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Losing Friends as We Get Older is a Fact of Life
Part of growing up and maturing means shedding the excessive or unnecessary, and realizing what you need and don’t need in your life.
You may realize that life is just simpler with less.
You may realize that your priorities have drastically shifted over the years.
And you may recognize that some friendships just aren’t meant to be as you grow older.
While it is sad to think about losing friends as we get older, losing friends in your 20s, 30s, 40s, and even 50s is perfectly normal. In fact, it’s even regarded as healthy and shows that you’re maturing.
So when does this friend drop-off point occur?
Studies show that we begin to lose friends in our mid-twenties. Why? Typically around this period, we begin to reevaluate what is most important to us, including our relationships.
Friendships are meant to evolve over time. So if you’ve noticed that your circle of friends has shrunk in the last few years, don’t worry – it’s normal! As we age, we maintain the friendships with the people that truly understand and support us. These authentic, deep connections are rare, and we place more and more importance on them as we grow older. Friendships like these represent the ‘true’ friends that have stood the test of time.
We lose friends over time for a number of reasons, and in most cases this is a good, healthy pattern of maturation. But to help you understand why you may be losing friends as you grow older, here are some of the most common reasons for why we lose friendships as we age.
Why We Lose Friends as We Get Older
1. Your priorities change. As time passes and we grow older, our priorities drastically shift. In college, your priorities may have been to study hard during the week and play hard on the weekends with your friends. Post college, we tend to focus more on our careers and finding a life partner. As the years go by, we focus more and more on the possibility of starting a family, and we typically lean more on our own family for support. Through the progression of these phases, the priorities shift from friends to family. While it is a sad fact of life that friends become less important in some ways, this is perfectly normal and expected, and signifies that you’re maturing.
2. You realize you only have time for genuine friends. As you get older, you also get a lot better at cutting through all the bullsh*t. You don’t tolerate insincerity or flakiness anymore, and you’ve realized who your ‘true’ friends are: the ones who have stuck by you through thick and thin. These are the friends you’ll continue to make time for. Maybe you’ve decided to let go of the more toxic friendships over time, as well. Or maybe you’ve outgrown some of your still-not-quite-mature friends, or the overly negative friends. This doesn’t mean you don’t still care about them; it just means that you realize that they’re not the best influence.
3. You have less time overall. Remember all the free time you used to have when you were younger? All those fun nights out with friends, and you could use your weekends to catch up on sleep? Those days are long gone now, and time is your most precious commodity. You’ve figured out how to maximize the little time you do have now, and you simply can’t make time for every friend you know.
4. You know yourself better, and you know what your needs are. Growing older, you’ve come to know yourself better, and you now know what you need and don’t need in your life. For this reason, some friends naturally grow apart over time because their needs and interests differ. Maybe you have a friend that has become overly materialistic through the years, and you find yourself fundamentally disagreeing with them on their lifestyle choices. You may realize that you don’t need someone like that in your own life, simply because the differences are too great to overcome. Whatever the situation, you know yourself well enough now to know what you want and don’t want in your life.
5. You realize quality matters more than quantity. Simply put: you realize you don’t need a ton of friends to be happy. You may have found personal fulfillment through starting a family with your partner, working your way up the corporate ladder, or continuing your education, and you’ve matured drastically, as a result. You have a solid support base of a few people that may include a couple close friends, but beyond that, you know you don’t need much more to be happy and satisfied with your life. You have a few, cherished people in your life that you would do anything for (and vice versa), and that is enough.
Wow! Thank you!