5 ms·

Why we lose our friends as we age (2023)

• ge96 6mo ago
  It is sad I had a best friend who I just lost out of touch with when we both entered college. I don't remember if I did something wrong or what, I remember he even lived with me at one point when he was having problems with his parents in highschool. Yeah I only have 4-5 really good friends (keep in touch with often) and then a bunch of acquaintances/work people. Contrast to high school when I had tiers of friends/different groups. It is an exposure thing, more people in education settings.
  • breakpointalpha 6mo ago
    The core loop of new friend formation is repeated casual contact. School is naturally good at forcing this, since we are filtering in and out of different class groups. If you want to recreate this in post-school life, you have to join high membership interest groups, like casual sports groups (kickball, tennis, golf). Game nights at the local pub work well too, since there will be a rotating cast of characters to make friends with. Basically, you have to seek novelty and regular re-occurance to make "natural" new friends.
    • ge96 6mo ago
      Yeah I get it, I'm into cars (drive fast, don't change my own oil) and started talking to a guy at work about his car, had me sit in it (Porsche). Pretty sick. It definitely helps to have a shared interest.
• mattw2121 6mo ago
  We become less social as we age...
  • forinti 6mo ago
    Time is a precious resource and you learn to filter who you spend it with.
  • darth_avocado 6mo ago
    We grow up. At a younger age you are willing to put up with asymmetrical relationships, mostly because you don’t realize they are asymmetrical. You just start seeing them for what they are as you age.
  • sublinear 6mo ago
    That's not necessarily true at all. You just have to accept that socializing won't feel the same or have the same function in your life. You choose how and how much to value what you make of it. Most of these fears are absurd. Why can't you just go outside and talk to anyone you want? If your answers are along the lines of "it's rude" or more honestly "I am awkward", then congratulations you just figured out what's holding you back. Everything we're doing here online can be (and is!) done offline. It requires some acceptance of discomfort and recognition that you won't be so precious about IRL conversations anymore. It will become as mindless/mindful as you can handle, but opportunities are always everywhere to make friends.
    • mattw2121 6mo ago
      I'm not sure where "fears" comes from. My assertation was that we (collectively) become less social as we age. We value social interactions less. I can attest that is true for me. It's not about fear. It's that I don't care to socialize as much as I did when I was younger.
      • sublinear 6mo ago
        > we I think we're talking past each other here. You and the article say "we", but it sounds more like "you" and everyone else that has not found new reasons to socialize. I do tangentially agree there may be an answer why the old reasons aren't good enough anymore, but that doesn't mean there isn't as much value. If anything there's more value (to me) now that I have a better grip on why I socialize as an adult. It became more nuanced with my lifestyle changes. I stopped needing friends and started wanting them. I keep the ones I have for their perspectives on life. I have far less in common with my adult friends than I ever did when I was younger. I deliberately select for that. It helps me find balance.
  • SirMaster 6mo ago
    Definitely not universally true. I was a big introvert in high school and college, but now as an adult I am way more extraverted and have more friends than ever.
• wxw 6mo ago
  https://archive.ph/uF6WC#selection-773.5-780.0 https://archive.ph/uF6WC#selection-773.5-780.0
• avgDev 6mo ago
  I've lost many friendships because I grew out of things. My friends were a bad crowd involved in street racing and just being a nuisance. No real direction and involvement from parents. I was that too. At some point I realized I need to improve my life and went back to school for CS. Got a good job and got my life together. My "friends" are still doing the same things, they just got older. If we met today, I would never befriend them. I did however meet new friends, but they are not as close to me. I like keeping distance. I'm mostly focused on spending time with my child and just teaching him things. I also try to learn about sports and things he is interested in. Therefore, time for friends is limited.
  • HPsquared 6mo ago
    Having a family also reduces the driver to connect with random people.
• lom888 6mo ago
  It's just gonna be chatting with sockpuppet AIs from here on out. Someone needs to set up a social network where our AI agents (who for many of us, know us better than our families) sort out who we'd be best set up to socialize with and then set up play dates.
  • red-iron-pine 6mo ago
    yeah but how do incumbents extract value on a monthly or yearly basis out of that? like, match.com doesn't make money if the first match you get is a perfect one and you stop using the app.
• deleted 6mo ago
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• bjelkeman-again 6mo ago
  One thing I try to do is cultivate new friendships through new hobbies. Some of them develop to become lifelong friendships. It takes time and effort, and to me it is worth it.
• MarkusWandel 6mo ago
  A lot of friendships aren't that deep. I've had work colleagues I really liked and even socialized with outside the workplace, and yet, if they left the company or retired... faded away. If it takes real effort to keep up contact, you get a lot more choosy. COVID also hit pretty bad. Speaking from personal experience, several friends that we saw once or twice a year at informally recurring BBQ/brunch/etc. kind of occasions have faded away as that series was interrupted and never restarted. And finally... you learn who you are as you age. Friends who seemed cool, who seemed to have the answers... may not be so great from a mature perspective.
  • seniorThrowaway 6mo ago
    Feel the same way about COVID. It damaged the social fabric in ways that have not recovered. I think a lot of people realized that maybe they never really liked socializing as much as they thought they did. I also think it just kind of reset people's expectations around socializing. The other big one to me, that it also unleashed, was inflation. Dining out, sporting events, concerts etc are all way more expensive than they used to be. Places are still busy and games are still packed but the prices are way higher, more evidence of the K shaped economy where only the top stratas are spending. Also, and this is subjective, it feels a bit more performative, as in people are going because it signals they have the means (edit: and the general instagram-ification of our culture.)
    • MarkusWandel 6mo ago
      The damaged social fabric - for me - didn't consist of spendy stuff. Just backyard BBQ's, pool parties, (hosted) brunch or dinner invitations, that sort of thing. You keep doing it because habit. But then a 2 year interruption because of COVID, habit broken and before you know it you haven't talked to some people for 5 years and now it would be awkward to call them up again...
      • nothercastle 6mo ago
        Except it’s not. It’s ok to just call them up and get back and have a bbq
• gsky 6mo ago
  a lot of people see friendships as a source of free labor.
  • benoau 6mo ago
    On the flip-side, there's an expression "fair-weather friends" for people who are only friends when you don't need anything. Which is perfectly reasonable, but you're not really friends just because you can enjoy doing an enjoyable thing together where nothing is asked and nothing is given.
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• oaweoifjwpo 6mo ago
  I've found it to be very obviously the case that the main reason this happens to me is that everyone is moving around all the time. People scatter to all corners of the country (or even the world) and time zones and travel times just make it impossible to meet and maintain friendships. None of my friends growing up live in the same state as me.
  • TFNA 6mo ago
    I don't have the link, but this claim almost always gets made in these kinds of comment threads, and then someone points out that American mobility is in fact lower today than it was in the late twentieth century. And different countries are different but still report growing loneliness, etc.
    • oaweoifjwpo 6mo ago
      I'm saying that at least for me it's very specifically for this reason. If I'm living near my friends I still see them often. If I'm not, I don't.
      • pillefitz 6mo ago
        Back in the old days, presumably you made friends wherever you went
  • deleted 6mo ago
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• everdrive 6mo ago
  I'm in my early 40s, and my social life has been collapsing. I've always been weird, but haven't had trouble making at least some friendships most of my life. Like others in this thread, I never recovered after COVID. It's interesting to think of this strictly in terms of aging. I had been thinking of it as strictly a "bowling alone" or "loneliness crisis" problem. Perhaps it's like a modern forest; the same old stressors can be too much when forests are dealing with pollution, parasites, ecosystem collapse, etc. ie, the old stressors are still there but everything is in a much weaker state.
  • nothercastle 6mo ago
    If you don’t have kids by now your friends have moved on
  • avgDev 6mo ago
    Find a community! People are still meeting other people. I have a good community with a great library and a park district. They offer many sports and other programs. Right now, I'm busy doing everything with my kid but intend to join some stuff on my own once he is more independent. Science, book, and sports communities are amazing for meeting people. Then you just pick who you vibe with and see if they are open to hang out outside of the group setting.
    • dingaling 6mo ago
      > Then you just pick who you vibe with This is the problem, though. So many hobby clubs and societies have pre-existing cliques, you don't get to pick - you get selected if they deign, or excluded if not. I've felt lonelier in many societies than on my own, if that makes sense.
      • pavel_lishin 6mo ago
        True, but if they always have an influx of new people, you can form your friendships with them. You can also start your own club - my local friends, I've made through starting a D&D group and running a campaign with them.
• SunlightEdge 6mo ago
  I've gotten into my 40s and honestly I've dropped about 25% of my friends - as they are also in their 40s but drink a lot and worse do cocaine. They also are really into making fun of each other. Maybe I'm an old bore, but none of that appeals. I haven't burnt my bridges but I much prefer to spend time with people that are healthy, into reading, are positive. I just can't be bothered... Still I may change my mind in time - but I am aiming for a long stint of not seeing the boys. I am married now and with my first kid (10 weeks old) and that has definitely made me time poor. But I only now text the friends that actually matter to me now.
  • loeg 6mo ago
    I find it's pretty easy to make new friends with other people doing healthy activities (I'm not in my 40s but many of the people I meet doing sports are).
  • coldtea 6mo ago
    >as they are also in their 40s but drink a lot and worse do cocaine. They also are really into making fun of each other. Can I get your friends?
    • whatever120 6mo ago
      His “friends” sound awful. Why would you want them?
      • karmakurtisaani 6mo ago
        He might also be awful, no shame in that (a little shame in that tho).
      • ElevenLathe 6mo ago
        Better awful friends that no friends at all IMO.
        • breakpointalpha 6mo ago
• nwhnwh 6mo ago
  Because the real you discovers that they were never real friends.
• elchief 6mo ago
  put everyone's birthday in your calendar, and wish them a happy birthday (at least a text) every year like their stuff on social media friendships ebb and flow, as people get married, have kids, get divorced, kids become independent, move away, move back. don't give up on a friend even if they disappear for a few years when they first have kids try to arrange at least an annual in-person meet up, if in the same city try to involve them in your interests, and try to take up their interests, or at least be curious fantasy football is helpful. golf as you get older. baseball games. meet for lunch if you're in their part of town. host parties for events like super bowl, the oscars, stuff like that
• tristor 6mo ago
  As I've gotten older I struggle to make new friendships, but I still keep up most of my older friendships. The friendships that I've dropped or let fade away are mostly because they were toxic relationships in some regard or alternatively that I'm simply in a much different place in my life than the other person. I still have multiple friends that I've known for more than 20 years, but nobody left from high school or earlier that I keep in touch with. My path just diverged so much from others once I left my hometown, and while one of my long-term friendships is with someone from the same home town, we both live in the same city now over a thousand miles away. It's harder to make the time for new relationships when you're older, and you frankly just have less patience for people who should know better and nearly infinite patience for those who couldn't have known better. Ironically, I'm at a point in my life where what I'd like to do the most is teach younger people useful skills that I've learned, but that's a difficult thing to do as most younger people have no interest in interacting with people significantly older than them, and the social context has changed so much now compared to the past that it's socially frowned upon unless you are directly familial related. I've guest lectured at a local college a few times, and I've actually considered doing full-time teaching after I retire from tech, but the types of things I want to teach aren't really a focus in school (think stuff you'd learn in shop, home-ec, or stuff that was never taught). I have a young niece I teach things and there's neighborhood kids that come around when I'm doing project car stuff in the driveway, but generally it's fairly disappointing to me how most adults stop wanting to learn by the time they're just 20-25, and people are fully stuck in to their ways by 30. I'm still learning new things every day, and I have never lost my desire to learn or to self-improve. I am a different person than I was 5 years ago or 10 years ago, and I think better than I was. There's no reason I should ever stop getting better and learn new things, but just knowing things doesn't make anything better, it helps to also teach others or use your knowledge to help people. So many folks are just completely resistant to the idea of learning something or accepting help.
• sylens 6mo ago
  Having kids really changes the game in a lot of ways. For me to consider doing something now, its not just that I'm interested or if I have the money, I also have to make sure childcare is lined up - either my partner or a family member. It makes you very judicial in what you choose to do as you have a finite amount of childcare to spend (unless you are really lucky and have a family that is always available to watch your kids). I don't really see movies in theaters anymore because I'd rather use the childcare to go out to dinner with my wife or take in a baseball game, for example.
  • jtr1 6mo ago
    This is the answer for me as well. My partner and I try to be intentional about giving each other at least an evening a week to go do something social, but it doesn't work out nearly that often because everyone else is juggling their own kids' schedules. So even if I didn't personally have kids, I would still be facing the same issue.
  • slumberlust 6mo ago
    Movie theatres aren't want they used to be anyways. You aren't missing much.
  • silexia 6mo ago
    I have five kids and would rather spend time with them doing anything (even picking up trash), then time doing anything else without them. It is the natural, biological order of things.
• jonbaer 6mo ago
  Some of this has to also do w/ the environment. If you have a solid weekend pickup game of any kind and a park/rink/court closes it is pretty much the end of that group, as much as you might try to find another spot it is never the same.
• nphardon 6mo ago
  Ah, I'm one of the outliers, I have more friends now and a richer, healthier social life than I've ever had before. I'm 45, I do have a 7yo kid and wife, two dogs, a full time job, just like everyone else on here for whom these are reasons for not having friends. I have too many friends, actually, but that's a good problem to have. I make a point not to make friends with coworkers and feel bad for some of the people I know who only have work friends. It reminds me of Colin Robinson "I'm gonna go hang out with my real friends, my work friends."
  • wink 6mo ago
    I'm not sure deliberately avoiding this is useful, I do agree it makes sense to not only have friends at work - but just like everywhere else it can work.
• deleted 6mo ago
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• nuancebydefault 6mo ago
  Having friends is a bit like a love relationship : you have to work at it and sometimes you get hurt. Things that are worth the effort mostly take effort.
  • stuxnet79 6mo ago
    > you have to work at it and sometimes you get hurt. This pretty sums up why there's so much negativity and pessimism every time this topic comes up. People want to have amazing friendships without taking a risk, making an effort and putting themselves out there. Nothing worthwhile in life comes easy.
• smurda 6mo ago
  How much time is required to spend with someone to become friends with them? If you assume 20 hours, that's 5-10 hangout sessions with someone. During a working life, that might take over a year. University life offers large windows of disposable time to forge those friendships. In work life, we don't have as much disposable time to spend building friendships.
• NoSalt 6mo ago
  Maintaining relationships with other humans is a giant PITA. It's just not worth it.
• ghjv 6mo ago
  While reading some of the comments on this thread I felt somewhat troubled at how pessimistic a few users were about having meaningful relationships with other people. Can be easy to feel like what you read on Social Media is representative of the avg human being or society at large. Always worth keeping in mind on HN but on a thread like this especially, the comments you see are heavily selected for having been written by people who spend significant amounts of their time commenting on forums for techy nerds... famously a group which is less extroverted irl than most, leans toward being neurodiverse in a way which sometimes makes traditional socialization difficult or less desirable, etc... In other words, do not despair like I did at antisocial comments.
• NordStreamYacht 6mo ago
  I don't have any friends because I stopped drinking.
  • hbogert 6mo ago
    oof, it's kinda the only reason i still drink. Thankfully way less than in my 20's
• Rekindle8090 6mo ago
  [dead]
• zen928 6mo ago
  I remember whenever I would see more "nerdy" people in college talk about their interests casually and dork out in public about hobbies or movies they watched or games they've played that I've also played or shown interest for, my immediate reaction was never excitement that I found people who enjoyed what I did but instead a sort of nauseating embarrassment about their existence, even if they shared a high amount of interests as me. I would then attempt to not draw their attention and not blend with their social group, leaving numerous signs I wasnt interested in engaging more with them. In a few cases this left me as the outsider, but I found that actually to be preferable than to be associated with these people. I thought maybe I was projecting insecurity about myself onto them and feeling what I thought other people felt and tried to push myself away from them to avoid similar judgement, but I can talk with my limited close friends in public about these things just fine without having the same feeling. I've wrestled a bit with why I cringe so heavily at hearing others talk and seemingly show enthusiasm in the things I do and why I wouldn't want to be friends with them, and the answer I eventually landed on was the performative nature. From my own experience, I understood what they were saying was banal and small, but portrayed jovially and overexerted in discussion undeservedly because of desiring the aesthetic of comradery and friendship over any meaningful attachment. With every ounce of my being, I reject someone attempting to contort a discussion into convincing someone that you know enough shibboleths to be "cool", and for most of my life in school and early work thats all I saw the value of these "friends" for: the appearance of cooperation or shared interest over having any actual nuanced understanding of eachother or the topics we talk about. Friendships draw on connections and bonds, and the type of person who needs to sell to me that they could understand my interests and thus could be friends at a surface level always rung as the lowest level of self serving needy pathetic loser. Mentioned in this thread, a huge driver for building friendship is "repeated casual contact", so seeing the experiment repeat multiple times at others dropping contact the second you go out of their vision just continued to echo how hollow and vain a lot of people "seeking friends" really are. At any mutual interest group, I still feel pretty similar. Sports clubs, bars, conventions all draw these crowds of people and it feels embarrasing to even be in the same area as them. I lost my friends because I never really made many, and I dont think a lot of other people do either. Sure, age and location obviously strains communication with people, but thats just an excuse for why you dont want to put in work to continue a friendship, you can communicate to anywhere on the planet nearly instantaneously. You were never really friends to begin with and finished your transactional relationship, thats really all it ever really was. There's plenty of those to waste your time on if you want, though.
• KrisDavidson11 6mo ago
  [flagged]