14 ms·

It’s your friends who break your heart

179 points by wallflower 5y ago

renewiltord 5y ago
How does one read The Wellness Letters? I only read far enough into the article that I wanted the source material but I can’t find them anywhere.
- spidersouris 5y ago
  FWIW I sent an email to Elisa Albert from her website[1] and here is what she replied: > the wellness letters is buried in an unmarked grave. i am going to turn it into some other book eventually. [1] https://www.elisaalbert.com/about https://www.elisaalbert.com/about
- omgmajk 5y ago
  https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60406234-the-wellness-letters https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60406234-the-wellness-le...
dominotw 5y ago
i lost all my friends to marriage and family life. I choose to remain single and now i cannot relate to any of my friends. Impossible to find friends as a single man in lat 30's. Kind of resigned to my fate and accepted that this is how things are.
- donatj 5y ago
  Similar predicament myself, though I am married without children. My friends all had kids and moved out to the exurbs. Combine that with forced working from home the last couple years and it’s made my mid-late thirties the loneliest part of my life. I even tried Bumble BFF, but it just further revealed I have no idea how to make friends.
- verisimi 5y ago
  .... but you have your wife .... forever ... lol
  - theonemind 5y ago
    No, he doesn't. He's single. His ex-friends have their wives forever. (But they don't, because estrangement, divorce, and death.)
    - verisimi 5y ago
      I've made a mistake, I apologise! I read what the poster said as him saying that he lost his friends to marriage and family life. I obviously did NOT read the bit where he said he chose to remain single. I actually interpreted the first part as him saying that he had got married etc. Mea culpa - apologies again.
      - theonemind 5y ago
        Happens to everyone!
- revlolz 5y ago
  Take a hobby and find an online community for it. If there is something like a discord or messaging group, start there. Best, close, good, any friend starts as an acquaintance. Relationships need not progress anywhere to which both people make it and it's entirely possible for both parties to view the dynamic differently. I went through this and found comfort in just being able to talk with e-friends from gaming groups that I have loose association with when going through life changes.
  - dazc 5y ago
    > Take a hobby and find an online community for it. I believe you're trying to be helpful but parent poster seems to be content as he is and there is nothing wrong with this. Just as you don't have to be married or have kids or like dogs to be a regular human being.
- therealmarv 5y ago
  In late thirties I changed country and joined a coworking regularly. 5 years later I have maybe even more friends than during University times is my feeling (maybe I got lucky). Same could work with joining other kind of communities (hobby, sports etc.).
  - hungryforcodes 5y ago
    I agree! Since leaving North America and my married / parent friends -- I found so many great friends and I'm really happy. Other people should try this as well.
  - deltaonefour 5y ago
    Co-working? You mean like a co-working space where remote workers from various companies congregate? Any recommendations for good ones?
- dheera 5y ago
  > i lost all my friends to marriage and family life This I can very much relate with, a lot of my formerly good friends I never see anymore because they have literally negative amount of free time, they are already cutting into their health and sleep just trying to raise 2 kids, a dog, a cat, 2 full-time jobs, and unethical amounts of on-call time. I don't think they are all doing "well" either, honestly, but they don't have time for friends, even if I try to get coffee them they usually end up having to bail in 20 minutes. I remember when these people would go on long hikes with me, build stuff together, play duets, support each other through sickness and other times of trouble, but that is no more. I'm okay because I've been fortunate enough to be able to find new friends, but yeah, I understand this phenomenon. Society is just too demanding of people in general. There used to be a time in history where only one parent worked, and in theory now that both parents work they should only theoretically need to each work half time, but that isn't what reality accepts right now, reality wants both to work full time plus some more. I have a vanishingly small but nonzero number of friends who seem to manage family life very well, including things like alternating each parent taking over 100% of kid responsibilities for a few days at a time which gives the other parent the freedom to basically do whatever they want or need to do including hobbies or social life, but that number is really quite small, and most of them have money to hire help or have close family in the area. > Impossible to find friends as a single man in lat 30's It's much easier if you're in the right place. I can definitely say late 30's is no problem at all to make friends if you're in the bay area.
  - deltaonefour 5y ago
    Interesting. I'm moving to the bay soon and I'm in my late 30s. Any recommendations on where to meet people and how to make new friends?
    - dheera 5y ago
      There are lots of parties and gatherings in SF where if you're late 30s nobody will bat an eyelid as long as you're friendly and approachable. It may be a bit challenging to discover them at first but once you find one or two and make friends with the organizers, you'll start getting vortexed to many more as long as you are friendly and come off as either good-looking, interesting, knowledgeable, or accomplished (not necessarily all of the above, but friendly is non-negotiable). Peninsula and South Bay also have plenty of social events but they take a bit more effort to find. Look for interest clubs of sorts and start from there. If you're joining a large company such as Google or Facebook, they normally have plenty of social events, though it's been much less since COVID. If you're doing a startup, you'll get invited to various investors' parties and things and you can make friends from there. But in general ... the bay is much more forgiving of age than most places in the country.
- caymanjim 5y ago
  Same thing happened to me. For most of my 40s my friends were all mid-20s to mid-30s. That was fun for a while, but now I'm too old to keep up. I expect I won't ever have any close friends again, but maybe there will be a resurgence when my generation finally get their kids out of the house and end up divorced. People have kids so late in life now that they're not done actively parenting until their 60s.
- nanomonkey 5y ago
  If you enjoy their company, I'd suggest getting a dog. There is no easier way to meet like minded people, then to take your dog to the park. You don't even have to make close friendships with the people you see every day, but you will begin to see them repeatedly. If you don't enjoy having a dog, join a group of some sort. Dance, crossfit, hacker space, HAM radio, sailing club, community clean up crew, church, baseball...you name it.
- thih9 5y ago
  > Impossible to find friends as a single man in lat 30's. Not impossible, although often hard. It also depends on how much effort are you willing to put into the search and the friendship.
  - humanrebar 5y ago
    If you don't mind babysitting and doing kid friendly activities, usually the old friends can stay friends. Better friends, even, in some cases.
- shocks 5y ago
  > Impossible to find friends as a single man in lat 30's. This is just not true. Consider getting a hobby and joining clubs or attending events. Establishing a friendship is (basically) impossible without: 1. repeated contact 2. a common activity to share Most people get this through school/university/workplace/partner, but there are plenty of other ways. Examples: - Buy a motorcycle. Join a riding club. [0] - Join a rock climbing gym. Look on Facebook for belay partners. - Find a maker space near you. - Learn a musical instrument at a school. - Play online games. Join a clan. 0: I've never made friends faster than via motorcycles. Literally made friends at traffic lights.
  - andrewflnr 5y ago
    Right, so, I'm doing this and it has worked ok for relatively shallow friendships, but deep friendships still seem to elude me.
    - bckr 5y ago
      What have you tried to deepen friendships? These things do not happen by accident. Think of it like a marketing funnel. At the top, meeting people at a club. In the middle, hanging out 1:1. Bottom of funnel is doing something that requires commitment and self disclosure.
      - andrewflnr 5y ago
        It used to happen by accident, so I don't know what to do.
        bckr 5y ago
        > It used to happen by accident I doubt that. I bet if you pondered, you would remember having taken all sorts of steps to forming relationships in the past. These might not look like what you're imagining, and certainly you'll have to do something differently now. But see my reply to another comment below, re: friendships don't happen by accident. And fwiw, I don't know you, but I believe in you. You can have more close friends in the future. You're capable of the work necessary.
- rr808 5y ago
  > single man in late 30's. The good side is there are loads of women in their thirties desperate to date, have kids, settle down. Esp if you didn't relate well to women when you're younger you have more maturity now and the odds are much better.
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    Ugh. Romances based on desperation are the worst kind. If you want to live in hell, dive in. Hint: there is a reason these women are in their 30s and still single.
    - tartoran 5y ago
      You are overgeneralizing a bit. Yes, desperate romances are impulsive and bad but it idoesn’t have to be that way. OP may find someone in the same situation, someone who didn’t want to start a family for similar reason and so on.
    - samgtx 5y ago
      Wow that's pretty rude.
      - denton-scratch 5y ago
        It is rude. A woman in her 30s might be single for any reason, and the assumption that she's "desperate" is just incel crap.
- frankzander 5y ago
  Get a dog ... not to have a friend but to get to know new people and be generous and kind. Maybe you find a soul who kinda surfs on your wave (at least sometimes) and maybe another and another. It's work but it pays if you keep up.
- Eric_WVGG 5y ago
  I think it depends a lot on where you live. I’m late-40's and in NYC, sort of a Never Never Land where people don't tend to settle into family life so much. Making friends isn't exactly easy, but it happens!
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  Same happened to me in muy 30s, I'm in my 50s now and it hasn't changed. I have casual acquaintances at work and at the gym, but none are close (as in, we don't get together outside of those settings). I also am never in contact with friends from school, old roomates, etc. who I did everything with at one time. When my kids were younger, I was part of another group of adults who were parents of kids involved in the same activities. But now that the kids are done with all that, those adults never kept in touch. It seems normal to me, honestly. I think friendships are matters of happenstance and cooincidence and when circumstances change the friendships are rarely kept up. People who have long-lasting adult friendships will probably realize that those friends are neighbors or have some other external commonality. If those things would change, the friendship would quickly fade.
- deltaonefour 5y ago
  I'm a single perpetual manchild like you. However, I look much younger than I actually am. At my age people typically suffer from age-ism in their career, I don't because of the way I look and that has allowed me to gain insights on certain things. What I found is that my friends shifted over the years, with most being 15 years younger than me nowadays. Some know how old I am, some don't know. But overtime if they get use to you, the age thing doesn't matter. If you want friends you should find it in younger people. An easy way to do that is to have suite mates or join a team in your job with younger people. But it also depends on how you look. If you look obviously older, the first impression will take a bit of time to get over. Kids won't be inviting you to parties until they're more familiar with you, so it will take time.
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  Late 30's? Goodness, young person; that's when I got divorced, and my life began. Courage, mon brave!
tluyben2 5y ago
I have been struggling with terms like friend, close friends and ‘people I know’ for a long time now. I have all of those for my definitions but the definitions for these are wildly different for different people. Like ‘I invited my closest 1000 friends to my wedding’ to ‘I don’t have 1 close friend’. In both camps I have seen that in the former people have 3-5 close friends, 10-20 friends and the rest are acquaintances if using my definitions; in the latter exactly the same when using my definitions. I have been wondering for decades what makes you happiest; my current definitions make me happy and both other ways would make me unhappy but I find the subject matter interesting, also because I am apparently an exception who makes new ‘best’ friends after 40 and removes others because circumstances changed.
- bin_bash 5y ago
  Nobody has 1000 close friends
  - tluyben2 5y ago
    No one has 1000 friends either, no matter close or not and yet there are quite a lot of people who say that.
    - diogenescynic 5y ago
      Counterpoint: I know someone who has a 1000+ friends and they've always maintained contact with basically EVERYONE. I always took note of this because I am very selective, but I honestly see her interacting with hundreds of people daily on social media, so I know she probably literally does have 1000+ people who would consider her a friend. I also know people who went to schools in Los Angeles and have literally hundreds of friends, but again not all super close. I think your friend network is more of a function of how many people you are introduced to and in close proximity with and how outgoing you are.
      - throwawayboise 5y ago
        Being among a person's social media contacts seems like about the shallowest definition of "friend" that there is. It's not much different from getting birthday cards from your financial advisor or insurance agent.
Trasmatta 5y ago
I've found the hard way that no friends is better than the wrong friends. I've also come to appreciate casual acquaintances more as I've become older. People you talk with semi regularly but don't have any sort of deep connection with. When I was younger, I found those types of relationships superficial and pointless, but I see it differently now.
- ketanmaheshwari 5y ago
  Hey could you elaborate a bit. How are the casual acquaintances adding value to your quality of life? I am unable to appreciate them in my own life.
  - JoeAltmaier 5y ago
    I can add my 2 bits. I know all the staff at my local diner; I chat with the owners and chefs regularly. We talk about food, the weather, their college schedule, vacation plans. Then I eat eggs and potatoes and go my merry way. It's much better than sitting alone at a corner 1-person table, at least for me. Any club is the same way - people who are not (all) your friends but you get along with and have something to do together.
  - graeme 5y ago
    Not OP, but some things from my own life that came from casual acquaintances: * Meeting new friends through them * shared activities * Getting new perspectives * Invites to parties (some very social casual acquaintances have huge parties) * Business connections * Fun and laughter * If at a shared event or location, casual chit chat and friendliness You get all those with close friends too, but you can have many more casual acquaintances more quickly. If you’re not getting that it’s possible you’re not meeting the right kind of casual acquaintances or maybe you yourself aren’t the type to attract/benefit from such acquaintances. (Which is fine, you can do perfectly well without casual acquaintances) A good definition of close friend is anyone with whom you’ve discussed a deep personal issue with within the past year, who isn’t family. (Or that you absolutely would feel comfortable doing so with) I’m counting things below that as casual acquaintance/loose friendship. It’s possible I’ve set the friendship bar higher using that definition. Also, casual acquaintances are usually how you develop new friends. See someone in a context enough times, realize you’re getting along, start hanging out more, etc. People complain about a lack of ability to make friendships with age and a big part is losing the contexts that allow for casual acquaintances.
spdegabrielle 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
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zabzonk 5y ago
Perhaps a bit over-analysed? Neil Young: "Yes, only love can break your heart"
- rdiddly 5y ago
  He even touches on depressed friends: I have a friend I've never seen He hides his head inside a dream Someone should call him and see if he can come out Try to lose the down that he's found
  - emptysongglass 5y ago
    The Saint Etienne version is also really lovely if you enjoy something a little more bubbly and synthy.
asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
I agree that friends can break your heart, but it's not a necessary outcome. It sounds like one or both of these folks was behaving poorly or being disagreeable, and that is what ended the relationship. Treat your friends well and be friends with people who treat you well and there will be no need for heartbreak.
- deltaonefour 5y ago
  You're young. The problem is this never happens. People are too complex for things to work out like this. Maintaining a long term friendship is more about mutual acceptance of the flaws, imperfections and transgressions of the people in your life. Inevitably there will be some heartbreak eventually. The key is to not let this heartbreak define the friendship.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
    I'm as old as the subjects of this story were when their friendship ended. I don't think my age has anything to do with my disagreement with the premise of the article, or with your conclusion.
    - deltaonefour 5y ago
      Then our anecdotal experiences differ. I tend to see your outlook on this topic in people that are younger. Hence my prediction which was wrong for you individually. I would argue though that my statement applies to a more broader generality. That for most people I would be right and for very few people I would be wrong.
  - heavenlyblue 5y ago
    > Maintaining a long term friendship is more about mutual acceptance of the flaws, imperfections and transgressions of the people in your life Would you accept a flaw of a friend who decided once in his life to start taking loans from each of his friends and then use those loans to pay other friends back? Would you accept a flaw where someone suddenly decides to become a cocaine addict? Someone who got some success and suddenly started thinking are better than you? What if they failed down the way and came back telling “they now realise what kind of person they were”. The problem is, why are you maintaining relationships like that?
jrjarrett 5y ago
I count myself very lucky. I have friends from childhood and college that are still very close. We don’t get to see each other as often as we’d like but we do keep in touch and I know they are as there for me as I am for them. Our friendships have survived moves and children.
ganzuul 5y ago
I think we in the West have basically sabotaged the social structure that happened post 30 for most people. We should be looking to each other for wisdom and understanding since we are not kids anymore, and not protected from life's frailties. It seems like we have so much access to information through technological means that we totally neglect the personal means that support us emotionally.
- nvusuvu 5y ago
  I don't think it is a coincidence that the decline of Americans attending churches (any church) corresponds with increased feelings of isolation, depression, anxiety. The positive outcomes of the social networks of religion are not easily replaced with virtual hangouts and social media posts.
  - ganzuul 5y ago
    There was something about people being able to transition seamlessly between these groups in different cities, wasn't there? So if you uprooted, you found good soil to plant in. Is there something wrong with the soil?
- itqwertz 5y ago
  Well said. Outside of the 18-35 mainstream culture demographic, it feels like there’s a gap.
borroka 5y ago
The mistake made by the two obnoxious semi-toxic characters from whose friendship the article draws inspiration is that they want too much and too many things for their friendship. They are needy, one is looking for a daughter and the other a mother, they over-intellectualize, there is no sharing of support or fun. Even the author, who produced a thoughtful if meandering piece (but it was good meandering) comes across as rather unlikeable, she doesn't really like having friends, "Oh, it's so hard, we're all so busy, I'm so sorry." Not hard at all if you're interested in the other person—a boulder to move with your bare hands if instead you're not interested.
- ketzo 5y ago
  I think it's pretty wild to say there was "no sharing of support or fun" when we see, like, 10 texts total between the two. One of the women literally lived with the other after her divorce. That seems pretty supportive. All in all, this kind of incredibly dismissive comment doesn't add much but negativity to the discussion.
  - bckr 5y ago
    I agree that it's dismissive and negative, but golly were those characters obnoxious and at least semi-toxic.
  - borroka 5y ago
    It is not dismissive at all. I enjoyed the article, it was well written, engaging, and touches very important points. My points are not negative for the article, are negative for the people involved, and one may agree or disagree. The "support" was not support, was a selfish desire to fit the other person in a void of affection that needed to be filled by someone. One wanted a new mother and the other a new daughter/mentor. That "friendship" is a case-study in toxicity, when one person had a role that they did not ask for and generates a vortex of endless accusations that cannot have any sort of resolution. In fact, as far as I understand, they are not friends anymore and they are both better off that way.
    - 5y ago
ralusek 5y ago
I've always found it weird how little people prioritize life choices around their friends. Proximity/accessibility of friends is probably the single greatest priority I have when deciding where to live. I'm about to have my first kid, and I have no plans on changing that priority, with the minor exception of being near reasonably good schooling (which would surely also be a priority of my friends).
- stuxnet79 5y ago
  North American culture is highly individualistic. It is reasonable and expected to prioritize your own personal / professional needs first and have those of your friends be a distant second. Prioritizing life choices around your friends requires you to integrate your life with others in some way which is challenging and often results in conflict. North Americans are incapable of handling such interpersonal challenges as they are trained to be 'selfish' as a default. The end result of this is we live an atomized existence that is comfortable but oddly "empty". I have experienced living in a different culture so I can at least put this way of living in context but anybody who grew up here can't & this odd feeling of something "missing" can never be satisfied or understood. Mind you the western approach to living does have a lot of advantages. Not being bound by community strictures makes our societies a lot "freer" and more dynamic. But it wouldn't be intellectually honest to admit that this doesn't come with a cost. Mental health is getting affected and the problem is only going to get worse.
  - rakejake 5y ago
    I didn't grow up here and have only spent a few years in the states but I have this exact "empty" feeling that you described here.
  - ralusek 5y ago
    I think that the individualist framework is the correct one, and I tend to think that communitarian emphasis leads to all sorts of erosion of identity (among other issues). What I mean to say, in regards to friendship, is that within an individual's things that they'd like to emphasize/prioritize, friends so frequently play second fiddle to things like career. I don't actually think that this has to do with individualism, so much as individualism gives such an unconstrained vision of what constitutes a life that most people simply choose to optimize for things like a career. Again, I'm highly individualistic, I think the individual is the correct atomic entity by which to reason about society and discuss objectives and solutions, and I still find friendships to be of utmost importance. Individualism doesn't mean "existing as an atomic entity independent of other entities," it means "treating individuals as entities with characteristics unique to themselves rather than existing primarily as members of collectives."
GrumpyNl 5y ago
Live lesson, everybody wants your money.
nus07 5y ago
One of the things that I noticed that when I lived in India and England, I never felt lonely . It was more walkable and there was less of a comparing salaries and lifestyles and more of hanging out and ‘chilling’. Maybe I was younger . But moving to the US has been bad because how isolating it is - cannot get out of the house and walk to a place or a market or bar except NYC . Most social connections are around an activity like playing board games or running . No one wants to just hang out and talk without discussing jobs and salaries. People from different classes and jobs and lifestyles rarely mix . I do regret moving to the US from a social and friends perspective.
- deleted 5y ago
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- shihab 5y ago
  I moved to a mid-seized US city 6 months ago for grad school and I wholeheartedly agree with you. The bit about hanging out in particular surprised me. I live in such a beautiful neighborhood, yet I almost never see any people outside. People are either walking their dogs or going from their door to car. I never saw a group of child randomly running around, teenagers doing teenager things, or bunch of old people just hanging about- sights I'm so used to. It's even more weird because these people are so friendly when you do get to interact with them.
  - stanford_labrat 5y ago
    Since you’re in grad school perhaps it’s because you are living in an American college town? Where I spent my pre-college school years we would run around pretty frequently.
  - uxp100 5y ago
    How many children live where you live? I think there may be major difference between countries for this, but also, when I lived in an inner ring suburb in the US, there would be kids running all over the neighborhood every day, playing catch across every front lawn on the block, no worries about whose property was what, but then I moved into the city proper I never see them outside of school grounds. But it's pretty easy to deduce why, I have met every person on my block, none has a child older than 3 or younger than 16. I suspect there are lots of interesting patterns emerging if you mapped presence of children house by house in a metro area. Not sure what it would look like, but it feels like it oscillates.
bckr 5y ago
This article annoyed me with its focus on the pair of women who message each other like Tumblr pals and apparently find themselves the most interesting people on the planet. But it grew on me, if only through the gravity of schadenfreude, and I read the whole thing. What stood out to me the most was this: > as American life reconfigures itself, we may find ourselves rethinking whether our spouses and children are the only ones who deserve our binding commitments This brought to mind a pair of entertainers[] who: * Have been close friends since 1st grade * Are now in their 40s * Have been creative partners for about 2 decades * Have been business partners for over a decade * When they were teenagers, performed an actual blood oath (cut themselves and mingled their blood) promising that they would create something great together * Now have dozens of employees and a loyal following of millions * Alternately describe their friendship as a brotherhood and as a "second marriage". I am deeply inspired by and jealous of their relationship, and think that this "friendship as commitment" model is dreadfully important. We might benefit from formalization of this type of relationship through institutions (think fraternal organizations--but instead, "philial organizations"). [] Rhett & Link https://open.spotify.com/episode/2DNxju3SrXATFdhd1SzH1A https://open.spotify.com/episode/2DNxju3SrXATFdhd1SzH1A
- watwut 5y ago
  You don't need fraternities. You need to stop mocking people who treat extended family as important or base their personal decisions on relationships.
  - bckr 5y ago
    > stop mocking people Not sure where this is coming from. > who treat extended family as important I'm glad for you if you have an extended family whom you can be close with. > or base their personal decisions on relationships This is compatible with what I am advocating for.
    - watwut 5y ago
      > Not sure where this is coming from. The American culture is fairly big on mocking people who treat extended family as important. It is considered immature to base your decisions on wish to be close to parents, extended relatives or long friends. Maturity is interpreted as caring about small direct unit. Same goes for needs of those. If a guy lives with disabled parents who he helps, he is seen as looser - by his peers who see him as less then and by romantic partners. Same goes for any living with parents, even if you do your shares of chores, have good relationships and pay them rent. It is being treated as invalid option, even if all involved are happy and save money on the setup. The fraternity is creating unit you will prioritize over everything else. That primary means over wife and kids, but also over extended family and friends outside of fraternity. It is more of the same, except even more extreme. The chill out in the evening socialization is something that does not exists and is treated as being lazy. Meanwhile, chatting in office till late hours is seen as being hard worker because you are at work a lot. But then, your social network are your competitors and it disappears when you are sick of change work. I have seen multiple people see regular family visits or partying over certain age or just communal hanging around as immature or somehow weird. The socialization outside of work, where families socialize as families, across age groups, is considered unimportant. Specifically on HN, extended family is seen as source of free childcare, but never as someone worthy of help.
wizerno 5y ago
Beautifully put, thoughts captured exceptionally well. The agony of lost friendships, the joy of the ones we cherish today, everything brought to life with words. This is one of those articles which will stick with me and I'll come back to re-read throughout the year. Big props to the author
rdiddly 5y ago
One of the smartest things I ever did was to just sort of quietly quit putting so much effort into pleasing all the people I used to depend on to reinforce my self-esteem or sense-of-self or whatever-it-is. I kind of died, and was reborn as myself. It's way better. But the self I am is much smaller than the one I wished I was or thought I could be or whatever... the one I conceived of. (There is no limit to what we can conceive of, so it's not super impressive to dream up a big version of yourself. Just be who you are and forgive yourself for not being the outsized caricature.) The emptiness in your life will never go away. The error lies in thinking there ought to be more. More more more, it ought to ring a bell, and be recognized as a form of greed. Trying to fill the hole with friends is just as bad as filling it with drugs or booze or work. Just let it be empty. What's the big deal? It's empty, so what? Don't dwell on it, because that's the same thing, except you're trying to fill the emptiness up with an obsession about the emptiness itself. That isn't going to work, the emptiness will just grow to accommodate itself and eventually swallow you too. Get back to work. It's the one thing everyone has to do to survive, even if you're rich and it's just the work of showering once in a while. But don't try to fill the emptiness with work either. Just be like an animal (the animal you actually are). Get a dog if it helps you remember.
- DyslexicAtheist 5y ago
  > Get a dog if it helps you remember. my dogs gave me much needed contrast to compare my outsized ego against. made me realize how insignificant my struggle was to the lightness of what I imagine it is to live in the moment like dogs/cats (animals). loved every sentence of what you wrote on embracing emptiness. thanks for sharing.
- rochak 5y ago
  This just gave me a newfound perspective about myself that I had been trying to find for so long. Ever since I started my job and COVID started weakening, I realised that I don’t need a lot of people I thought I did. Spending more time with the people I actually like was far more enjoyable than distributing it among all the people I expected to stay friend with.
  - 5y ago
molhillmountain 5y ago
Writing a book/post about friendship is inherently pretty antithetical to a lot of what is nice about friendship. It doesn't take a lot of thought, it doesn't require a lot of explanation, and it doesn't involve other parties. It is mostly physical, and relies heavily on face-to-face communication. You can maybe write advice for one party, but not really two. Alexey Guzey has a good post on friendships but it's mostly about the happy accidents that bring friends together, not relationship managment. The only thing you need to do is maximize your happy accidents. This is why people giving advice on friendships tell you how to meet friends, not how to keep them. It is assumed that each friend is a friendship is playing a single player game, following rules set by the other friend. The author, and the cited letters, exemplify violating the rules of those games: Envy for a friend who succeeds, directed focus on sensitive topics, failure to respect the new boundaries of a friend's changing life. This is framed as "something we all secretly do" but you have to question this premise rather than the entire concept of friendship. If your friend realizes you will envy their success, might make his wife mad at him, why should you expect them to stay your friend? This isn't a tragic underpinning of all friendships, this is basic consideration for a friend. Doesn't it seem naive, almost immature, to avoid considering these things in private? Yes, if you aren't thinking about the other person. From a one-person vantage point it makes sense to prisoner's dilemma everything, that's how prisoner's dilemma works. Even if you find good partners, but still point out defection opportunities, you are losing player. Only way to win is not play, like really not play. Just blend some baseline level of self-preservation + good deeds done for no reason to get a guiding priciple like "embrace the kingly power of choosing to do quiet, unreciprocated good"
- jdkee 5y ago
  There is evidence for this. Studies have found that if you have met the following conditions: • Proximity: You're around each other regularly. • Unplanned interactions: You see each other even without putting an appointment on a calendar. • Privacy: You're in a space where you can exchange confidences. You are likely to make friendships. See https://www.businessinsider.com/things-that-help-people-make-new-friends-2014-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/things-that-help-people-make...
lkrubner 5y ago
"It gets harder to keep friends as you get older." I find that curious. When I was in my 20s we all bounced around, and there were no social networks, so there was no easy way to stay in touch. A lot of people were my best friends for 2 years, and then they were gone and I never heard from them again. Adults make more of an effort to hang onto their friends. My friendships have become more stable with age, and I assume this will remain true till old age starts killing them off.
- marssaxman 5y ago
  That was true for me during my 30s, but people have a way of disappearing after they reproduce. I'm 45 now, and my community of friends has collapsed; people are still around, but they don't seem to do very much anymore, and it is therefore difficult to keep in touch with them, as a group. Keeping up with a few individual friends is still possible, but it's a much lonelier existence.
  - BeFlatXIII 5y ago
    I've started losing friends to marriage and children. We used to make time to visit each other at least once a year, but then they go and make finding love their #1 priority over their old friendships and disappear off this planet. It's not impossible to schedule a visit one-on-one, but getting the whole group together for a weekend to pretend we're all still in college just doesn't happen. The peripheral friendships in that college dynamic were what made it truly special instead of merely having a collection of 5 close friends. It was those 5 close friends plus two dozen friendly hangers-on.
kingcharles 5y ago
One thing I discovered about friendship is that it is a total illusion. Go inside any jail or prison and talk to the inmates. Anyone who has been incarcerated will tell you that 99.9% of your so-called dearest friends will immediately disappear and never call, write or put money onto your commissary account. Then as soon as you get out they want to be friends again as if nothing happened and you weren't missing for years. I know of the hundreds of friends I had, only one contacted me in the eight years I was locked up for being poor. Several of them even had the money to have me released on day one. Friendship is not what you think it is. It is depressingly fickle. Friendship seems to be based entirely around what you can do for the other person, and once you're incarcerated it is clear you are of no social value. It sounds like I'm being hypercynical, but that's the reality of it.
- nvusuvu 5y ago
  Two months ago, a homeless guy I have never met in my life, driving from Florida to Ohio, with a beater car, a mutt, and $300 to his name runs out of gas in Alabama. Walking in the dark with a gas can, the cops stop him, call an ambulance, and have the guy taken to the hospital for a psyche evaluation. He ends up in the hospital for 3 days. Car is impounded (he doesn't know where), dog taken to a shelter (he doesn't know where). While trying to find his car and dog, gets the cheapest hotel (in my town) he can find while he tries to sort out the mess he's in. To help with the dwindling cash flow, he gets a job at Waffle House near the hotel. Come to find out, Waffle House wants him to start at their other location, some 7.6 miles in a neighboring town. He gets walking, where my wife, who has never picked up a stranger in her life, feels like helping, getting the guy to his job. Next night, while about to sit down to the juicy porkchop I have ever grilled, sidelined by creamy mash potatoes, my wife gets a text from this guy saying he's found his dog and would I please give him a ride across town to get Stevia back. I knew nothing about this guy, his life, his character, and so I hit my knees and asked God if I should help him. And I didn't get an answer from God. I didn't get a 'yes, go help' and I didn't get a 'no, don't go.' And when I don't get a clear answer from God, I know its Him saying essentially, 'it's your choice' So I chose to help (the porkchop could wait). I went and picked up this complete stranger and gave him a ride to the animal shelter, where he signed a promissory note to take his dog back into his care. He shed tears of joy and that puppy's tail was wagging like a Cessna propeller. The next day I help the guy go get his car from the impound. I say all of this not to boast of myself. I tell you this because there are other people out there in the world like me, and we love other people and love to have meaningful relationships.
dav_Oz 5y ago
>A brief word here about the scholarship devoted to friendship: I know I’ve been citing it quite a bit, but the truth is, there’s surprisingly little of it, and even less that’s particularly good. A great deal is dime-store wisdom crowned in the laurels of peer review, dispatches from the Empire of the Obvious. After wondering about the unusual amount of references and citations of "experts" I finally reach that paragraph, and think to myself: Oh, good, that was really a bit too much. Nevertheless, the writer quietly continues. I'm baffled as though in the absence of any higher meaning there at least has to be some sort of justification albeit in the unstable and ever changing form of 'social sciences'. In this deeply buried nihilistic outlook for me as a reader it is indeed a very insightful piece. To be abstract, knowledgeable and articulate about the phenomena of social bonding (here: friendship) is one thing but to be actually good at the art of communication itself (forming, maintaining and parting away) requires an entirely different skillset and dedication. That's why in a sense these essays and its intertexts literally got stuck only revolving around itself.
spidersouris 5y ago
I can't find any information on The Wellness Letters. Is it supposed to be an entire book? Where can I read the manuscripts found in the article?
denton-scratch 5y ago
I've never had many friends. I'm OK with that - I think handling a lot of friends is more work than I want. Lately though, I have only a couple of them, that I'm rarely in touch with. I've never had an awkward bust-up with a friend, other than a bad divorce (which wasn't that bad, all told). Mostly my friends and I have just drifted apart. Twice there was a home-move. Once, there was behaviour that led me to simply terminate contact forever. But this kind of "love you forever, you bitch" thing seems to be a girlie thing, I don't think boys behave like that, for whatever reason. Am I wrong?
- nine_zeros 5y ago
  > But this kind of "love you forever, you bitch" thing seems to be a girlie thing It exists for men if you change it to "You are a fuckin asshole", but in an endearing way. Some of my best friends in Asia still call each other with jerky nicknames - Cunt, jackass, ugly nicknames are all part of a strong friendship.
bravura 5y ago
Where can I read a copy of "The Wellness Letters" by Elisa Albert and Rebecca Wolff, which is repeatedly referenced in the article? It's not on Amazon, and on Goodreads it has 0 reviews. Google doesn't help either.
- spidersouris 5y ago
  FWIW I sent an email to Elisa Albert from her website[1] and here is what she replied: > the wellness letters is buried in an unmarked grave. i am going to turn it into some other book eventually. [1] https://www.elisaalbert.com/about https://www.elisaalbert.com/about
mwattsun 5y ago
This article rings true. I'm 64 and I've only kept one life long friendship going on 30 years. All the others are gone and don't want to haven anything to do with me. Thinking about it now, I've kept the one friendship for a few reasons. 1) He hasn't changed much in 30 years. He's a remarkably stable individual 2) The interests that are the bedrock of our friendship are still there 3) our opinions about various controversial topics still match up 4) He's a remarkably tolerant individual of my many flaws The reasons I've lost the others include - They became fanatics about a topic that didn't interest me. For example, a person got really into Non Violent Communication and wanted me too as well, implying my communication was violent - They became an author with a fan club and our adventures in the past would embarrass them if they came to light - They went into the oil industry and became a climate change denier - They became wealthy and high status and my adventures on the wild side of life were embarrassing to them (I've led a Jack Kerouac kind of life, except one that straightened up) - He became a woman and in her case (not all cases) became less interesting to me - And of course the recent tragic one: Politics Some people believe that "people don't change" but I disagree with that. People do change and it's rare to keep a friend for the long term
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
owenversteeg 5y ago
>It’s not wholly natural, this business of making our own tribes. And it hardly seems conducive to human thriving. The percentage of Americans who say they don’t have a single close friend has quadrupled since 1990, according to the Survey Center on American Life. Interesting point. I wonder what the ability to "make our own tribe" has done to us.

179 points by wallflower 5y ago

How does one read The Wellness Letters? I only read far enough into the article that I wanted the source material but I can’t find them anywhere.

spidersouris 5y ago
FWIW I sent an email to Elisa Albert from her website[1] and here is what she replied: > the wellness letters is buried in an unmarked grave. i am going to turn it into some other book eventually. [1] https://www.elisaalbert.com/about https://www.elisaalbert.com/about
omgmajk 5y ago
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60406234-the-wellness-letters https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60406234-the-wellness-le...

dominotw 5y ago

i lost all my friends to marriage and family life. I choose to remain single and now i cannot relate to any of my friends. Impossible to find friends as a single man in lat 30's. Kind of resigned to my fate and accepted that this is how things are.

donatj 5y ago
Similar predicament myself, though I am married without children. My friends all had kids and moved out to the exurbs. Combine that with forced working from home the last couple years and it’s made my mid-late thirties the loneliest part of my life. I even tried Bumble BFF, but it just further revealed I have no idea how to make friends.
verisimi 5y ago
.... but you have your wife .... forever ... lol
- theonemind 5y ago
  No, he doesn't. He's single. His ex-friends have their wives forever. (But they don't, because estrangement, divorce, and death.)
  - verisimi 5y ago
    I've made a mistake, I apologise! I read what the poster said as him saying that he lost his friends to marriage and family life. I obviously did NOT read the bit where he said he chose to remain single. I actually interpreted the first part as him saying that he had got married etc. Mea culpa - apologies again.
    - theonemind 5y ago
      Happens to everyone!
revlolz 5y ago
Take a hobby and find an online community for it. If there is something like a discord or messaging group, start there. Best, close, good, any friend starts as an acquaintance. Relationships need not progress anywhere to which both people make it and it's entirely possible for both parties to view the dynamic differently. I went through this and found comfort in just being able to talk with e-friends from gaming groups that I have loose association with when going through life changes.
- dazc 5y ago
  > Take a hobby and find an online community for it. I believe you're trying to be helpful but parent poster seems to be content as he is and there is nothing wrong with this. Just as you don't have to be married or have kids or like dogs to be a regular human being.
therealmarv 5y ago
In late thirties I changed country and joined a coworking regularly. 5 years later I have maybe even more friends than during University times is my feeling (maybe I got lucky). Same could work with joining other kind of communities (hobby, sports etc.).
- hungryforcodes 5y ago
  I agree! Since leaving North America and my married / parent friends -- I found so many great friends and I'm really happy. Other people should try this as well.
- deltaonefour 5y ago
  Co-working? You mean like a co-working space where remote workers from various companies congregate? Any recommendations for good ones?
dheera 5y ago
> i lost all my friends to marriage and family life This I can very much relate with, a lot of my formerly good friends I never see anymore because they have literally negative amount of free time, they are already cutting into their health and sleep just trying to raise 2 kids, a dog, a cat, 2 full-time jobs, and unethical amounts of on-call time. I don't think they are all doing "well" either, honestly, but they don't have time for friends, even if I try to get coffee them they usually end up having to bail in 20 minutes. I remember when these people would go on long hikes with me, build stuff together, play duets, support each other through sickness and other times of trouble, but that is no more. I'm okay because I've been fortunate enough to be able to find new friends, but yeah, I understand this phenomenon. Society is just too demanding of people in general. There used to be a time in history where only one parent worked, and in theory now that both parents work they should only theoretically need to each work half time, but that isn't what reality accepts right now, reality wants both to work full time plus some more. I have a vanishingly small but nonzero number of friends who seem to manage family life very well, including things like alternating each parent taking over 100% of kid responsibilities for a few days at a time which gives the other parent the freedom to basically do whatever they want or need to do including hobbies or social life, but that number is really quite small, and most of them have money to hire help or have close family in the area. > Impossible to find friends as a single man in lat 30's It's much easier if you're in the right place. I can definitely say late 30's is no problem at all to make friends if you're in the bay area.
- deltaonefour 5y ago
  Interesting. I'm moving to the bay soon and I'm in my late 30s. Any recommendations on where to meet people and how to make new friends?
  - dheera 5y ago
    There are lots of parties and gatherings in SF where if you're late 30s nobody will bat an eyelid as long as you're friendly and approachable. It may be a bit challenging to discover them at first but once you find one or two and make friends with the organizers, you'll start getting vortexed to many more as long as you are friendly and come off as either good-looking, interesting, knowledgeable, or accomplished (not necessarily all of the above, but friendly is non-negotiable). Peninsula and South Bay also have plenty of social events but they take a bit more effort to find. Look for interest clubs of sorts and start from there. If you're joining a large company such as Google or Facebook, they normally have plenty of social events, though it's been much less since COVID. If you're doing a startup, you'll get invited to various investors' parties and things and you can make friends from there. But in general ... the bay is much more forgiving of age than most places in the country.
caymanjim 5y ago
Same thing happened to me. For most of my 40s my friends were all mid-20s to mid-30s. That was fun for a while, but now I'm too old to keep up. I expect I won't ever have any close friends again, but maybe there will be a resurgence when my generation finally get their kids out of the house and end up divorced. People have kids so late in life now that they're not done actively parenting until their 60s.
nanomonkey 5y ago
If you enjoy their company, I'd suggest getting a dog. There is no easier way to meet like minded people, then to take your dog to the park. You don't even have to make close friendships with the people you see every day, but you will begin to see them repeatedly. If you don't enjoy having a dog, join a group of some sort. Dance, crossfit, hacker space, HAM radio, sailing club, community clean up crew, church, baseball...you name it.
thih9 5y ago
> Impossible to find friends as a single man in lat 30's. Not impossible, although often hard. It also depends on how much effort are you willing to put into the search and the friendship.
- humanrebar 5y ago
  If you don't mind babysitting and doing kid friendly activities, usually the old friends can stay friends. Better friends, even, in some cases.
shocks 5y ago
> Impossible to find friends as a single man in lat 30's. This is just not true. Consider getting a hobby and joining clubs or attending events. Establishing a friendship is (basically) impossible without: 1. repeated contact 2. a common activity to share Most people get this through school/university/workplace/partner, but there are plenty of other ways. Examples: - Buy a motorcycle. Join a riding club. [0] - Join a rock climbing gym. Look on Facebook for belay partners. - Find a maker space near you. - Learn a musical instrument at a school. - Play online games. Join a clan. 0: I've never made friends faster than via motorcycles. Literally made friends at traffic lights.
- andrewflnr 5y ago
  Right, so, I'm doing this and it has worked ok for relatively shallow friendships, but deep friendships still seem to elude me.
  - bckr 5y ago
    What have you tried to deepen friendships? These things do not happen by accident. Think of it like a marketing funnel. At the top, meeting people at a club. In the middle, hanging out 1:1. Bottom of funnel is doing something that requires commitment and self disclosure.
    - andrewflnr 5y ago
      It used to happen by accident, so I don't know what to do.
      - bckr 5y ago
        > It used to happen by accident I doubt that. I bet if you pondered, you would remember having taken all sorts of steps to forming relationships in the past. These might not look like what you're imagining, and certainly you'll have to do something differently now. But see my reply to another comment below, re: friendships don't happen by accident. And fwiw, I don't know you, but I believe in you. You can have more close friends in the future. You're capable of the work necessary.
rr808 5y ago
> single man in late 30's. The good side is there are loads of women in their thirties desperate to date, have kids, settle down. Esp if you didn't relate well to women when you're younger you have more maturity now and the odds are much better.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  Ugh. Romances based on desperation are the worst kind. If you want to live in hell, dive in. Hint: there is a reason these women are in their 30s and still single.
  - tartoran 5y ago
    You are overgeneralizing a bit. Yes, desperate romances are impulsive and bad but it idoesn’t have to be that way. OP may find someone in the same situation, someone who didn’t want to start a family for similar reason and so on.
  - samgtx 5y ago
    Wow that's pretty rude.
    - denton-scratch 5y ago
      It is rude. A woman in her 30s might be single for any reason, and the assumption that she's "desperate" is just incel crap.
frankzander 5y ago
Get a dog ... not to have a friend but to get to know new people and be generous and kind. Maybe you find a soul who kinda surfs on your wave (at least sometimes) and maybe another and another. It's work but it pays if you keep up.
Eric_WVGG 5y ago
I think it depends a lot on where you live. I’m late-40's and in NYC, sort of a Never Never Land where people don't tend to settle into family life so much. Making friends isn't exactly easy, but it happens!
throwawayboise 5y ago
Same happened to me in muy 30s, I'm in my 50s now and it hasn't changed. I have casual acquaintances at work and at the gym, but none are close (as in, we don't get together outside of those settings). I also am never in contact with friends from school, old roomates, etc. who I did everything with at one time. When my kids were younger, I was part of another group of adults who were parents of kids involved in the same activities. But now that the kids are done with all that, those adults never kept in touch. It seems normal to me, honestly. I think friendships are matters of happenstance and cooincidence and when circumstances change the friendships are rarely kept up. People who have long-lasting adult friendships will probably realize that those friends are neighbors or have some other external commonality. If those things would change, the friendship would quickly fade.
deltaonefour 5y ago
I'm a single perpetual manchild like you. However, I look much younger than I actually am. At my age people typically suffer from age-ism in their career, I don't because of the way I look and that has allowed me to gain insights on certain things. What I found is that my friends shifted over the years, with most being 15 years younger than me nowadays. Some know how old I am, some don't know. But overtime if they get use to you, the age thing doesn't matter. If you want friends you should find it in younger people. An easy way to do that is to have suite mates or join a team in your job with younger people. But it also depends on how you look. If you look obviously older, the first impression will take a bit of time to get over. Kids won't be inviting you to parties until they're more familiar with you, so it will take time.
denton-scratch 5y ago
Late 30's? Goodness, young person; that's when I got divorced, and my life began. Courage, mon brave!

tluyben2 5y ago

I have been struggling with terms like friend, close friends and ‘people I know’ for a long time now. I have all of those for my definitions but the definitions for these are wildly different for different people. Like ‘I invited my closest 1000 friends to my wedding’ to ‘I don’t have 1 close friend’. In both camps I have seen that in the former people have 3-5 close friends, 10-20 friends and the rest are acquaintances if using my definitions; in the latter exactly the same when using my definitions. I have been wondering for decades what makes you happiest; my current definitions make me happy and both other ways would make me unhappy but I find the subject matter interesting, also because I am apparently an exception who makes new ‘best’ friends after 40 and removes others because circumstances changed.

bin_bash 5y ago
Nobody has 1000 close friends
- tluyben2 5y ago
  No one has 1000 friends either, no matter close or not and yet there are quite a lot of people who say that.
  - diogenescynic 5y ago
    Counterpoint: I know someone who has a 1000+ friends and they've always maintained contact with basically EVERYONE. I always took note of this because I am very selective, but I honestly see her interacting with hundreds of people daily on social media, so I know she probably literally does have 1000+ people who would consider her a friend. I also know people who went to schools in Los Angeles and have literally hundreds of friends, but again not all super close. I think your friend network is more of a function of how many people you are introduced to and in close proximity with and how outgoing you are.
    - throwawayboise 5y ago
      Being among a person's social media contacts seems like about the shallowest definition of "friend" that there is. It's not much different from getting birthday cards from your financial advisor or insurance agent.

Trasmatta 5y ago

I've found the hard way that no friends is better than the wrong friends. I've also come to appreciate casual acquaintances more as I've become older. People you talk with semi regularly but don't have any sort of deep connection with. When I was younger, I found those types of relationships superficial and pointless, but I see it differently now.

ketanmaheshwari 5y ago
Hey could you elaborate a bit. How are the casual acquaintances adding value to your quality of life? I am unable to appreciate them in my own life.
- JoeAltmaier 5y ago
  I can add my 2 bits. I know all the staff at my local diner; I chat with the owners and chefs regularly. We talk about food, the weather, their college schedule, vacation plans. Then I eat eggs and potatoes and go my merry way. It's much better than sitting alone at a corner 1-person table, at least for me. Any club is the same way - people who are not (all) your friends but you get along with and have something to do together.
- graeme 5y ago
  Not OP, but some things from my own life that came from casual acquaintances: * Meeting new friends through them * shared activities * Getting new perspectives * Invites to parties (some very social casual acquaintances have huge parties) * Business connections * Fun and laughter * If at a shared event or location, casual chit chat and friendliness You get all those with close friends too, but you can have many more casual acquaintances more quickly. If you’re not getting that it’s possible you’re not meeting the right kind of casual acquaintances or maybe you yourself aren’t the type to attract/benefit from such acquaintances. (Which is fine, you can do perfectly well without casual acquaintances) A good definition of close friend is anyone with whom you’ve discussed a deep personal issue with within the past year, who isn’t family. (Or that you absolutely would feel comfortable doing so with) I’m counting things below that as casual acquaintance/loose friendship. It’s possible I’ve set the friendship bar higher using that definition. Also, casual acquaintances are usually how you develop new friends. See someone in a context enough times, realize you’re getting along, start hanging out more, etc. People complain about a lack of ability to make friendships with age and a big part is losing the contexts that allow for casual acquaintances.

spdegabrielle 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

zabzonk 5y ago

Perhaps a bit over-analysed? Neil Young: "Yes, only love can break your heart"

rdiddly 5y ago
He even touches on depressed friends: I have a friend I've never seen He hides his head inside a dream Someone should call him and see if he can come out Try to lose the down that he's found
- emptysongglass 5y ago
  The Saint Etienne version is also really lovely if you enjoy something a little more bubbly and synthy.

asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago

I agree that friends can break your heart, but it's not a necessary outcome. It sounds like one or both of these folks was behaving poorly or being disagreeable, and that is what ended the relationship. Treat your friends well and be friends with people who treat you well and there will be no need for heartbreak.

deltaonefour 5y ago
You're young. The problem is this never happens. People are too complex for things to work out like this. Maintaining a long term friendship is more about mutual acceptance of the flaws, imperfections and transgressions of the people in your life. Inevitably there will be some heartbreak eventually. The key is to not let this heartbreak define the friendship.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
  I'm as old as the subjects of this story were when their friendship ended. I don't think my age has anything to do with my disagreement with the premise of the article, or with your conclusion.
  - deltaonefour 5y ago
    Then our anecdotal experiences differ. I tend to see your outlook on this topic in people that are younger. Hence my prediction which was wrong for you individually. I would argue though that my statement applies to a more broader generality. That for most people I would be right and for very few people I would be wrong.
- heavenlyblue 5y ago
  > Maintaining a long term friendship is more about mutual acceptance of the flaws, imperfections and transgressions of the people in your life Would you accept a flaw of a friend who decided once in his life to start taking loans from each of his friends and then use those loans to pay other friends back? Would you accept a flaw where someone suddenly decides to become a cocaine addict? Someone who got some success and suddenly started thinking are better than you? What if they failed down the way and came back telling “they now realise what kind of person they were”. The problem is, why are you maintaining relationships like that?

jrjarrett 5y ago

I count myself very lucky. I have friends from childhood and college that are still very close. We don’t get to see each other as often as we’d like but we do keep in touch and I know they are as there for me as I am for them. Our friendships have survived moves and children.

ganzuul 5y ago

I think we in the West have basically sabotaged the social structure that happened post 30 for most people. We should be looking to each other for wisdom and understanding since we are not kids anymore, and not protected from life's frailties. It seems like we have so much access to information through technological means that we totally neglect the personal means that support us emotionally.

nvusuvu 5y ago
I don't think it is a coincidence that the decline of Americans attending churches (any church) corresponds with increased feelings of isolation, depression, anxiety. The positive outcomes of the social networks of religion are not easily replaced with virtual hangouts and social media posts.
- ganzuul 5y ago
  There was something about people being able to transition seamlessly between these groups in different cities, wasn't there? So if you uprooted, you found good soil to plant in. Is there something wrong with the soil?
itqwertz 5y ago
Well said. Outside of the 18-35 mainstream culture demographic, it feels like there’s a gap.

borroka 5y ago

The mistake made by the two obnoxious semi-toxic characters from whose friendship the article draws inspiration is that they want too much and too many things for their friendship. They are needy, one is looking for a daughter and the other a mother, they over-intellectualize, there is no sharing of support or fun. Even the author, who produced a thoughtful if meandering piece (but it was good meandering) comes across as rather unlikeable, she doesn't really like having friends, "Oh, it's so hard, we're all so busy, I'm so sorry." Not hard at all if you're interested in the other person—a boulder to move with your bare hands if instead you're not interested.

ketzo 5y ago
I think it's pretty wild to say there was "no sharing of support or fun" when we see, like, 10 texts total between the two. One of the women literally lived with the other after her divorce. That seems pretty supportive. All in all, this kind of incredibly dismissive comment doesn't add much but negativity to the discussion.
- bckr 5y ago
  I agree that it's dismissive and negative, but golly were those characters obnoxious and at least semi-toxic.
- borroka 5y ago
  It is not dismissive at all. I enjoyed the article, it was well written, engaging, and touches very important points. My points are not negative for the article, are negative for the people involved, and one may agree or disagree. The "support" was not support, was a selfish desire to fit the other person in a void of affection that needed to be filled by someone. One wanted a new mother and the other a new daughter/mentor. That "friendship" is a case-study in toxicity, when one person had a role that they did not ask for and generates a vortex of endless accusations that cannot have any sort of resolution. In fact, as far as I understand, they are not friends anymore and they are both better off that way.
  - 5y ago

ralusek 5y ago

I've always found it weird how little people prioritize life choices around their friends. Proximity/accessibility of friends is probably the single greatest priority I have when deciding where to live. I'm about to have my first kid, and I have no plans on changing that priority, with the minor exception of being near reasonably good schooling (which would surely also be a priority of my friends).

stuxnet79 5y ago
North American culture is highly individualistic. It is reasonable and expected to prioritize your own personal / professional needs first and have those of your friends be a distant second. Prioritizing life choices around your friends requires you to integrate your life with others in some way which is challenging and often results in conflict. North Americans are incapable of handling such interpersonal challenges as they are trained to be 'selfish' as a default. The end result of this is we live an atomized existence that is comfortable but oddly "empty". I have experienced living in a different culture so I can at least put this way of living in context but anybody who grew up here can't & this odd feeling of something "missing" can never be satisfied or understood. Mind you the western approach to living does have a lot of advantages. Not being bound by community strictures makes our societies a lot "freer" and more dynamic. But it wouldn't be intellectually honest to admit that this doesn't come with a cost. Mental health is getting affected and the problem is only going to get worse.
- rakejake 5y ago
  I didn't grow up here and have only spent a few years in the states but I have this exact "empty" feeling that you described here.
- ralusek 5y ago
  I think that the individualist framework is the correct one, and I tend to think that communitarian emphasis leads to all sorts of erosion of identity (among other issues). What I mean to say, in regards to friendship, is that within an individual's things that they'd like to emphasize/prioritize, friends so frequently play second fiddle to things like career. I don't actually think that this has to do with individualism, so much as individualism gives such an unconstrained vision of what constitutes a life that most people simply choose to optimize for things like a career. Again, I'm highly individualistic, I think the individual is the correct atomic entity by which to reason about society and discuss objectives and solutions, and I still find friendships to be of utmost importance. Individualism doesn't mean "existing as an atomic entity independent of other entities," it means "treating individuals as entities with characteristics unique to themselves rather than existing primarily as members of collectives."

GrumpyNl 5y ago

Live lesson, everybody wants your money.

nus07 5y ago

One of the things that I noticed that when I lived in India and England, I never felt lonely . It was more walkable and there was less of a comparing salaries and lifestyles and more of hanging out and ‘chilling’. Maybe I was younger . But moving to the US has been bad because how isolating it is - cannot get out of the house and walk to a place or a market or bar except NYC . Most social connections are around an activity like playing board games or running . No one wants to just hang out and talk without discussing jobs and salaries. People from different classes and jobs and lifestyles rarely mix . I do regret moving to the US from a social and friends perspective.

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shihab 5y ago
I moved to a mid-seized US city 6 months ago for grad school and I wholeheartedly agree with you. The bit about hanging out in particular surprised me. I live in such a beautiful neighborhood, yet I almost never see any people outside. People are either walking their dogs or going from their door to car. I never saw a group of child randomly running around, teenagers doing teenager things, or bunch of old people just hanging about- sights I'm so used to. It's even more weird because these people are so friendly when you do get to interact with them.
- stanford_labrat 5y ago
  Since you’re in grad school perhaps it’s because you are living in an American college town? Where I spent my pre-college school years we would run around pretty frequently.
- uxp100 5y ago
  How many children live where you live? I think there may be major difference between countries for this, but also, when I lived in an inner ring suburb in the US, there would be kids running all over the neighborhood every day, playing catch across every front lawn on the block, no worries about whose property was what, but then I moved into the city proper I never see them outside of school grounds. But it's pretty easy to deduce why, I have met every person on my block, none has a child older than 3 or younger than 16. I suspect there are lots of interesting patterns emerging if you mapped presence of children house by house in a metro area. Not sure what it would look like, but it feels like it oscillates.

bckr 5y ago

This article annoyed me with its focus on the pair of women who message each other like Tumblr pals and apparently find themselves the most interesting people on the planet. But it grew on me, if only through the gravity of schadenfreude, and I read the whole thing. What stood out to me the most was this: > as American life reconfigures itself, we may find ourselves rethinking whether our spouses and children are the only ones who deserve our binding commitments This brought to mind a pair of entertainers[] who: * Have been close friends since 1st grade * Are now in their 40s * Have been creative partners for about 2 decades * Have been business partners for over a decade * When they were teenagers, performed an actual blood oath (cut themselves and mingled their blood) promising that they would create something great together * Now have dozens of employees and a loyal following of millions * Alternately describe their friendship as a brotherhood and as a "second marriage". I am deeply inspired by and jealous of their relationship, and think that this "friendship as commitment" model is dreadfully important. We might benefit from formalization of this type of relationship through institutions (think fraternal organizations--but instead, "philial organizations"). [] Rhett & Link https://open.spotify.com/episode/2DNxju3SrXATFdhd1SzH1A https://open.spotify.com/episode/2DNxju3SrXATFdhd1SzH1A

watwut 5y ago
You don't need fraternities. You need to stop mocking people who treat extended family as important or base their personal decisions on relationships.
- bckr 5y ago
  > stop mocking people Not sure where this is coming from. > who treat extended family as important I'm glad for you if you have an extended family whom you can be close with. > or base their personal decisions on relationships This is compatible with what I am advocating for.
  - watwut 5y ago
    > Not sure where this is coming from. The American culture is fairly big on mocking people who treat extended family as important. It is considered immature to base your decisions on wish to be close to parents, extended relatives or long friends. Maturity is interpreted as caring about small direct unit. Same goes for needs of those. If a guy lives with disabled parents who he helps, he is seen as looser - by his peers who see him as less then and by romantic partners. Same goes for any living with parents, even if you do your shares of chores, have good relationships and pay them rent. It is being treated as invalid option, even if all involved are happy and save money on the setup. The fraternity is creating unit you will prioritize over everything else. That primary means over wife and kids, but also over extended family and friends outside of fraternity. It is more of the same, except even more extreme. The chill out in the evening socialization is something that does not exists and is treated as being lazy. Meanwhile, chatting in office till late hours is seen as being hard worker because you are at work a lot. But then, your social network are your competitors and it disappears when you are sick of change work. I have seen multiple people see regular family visits or partying over certain age or just communal hanging around as immature or somehow weird. The socialization outside of work, where families socialize as families, across age groups, is considered unimportant. Specifically on HN, extended family is seen as source of free childcare, but never as someone worthy of help.

wizerno 5y ago

Beautifully put, thoughts captured exceptionally well. The agony of lost friendships, the joy of the ones we cherish today, everything brought to life with words. This is one of those articles which will stick with me and I'll come back to re-read throughout the year. Big props to the author

rdiddly 5y ago

One of the smartest things I ever did was to just sort of quietly quit putting so much effort into pleasing all the people I used to depend on to reinforce my self-esteem or sense-of-self or whatever-it-is. I kind of died, and was reborn as myself. It's way better. But the self I am is much smaller than the one I wished I was or thought I could be or whatever... the one I conceived of. (There is no limit to what we can conceive of, so it's not super impressive to dream up a big version of yourself. Just be who you are and forgive yourself for not being the outsized caricature.) The emptiness in your life will never go away. The error lies in thinking there ought to be more. More more more, it ought to ring a bell, and be recognized as a form of greed. Trying to fill the hole with friends is just as bad as filling it with drugs or booze or work. Just let it be empty. What's the big deal? It's empty, so what? Don't dwell on it, because that's the same thing, except you're trying to fill the emptiness up with an obsession about the emptiness itself. That isn't going to work, the emptiness will just grow to accommodate itself and eventually swallow you too. Get back to work. It's the one thing everyone has to do to survive, even if you're rich and it's just the work of showering once in a while. But don't try to fill the emptiness with work either. Just be like an animal (the animal you actually are). Get a dog if it helps you remember.

DyslexicAtheist 5y ago
> Get a dog if it helps you remember. my dogs gave me much needed contrast to compare my outsized ego against. made me realize how insignificant my struggle was to the lightness of what I imagine it is to live in the moment like dogs/cats (animals). loved every sentence of what you wrote on embracing emptiness. thanks for sharing.
rochak 5y ago
This just gave me a newfound perspective about myself that I had been trying to find for so long. Ever since I started my job and COVID started weakening, I realised that I don’t need a lot of people I thought I did. Spending more time with the people I actually like was far more enjoyable than distributing it among all the people I expected to stay friend with.
- 5y ago

molhillmountain 5y ago

Writing a book/post about friendship is inherently pretty antithetical to a lot of what is nice about friendship. It doesn't take a lot of thought, it doesn't require a lot of explanation, and it doesn't involve other parties. It is mostly physical, and relies heavily on face-to-face communication. You can maybe write advice for one party, but not really two. Alexey Guzey has a good post on friendships but it's mostly about the happy accidents that bring friends together, not relationship managment. The only thing you need to do is maximize your happy accidents. This is why people giving advice on friendships tell you how to meet friends, not how to keep them. It is assumed that each friend is a friendship is playing a single player game, following rules set by the other friend. The author, and the cited letters, exemplify violating the rules of those games: Envy for a friend who succeeds, directed focus on sensitive topics, failure to respect the new boundaries of a friend's changing life. This is framed as "something we all secretly do" but you have to question this premise rather than the entire concept of friendship. If your friend realizes you will envy their success, might make his wife mad at him, why should you expect them to stay your friend? This isn't a tragic underpinning of all friendships, this is basic consideration for a friend. Doesn't it seem naive, almost immature, to avoid considering these things in private? Yes, if you aren't thinking about the other person. From a one-person vantage point it makes sense to prisoner's dilemma everything, that's how prisoner's dilemma works. Even if you find good partners, but still point out defection opportunities, you are losing player. Only way to win is not play, like really not play. Just blend some baseline level of self-preservation + good deeds done for no reason to get a guiding priciple like "embrace the kingly power of choosing to do quiet, unreciprocated good"

jdkee 5y ago
There is evidence for this. Studies have found that if you have met the following conditions: • Proximity: You're around each other regularly. • Unplanned interactions: You see each other even without putting an appointment on a calendar. • Privacy: You're in a space where you can exchange confidences. You are likely to make friendships. See https://www.businessinsider.com/things-that-help-people-make-new-friends-2014-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/things-that-help-people-make...

lkrubner 5y ago

"It gets harder to keep friends as you get older." I find that curious. When I was in my 20s we all bounced around, and there were no social networks, so there was no easy way to stay in touch. A lot of people were my best friends for 2 years, and then they were gone and I never heard from them again. Adults make more of an effort to hang onto their friends. My friendships have become more stable with age, and I assume this will remain true till old age starts killing them off.

marssaxman 5y ago
That was true for me during my 30s, but people have a way of disappearing after they reproduce. I'm 45 now, and my community of friends has collapsed; people are still around, but they don't seem to do very much anymore, and it is therefore difficult to keep in touch with them, as a group. Keeping up with a few individual friends is still possible, but it's a much lonelier existence.
- BeFlatXIII 5y ago
  I've started losing friends to marriage and children. We used to make time to visit each other at least once a year, but then they go and make finding love their #1 priority over their old friendships and disappear off this planet. It's not impossible to schedule a visit one-on-one, but getting the whole group together for a weekend to pretend we're all still in college just doesn't happen. The peripheral friendships in that college dynamic were what made it truly special instead of merely having a collection of 5 close friends. It was those 5 close friends plus two dozen friendly hangers-on.

kingcharles 5y ago

One thing I discovered about friendship is that it is a total illusion. Go inside any jail or prison and talk to the inmates. Anyone who has been incarcerated will tell you that 99.9% of your so-called dearest friends will immediately disappear and never call, write or put money onto your commissary account. Then as soon as you get out they want to be friends again as if nothing happened and you weren't missing for years. I know of the hundreds of friends I had, only one contacted me in the eight years I was locked up for being poor. Several of them even had the money to have me released on day one. Friendship is not what you think it is. It is depressingly fickle. Friendship seems to be based entirely around what you can do for the other person, and once you're incarcerated it is clear you are of no social value. It sounds like I'm being hypercynical, but that's the reality of it.

nvusuvu 5y ago
Two months ago, a homeless guy I have never met in my life, driving from Florida to Ohio, with a beater car, a mutt, and $300 to his name runs out of gas in Alabama. Walking in the dark with a gas can, the cops stop him, call an ambulance, and have the guy taken to the hospital for a psyche evaluation. He ends up in the hospital for 3 days. Car is impounded (he doesn't know where), dog taken to a shelter (he doesn't know where). While trying to find his car and dog, gets the cheapest hotel (in my town) he can find while he tries to sort out the mess he's in. To help with the dwindling cash flow, he gets a job at Waffle House near the hotel. Come to find out, Waffle House wants him to start at their other location, some 7.6 miles in a neighboring town. He gets walking, where my wife, who has never picked up a stranger in her life, feels like helping, getting the guy to his job. Next night, while about to sit down to the juicy porkchop I have ever grilled, sidelined by creamy mash potatoes, my wife gets a text from this guy saying he's found his dog and would I please give him a ride across town to get Stevia back. I knew nothing about this guy, his life, his character, and so I hit my knees and asked God if I should help him. And I didn't get an answer from God. I didn't get a 'yes, go help' and I didn't get a 'no, don't go.' And when I don't get a clear answer from God, I know its Him saying essentially, 'it's your choice' So I chose to help (the porkchop could wait). I went and picked up this complete stranger and gave him a ride to the animal shelter, where he signed a promissory note to take his dog back into his care. He shed tears of joy and that puppy's tail was wagging like a Cessna propeller. The next day I help the guy go get his car from the impound. I say all of this not to boast of myself. I tell you this because there are other people out there in the world like me, and we love other people and love to have meaningful relationships.

dav_Oz 5y ago

>A brief word here about the scholarship devoted to friendship: I know I’ve been citing it quite a bit, but the truth is, there’s surprisingly little of it, and even less that’s particularly good. A great deal is dime-store wisdom crowned in the laurels of peer review, dispatches from the Empire of the Obvious. After wondering about the unusual amount of references and citations of "experts" I finally reach that paragraph, and think to myself: Oh, good, that was really a bit too much. Nevertheless, the writer quietly continues. I'm baffled as though in the absence of any higher meaning there at least has to be some sort of justification albeit in the unstable and ever changing form of 'social sciences'. In this deeply buried nihilistic outlook for me as a reader it is indeed a very insightful piece. To be abstract, knowledgeable and articulate about the phenomena of social bonding (here: friendship) is one thing but to be actually good at the art of communication itself (forming, maintaining and parting away) requires an entirely different skillset and dedication. That's why in a sense these essays and its intertexts literally got stuck only revolving around itself.

spidersouris 5y ago

I can't find any information on The Wellness Letters. Is it supposed to be an entire book? Where can I read the manuscripts found in the article?

denton-scratch 5y ago

I've never had many friends. I'm OK with that - I think handling a lot of friends is more work than I want. Lately though, I have only a couple of them, that I'm rarely in touch with. I've never had an awkward bust-up with a friend, other than a bad divorce (which wasn't that bad, all told). Mostly my friends and I have just drifted apart. Twice there was a home-move. Once, there was behaviour that led me to simply terminate contact forever. But this kind of "love you forever, you bitch" thing seems to be a girlie thing, I don't think boys behave like that, for whatever reason. Am I wrong?

nine_zeros 5y ago
> But this kind of "love you forever, you bitch" thing seems to be a girlie thing It exists for men if you change it to "You are a fuckin asshole", but in an endearing way. Some of my best friends in Asia still call each other with jerky nicknames - Cunt, jackass, ugly nicknames are all part of a strong friendship.

bravura 5y ago

Where can I read a copy of "The Wellness Letters" by Elisa Albert and Rebecca Wolff, which is repeatedly referenced in the article? It's not on Amazon, and on Goodreads it has 0 reviews. Google doesn't help either.

spidersouris 5y ago
FWIW I sent an email to Elisa Albert from her website[1] and here is what she replied: > the wellness letters is buried in an unmarked grave. i am going to turn it into some other book eventually. [1] https://www.elisaalbert.com/about https://www.elisaalbert.com/about

mwattsun 5y ago

This article rings true. I'm 64 and I've only kept one life long friendship going on 30 years. All the others are gone and don't want to haven anything to do with me. Thinking about it now, I've kept the one friendship for a few reasons. 1) He hasn't changed much in 30 years. He's a remarkably stable individual 2) The interests that are the bedrock of our friendship are still there 3) our opinions about various controversial topics still match up 4) He's a remarkably tolerant individual of my many flaws The reasons I've lost the others include - They became fanatics about a topic that didn't interest me. For example, a person got really into Non Violent Communication and wanted me too as well, implying my communication was violent - They became an author with a fan club and our adventures in the past would embarrass them if they came to light - They went into the oil industry and became a climate change denier - They became wealthy and high status and my adventures on the wild side of life were embarrassing to them (I've led a Jack Kerouac kind of life, except one that straightened up) - He became a woman and in her case (not all cases) became less interesting to me - And of course the recent tragic one: Politics Some people believe that "people don't change" but I disagree with that. People do change and it's rare to keep a friend for the long term

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owenversteeg 5y ago

>It’s not wholly natural, this business of making our own tribes. And it hardly seems conducive to human thriving. The percentage of Americans who say they don’t have a single close friend has quadrupled since 1990, according to the Survey Center on American Life. Interesting point. I wonder what the ability to "make our own tribe" has done to us.