What About Your Friends?

Friendships are essential. I have blogged about my friends multiple times. I came across this article a while back, The Anatomy of Friendship by Aly Walansky and it really struck a cord with me.  Below is the snippet that did it for me. You can read the full article here.  

We just don't have the time anymore
Sure, we thought we had it rough in high school and college -- but in retrospect, that was all youthful naiveté. Many of us now work ceaseless hours and while we may have many people we love spending time with, we all too often just don't have the time to spend. It's hard enough to maintain ties with our dearest friends. Do we have time to add new ones to the mix?

People show you who they really are (and you may not like it)

When we were kids, the worst thing that ever happened in friendships would be that my fifth grade BFF would start sitting with someone else at lunch. It felt tragic at the time, but by the next day, I had a new BFF. It was easy then. Now, when we make and lose friends, the parameters feel a lot larger -- it's very much like a breakup, possibly even a death. There are so many different types of friendship breakups. The people who say they will be there for you, and then ultimately aren't. The people who put you on an impossibly high pedestal -- and then one day tear the chair out from under you. The people who get married or have babies and suddenly just aren't as available as they once were. And, there's the most common type of friendship end in your 30s -- the ones that drift apart. You simply have different interests now, and nothing left to talk about. As I said, it's kind of like a divorce, and just as hard to come back from.

Even with tons of friends, life can be lonely. Especially if these friends are long distance, or people you predominantly chat with on the Internet. No tweet can hug you when you are sad. No email can give you someone to meet for an impromptu happy hour when you've had a bad day.

This has been an incredibly hard year for me, one where a lot of friendships have simply disappeared. And I've discovered that maybe, as you get older, it's not the same anymore. You don't need to have loads of friends. You need to have a few really good ones. And when you manage to have that -- and, praise the lord, I do -- treat them like the gold they are. You'll never have a more precious asset. And, as you may have noticed, they aren't so easy to replace.