there’s a conflict, instead of just saying “no”, try and reschedule. It shows effort, which is ultimately the primary factor in keeping your friendships in good health. Even something as seemingly simple as sending a friendship card can go a long way in maintaining that connection.
Another way to show up and put in effort is to invite your friends to simply hang out. Go to dinner by yourself or have them over just to talk. Inviting people to events is often impersonal and it can feel daunting to show up for something formal or with a crowd. Maintaining a friendship in middle age and beyond can be as simple as putting aside time to chat over coffee.
Making new friends in middle age
For many people, losing friends can just be an unavoidable part of life and aging, but that doesn’t mean you need to drift about alone. While you don’t have the captive audience of peers that you did in college and in the office, it’s definitely not impossible to find new friends.
One great way to find new friends when you’re older is to find a new hobby. The best part of this plan is that you get a new hobby. Whether you find a social group or not. But diving headlong into a hobby when you’re older is a wonderful plan, because you have fewer things keeping you from making it a priority.
You can find places in your city, or even online groups, and immediately you’ll be connected to people with similar interests. Beginner courses in beer making, cooking, art, or music are incredible for meeting new friends because everyone sucks as much as you do, and you can bond over that fact.
You can also reconnect with old friends; it just takes more effort to mend the relationship. Identify why you fell apart and if it’s something you did, it might help to own that. Invite them to a minor date like coffee or lunch because everyone needs caffeine and food so it’s easy to show up. There you might find that you slip quite easily back into pleasant discussion and from there, if you put in effort, you can redevelop your friendship. It’s not a guarantee, but it’s definitely possible so don’t count out those you’ve drifted away from.
Friendships require care and effort
What you’ll find when you start to examine your friendships as you age is that they simply require more work than they did when you were younger. Not being forced to be around people all the time can really put a damper in your relationships and the same can be said for family responsibilities, work, and distance. Still, we live in a world that is more connected than ever before, so at the very least, digital communication is available.
At the end of the day, friendship is a two-way street, but we often overestimate how much effort we’re putting in. Take stock of your friendships, why they’re failing, or they failed, and how much was your fault. Put in more effort, and give your friends grace too, because it can feel like a lot to communicate, plan, and show up. The truth is, however, that life is always better with friends, even when it feels like a lot.