Do you lose all/most of your friends in your 30s?

31 comments

1. [deleted]

2. Those friends suck for sure and you should strive to make new ones. Sounds like you’ve reached out to them enough and they’re simply not interested. Do you think they’re hanging out with eachother without you?

   But yes, #1 is to be comfortable with yourself. I know it’s hard, I just moved to a new city and don’t know anyone, but still make plans and go do things I’m interested in. It’s lonely but eventually I’ll meet likeminded people at those things. They aren’t going to want to hang out if I’m desperate or not comfortable in my own skin.

3. Friendships can often times be weirder to navigate than romantic relationships because at least with the latter, there’s a break up involved. The way you describe them, it certainly seems like the writing is on the wall.

   Are any of your friends in long-term relationships, engaged or already married? What about kids? These factors make everything more difficult because you increase responsibilities without increasing time. For some, everything outside their job and their family obligations becomes a bit more mundane and tiresome to maintain, especially at a level you’re previously used to.

4. Yes and no. Most died before I hit 30.

   A small amount have always been close even if they didn’t live close by, but getting together has always been difficult over the decades.

5. I feel like friends come and go through different life stages. At 40, I have an entirely different set of friends than I did at 29. But I think I have better friends now (maybe even more friends, too). Life moves forward and people do different ways and that’s ok.

6. It’s one thing to be busy.

   But to not even take 5 seconds to respond is plain rude and inexcusable.

   If you really want to salvage your friendships, call them on the phone and respectfully ask them for an explanation.

   If you don’t want to do that, then forget about them and go make new friends.

7. One of the hard lessons of adulthood is you learn that a lot of friendships were due to convenience. You will drift away from people you thought were lifelong friends. It sucks and there’s no answer to how to avoid it.

8. My late 30s, yes. But that was because I got divorced and my ex got all my friends in the divorce. I made new friends that are a lot more active and fit better with my new lifestyle. Dancers, hikers, people who enjoy the outdoors. I would have fallen away from the other group anyways.

9. I’ve had two groups of friends, one kind of fell apart when one passed away a couple of years ago. In hindsight, he may have been the one who always organized things and brought everyone together, alas.

   The other group of friends I still see a lot. Spoiler: maintaining friendships means you sometimes need to make an effort!

   Additionally: I still regularly meet new friends, you just don’t find them in the places you used to. Having a shared hobby (eg sports) is an excellent way to grow new friendships.

10. I think most people experience this at some point. As an adult you usually have a list of stuff that you want to do, it doesnt even have to be important some people would gladly spend a better part of a summer sitting inside watching tour de france. When people Get kids they will both have more responsibility, and more stuff they have/should do too.

    Noone tells you in your early 20s that you actually have to make a non stop effort to find new friends as you age. I guess Even if someone told me I would not really believe it, because throughout our teens and early 20s hanging out is so casual and natural.

    Truth is people’s interests and priorities often change over time. So you have to make an effort to socialize with people that share your current ones.

    Losing friends is hard, it is like a 10 year relationship Going down the drain. It is harder because you are rarely offered an explanation, people are just «busy», ghost you or simply treat you shitty like the one that canceled last min.

11. Yes, your friends suck. As you get older, friendships don’t have the aid of traditional institutions to sustain them. I’m talking institutions like college that force people to see one another. This is partially why adults end up befriending their coworkers or, if they’re religious, other people from their church

    At this aforementioned point in time, friendships require more effort from both parties in order to sustain them. In your case, you’re the one putting in all the effort whereas your (soon to be former-) friends aren’t, for whatever reason. Find other friends who will prioritize the friendship as much as you are

12. Yeah man, you need to quit investing effort into those people, they clearly don’t care about spending time with you.

    It’s not so much about “losing” friends, it’s more about realizing you need to cultivate some new ones and stop trying to resurrect relationships that are long past their prime.

13. [They’ll come back one day, man, but then it will be too late](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B32yjbCSVpU&ab_channel=UglyKidJoeVEVO).

14. Buddy. I just lost my best friend of over 45 years. In a second. When people don’t need you, they don’t want you. Think of friendship as borne of necessity, frustration and convenience and treat it as ephemeral. I’ve had “friends” of 20, 30, 40 years cheat, steal and lie as if I’d met them the preceding night at a bar.

15. Nope, in fact heading into my 30’s I grew my friendship circle as my interests diversified and evolved.

    I think a lot of people though are in the same boat as you where they feel like after school, as people are getting on in their professional lives, starting families etc that they are losing friends. In reality your friendships are just changing and you can either change and adapt with that or get stuck in a mindset where you feel abandoned.

    In your case, it just sounds like it’s time to make new friends rather than hang onto relationships where you’re putting the effort into them

16. I had a huge group of friends and I’ve drifted away from many.

    However, in my 30s I turned my attention inward and started working on myself. Learning, building a business, working out and sorting my health and fitness. I also started a family and now it’s pretty much all about them.

    I still get together with my old friends every now and again and it’s fun. But it’s not like before.

    What I have now is fantastic, though.

    Embrace change, OP. You have no other choice.

17. Yes, it’s normal. Can’t speak to your group of friends, but people get busy, starting families, taking care of homes, and, and there is less time for or interest in hanging out for the sake of hanging out. I mean there are people who will always get together for football, or hang out and work on cars or whatever. But in general, people get busy with their lives in their 30’s and 40’s. Then in the 50’s it opens up a bit as the “kids” get more independent and head off to college.

18. I like to think my close relationships weren’t “drifted away” more so we all got sucked into our own goals. Anytime I call them up or vice versa for anything nothing has changed.

    It’s just that at 30+ you’re going to focus on your kid and providing for said kid at your job over your homies you drink with, that’s just life.

19. A lot of times in my 30s it’s really hard to block off time like I did when I was in my 20s

    However, with your friends I think they are passively telling you they don’t want to be your friends anymore. I had to do this to one of my friends as telling them directly would have caused some unneeded rift with our social circle. I simply declined politely all invitations by them until they stopped. Hindsight I could have dealt with it differently though by maybe being a bit more honest…

20. Yes, it is a part of getting older. I always wondered why my old man and I just did things without a lot of ppl coming over to visit. Then I realized it as I got older.

    Reality changes you, it changes the people around you. But I just recently lost a best friend of 20 years out of nowhere, it got to the point I was doing all the talking, inviting etc. But, I figured Id let him make a move instead, that was 2 years ago, and nothing.

    So I adapted, I just got closer with my coworkers. And the regulars at my local bar. But I keep them at a distance. It may sound cynical, but learning to be your own best friend does wonders.

21. I’m 32 and have also experienced the gradual attrition of reliable friends over the past few years. I don’t know what to tell you, it sucks. I went from almost always having plans with friends at least one, sometimes two days a week, to 2-3 times a month, to nowadays once a month if I’m lucky. I keep trying to make plans with my few remaining friends in town but everyone’s always busy or out of town. Especially over the summer, it’s such a drag because it’s the best part of the year in my city, warm days and great weather for grabbing patio drinks or going for a hike and it’s like everyone just straight up vanishes!

    I find that my friends who are in relationships (and that’s nearly all of them) seem to book weekend plans 3, 4, 5 weeks in advance and go out of town like 2 weekends a month minimum. I wish I had that built-in social interaction of being in a relationship, it would make these long stretches of time where I can’t make plans with other friends so much more enjoyable. When people go from referring to themself as “I” to referring to themself as “we”, at least in my experience, I know I’ll hardly see them anymore.

22. Yes, in university many of my friends were due to common interest and convenience. But … over time we change and our interests and personalities change. Many people lose hobbies. Many get married , and many move away.

    I tried to keep in contact with others, but they’d always be busy. Eventually some of them moved back, and didn’t bother telling me even though they’d tell each other. Others would suddenly remember to contact me… but it was always to ask for help with something since I’m hardworking and loyal. Can I borrow $100? Can you pick me up after my car got towed? Can you help me move? Can you help him move? Can you help us move again? Can you help me with my college application? Oh, and can you help me move (from someone who unfriended me from Facebook)? Yes… I got asked for help moving 3 times in 4 months. I ignored the last request.

    So in a way, I totally feel you. But maybe you can do what I did: dump them all and start over. I was also in a rut so I quit my job and moved to a totally new area and started over. I built new friendships by being proactive and actively seeking friends and saying I was new in town. I joined a Facebook group devoted to people in that city and just said, “I’m new here, I need friends. Here are my hobbies, interests, etc.”

    It worked out pretty well.

23. My friends from HS and I all get together monthly or semi-monthly. But we are now in our 60s. We all went out separate ways and raised families and then 12 years ago one of our group moved back to the area and we’ve been getting together since. During your 30s and 40s most people focus on family and/or careers and don’t often have time for hanging out. Once your kids don’t need supervision, you find you have more time for your own entertainment.

24. It’s hard to answer this question without knowing the dynamic of your friend group and the role you play in it. When you listed things you guys did together, it was just getting fucked up and sitting around. Are they all growing up and you’re the friend that’s still getting fucked up and sitting around? I don’t know the answer to that and I’m not suggesting you are. It’s just to illustrate the fact that there are probably social dynamics at play here that people on Reddit will not be able to help you with by making blanket statements on the nature of human social interaction.

25. Yes and no. In my late twenties to early thirties I pretty much struck out on my own, as did most of my grade school and college friends. We had our own lives, our own career Pursuits, relationships, and such like. So I just kind of let those friendships not exactly die, but just hang on the vine a little bit. Would post things like happy birthday or like a picture or two just to remind them I’m still alive and check up on them. In my mid-30s, once we all got more settled with families and careers, our schedules opened up a lot more and we were able to reconnect. Now we see each other once a month or so for like golf outings or Dungeons & Dragons game nights. It’s difficult to do long scheduled big things like vacation together and stuff like that since there are things like children who go to school and careers and houses and things oh, so when we do find time to get together for just like a weekend barbecue we make the most of it.

    I’d say respect your friend distance and let them do the things that they need to do. They’re beginning their lives as I’m sure you are as well. Don’t give up on them, but you give them space and respect how your relationship will change.

26. Man, I feel incredibly grateful. I met two of my three best friends when we were all 14 years old. We are all 32 now and are still best friends. Beyond that, we still hang out all the time. I can’t say I’m exactly where I’d imagined or hoped to be at this stage in my life, but I do know I value these friendships a whole hell of a lot.

27. Quite the opposite in my case. I stayed in touch with two or three friends I knew from when I was 15. There were about 14 of us that all grew up on the same hill in Southern California. Some time in my mid 40’s I found another friend from my youth on Facebook and suddenly all 14 of us were all talking online again. We got together at a pizza place that we had all gone to during high school and we all have been friends again ever since. I am coming up on 60 years old and these were the kids I used to ride bikes with and go ice skating with.

    Only one guy we reached out to said he didn’t care to stay in touch with us anymore. His loss, not ours.

    We still get together once a year or so.

28. You keep inviting them to the beach and they keep not turning up. Do they even like the beach? Is the whole thing just too much effort for them? I have lots of old friends who are just too difficult to organise with their spouses and kids to do any big multi-day or day-long thing anymore. So I have the odd brunch with one or two. There is the occasional low-effort BBQ. And I’ve made other friends who are more my speed these days for the higher contact stuff.

    I have a big group chat going at the moment with some old drinking buddies from more than 15 years ago – definitely a kind of “friends for a season” type of crowd. We all live in a bunch of different countries and cities now and we’ve moved on with our lives from those crazy days and that’s mostly cool. We talk about people’s kids and pets and the rona. But there’s one guy on the chat who is not reading the room: it’s not 2003 anymore. While everyone has mostly been neutral and respectful of other people’s general opinions this guy gets started up with some pretty offensive stuff and thinks it’s okay. It’s not. Everyone is uncomfortable and no one wants to blow the chat up by dealing with him front on; the gentle stuff has not worked. We now have a whole alternative chat group that excludes him. OP, I hope you’re not that guy?

29. Yes. And it is the hardest thing I’ve had to deal with. You will make new friends tho! Maybe ones that suit you better than your old friends. It’s not always a bad thing.

30. I did, and to be honest, I don’t care and I enjoy not being beholden to worry about other people.

31. This happened to my spouse and it still drives me insane when I start thinking about it too much. Friends for like 20 years and then a small disagreement and he basically was like “yup we aren’t friends anymore” and it was so stupid and irrational and it bothers me – and it wasn’t even my friend. I think it depends. We have had tons of couple friends we’ve had to navigate stressful conversations but we usually can manage. If you can’t – probably worth dropping. Some people can have one bad experience negate decades of great times. It just happens I guess. A lot of times it’s not worth investigating but it doesn’t make it easier.