Friendships need presence and presence can be supported by hanging out and/or commitment. Ideally both but commonly by only one or the other. Phases in life ma

Friendships need presence and presence can be supported by hanging out and/or commitment. Ideally both but commonly by only one or the other. Phases in life make hanging out easier in the early life and harder in midlife, then easier again when you're old. In turn, commitment usually depends on the particular individuals and not so much from the age. The relationship between some friends you were hanging out with in your twenties might lack commitment and they tend to disappear as you grow older. Things were easy as long as you kept seeing each other anyway. Then again, some people you might see less frequently but you somehow know they'll always be there somehow when needed; that is commitment. When you're middle-aged you don't generally have time to hang out. So you need to build on commitment instead: find people you actually care about and who actually care about you, and who can be relied on even if you can't see every month. Unfortunately, finding these people is a rarity. It's only slightly easier than finding a life-long spouse, and you probably can't expect to find more than a small handful during your life. Friendships need to be intentionally nurtured but also sufficiently balanced. It's easy to find "friends" who you will listen to but who never have the time or patience to listen to you. Or "friends" who need you as an entertainer: they aren't interested in you in particular, they just long for company, any company. In this case you're giving more than your "friend", and you'll eventually grow grumpy about seeing the person. Averaged over the years, you should be getting back about as much as you put in the relationship yourself for a fruitful companionship. If it's always you who has to call and suggest something, you'll just be annoyed at some point. Both need to nurture, support, and invest in the relationship in roughly equal amounts on some, probably slightly relative, scale. It's also harder to find friends in midlife because your bar has gone higher up. You've learned the value of just friends and good friends in all the rough seas of life, and you just won't bother with everyone who's nice. You realise that life is finite and it's often more valuable to do things on your own rather than in a company where you only connect on some levels.