I saw this sticker once that says “Friendship is so weird… You find a human you’ve met and you’re just like ‘yup I like this one’ and you just do stuff with them”. How true is this? And how difficult is this when you get older? As we go through our 20s everything changes; we grow, we learn, and we find new people to “do stuff” with. So how do you continue to be friends with your friends as you get older?
This is an ongoing struggle for many people. Most of us have at least 1 or 2 friends that we have known since we were in elementary school and inevitably we will grow apart from these people in some ways but the idea of letting them go just sucks. There is no time that this is harder than your 20s-30s because everyone’s lives are changing – people are in relationships, getting married, buying houses, establishing careers, and *gasp* having babies on purpose.
It can be a hard pill to swallow when these people who you used to spend every waking hour with are now just a status update on Facebook and occasional text messages. Does this mean you aren’t friends anymore? Hopefully not. But it can be difficult to navigate this new aspect of your friendship. Here are some ideas for keeping it together:
- Plan a night at least once a month to just have dinner together, or something else you enjoy doing, to catch up and remind yourselves why you are so important to one another.
- Make your friends a priority, because they are the ones who are always there through relationship troubles, job changes, grad school, weddings, divorces, babies, etc.
- Make it a point to either text message or call at least once a week, even if it is just a quick funny picture or story about something crazy that happened to you.
- Schedule a trip, even just a weekend, with your girl/guy friends every year just to get away and put aside the stress of everyday life with the people who know how to relieve your stress the most.
While it can be hard to be friends with your friends, especially when you feel like you have little in common or life is just too busy to make the time, it is invaluable to keep them around. Friendship is something that is always worth that little extra bit of attention because no one knows you like your best buddies. Plus, you have to make sure they don’t tell anyone about that one time in Cancun…
