I genuinely ask this because I see people who still talks to their high school friends and still hangs out with them. Like how do you do that?
How do you maintain adult friendship?
r/AskWomen
I genuinely ask this because I see people who still talks to their high school friends and still hangs out with them. Like how do you do that?
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As soon as I graduated high school, I never looked back. Admittedly, I didn’t have many friends and I hated high school. I got along with my classmates in college and made a lot of friends then.
I met most of my friends in grad school and at work. I was in my late 20s-early 30s when I made all of my current friends. I see my closest friend a once a month or once every other month. We text a few times a month. I have a lot of work friends who I hangout with once a month or so.
I will say my husband still hangouts with a couple of his high school friends, but he actually enjoyed high school and had some decent, like minded friends then.
I’ve been friends with my group of friends since high school and college. How we’ve made it work is that our friendship was a priority to all of us and we moved accordingly. We made sure to hang out in person regularly but also kept in touch via phone.
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Have friendships that lasted 15 year and is still ongoing but also have had friendships that lasted max 1½ year
Iit really depends on a lot of things. Living in the same city goes a long way. Its harder to maintain something if it isent nearby. I will say,
I will say i have distanced myself from friends who have shown me despite having all the ressources to visit me and hang out, they still dont. I quickly end that friendship. Im so tired of people just taking from people rather than doing some actual work.
Healthy friendships? You boost each other up. You talk about real life. Good and bad. You don’t give each other “boyfriend” responsibilities and have reasonable expectations. You forgive fast and often. You tell them you love them. You visit frequently and talk often and go on adventures together and pick up the tab for each other without resentment. You don’t play competition over who has it better or worse. You help them with life. Sometimes they can’t be a great friend for a long time. You don’t cut the cord over it. Been friends with the same people since childhood.
Some you don’t, you grow and age and drift apart. That’s ok. I don’t talk to a single one of my high school friends.
Some you do maintain. Sometimes that looks like talking every day. Sometimes you meet in person, sometimes on the phone. Sometimes it’s just just text messages. Sometimes you don’t text at all for a while, or sometimes it’s just silly pictures and updates on your life:
”Got a really good latte today“
“The trees on my street are blooming“
“Look at this new shirt I thrifted“
“Book recommendation: __“
“Today something reminded me of that one time where “
For me it ebbs and flows, but it’s also a two way street. Several of my high school friends I lost contact with because I was the only one ever shouting into the void. Another one just reached out for the first time in almost ten years
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I’m still best friends with my best friend from high school (I’m 32, she’s 33). I do think our connection is unique, like it’s always been easy and I just couldn’t imagine my life without her so it’s pretty easy to keep up the effort. We haven’t lived in the same state since high school so we don’t get to see each other in person often, but we talk every day-some days all day.
I have a few local friends that I love, but those friendships do require more intentional effort. We schedule when we’re going to do dinner because we all have busy lives so it’s harder to kind of nail everyone down.
It’s a lot of effort but worth it if you value friendship. My phone is always buzzing from group chats, Snapchat’s, messages from friends on social media, so on so forth. It’s very time consuming catching up with everyone, but it’s really the only way to maintain relationships as you get older, especially if your friends don’t live near you. When my out of town friends are in town, I make it a priority to see them. I also try and visit them at least once a year and plan trips together. My friends local to me I see almost every weekend.
Same way I maintain any relationship, whether it’s romantic, familial, or friends. Talk to them, take an interest in their lives and what they have going on, and take the initiative to suggest stuff to do together. Respond when they reciprocate.
Incorporating smaller daily or weekly stuff. Texts, catch ups. Regular, sincere (whether sincerely goofy or otherwise) reaching out and asking questions.
New friends? Not a clue. 😬
32F here. I’m still in touch with most of my school friends, with 2 being I often connect with- been almost 20 years. I’m also still in touch with my college friends. I live in a different country, haven’t seen them in 6-7 years but we’re still connected and often speak on the phone. It’s mainly about building a genuine connection and the right ones stay with you. The best part of the 20 year old friendship is that we have seen each other grow from school to adulthood- with our personal and professional growth.
It’s hard but the key is being intentional. You won’t always have time but even random messages or planning something once in a while helps. Most adults friendship are low-maintenance. People just wanna feel remembered and appreciated.
It’s so hard!! And it’s even harder to make new close friends as adults, ugh. I think men maintain friendships way easier than women do. My partner says his conversation with his friends on the daily are mainly just them sending each other memes lol. But they’re still hella tight and close despite not updating each other about life that much – they only mention big things. But I want friends who I can share even little things to or rant about silly things.
Majority of my friendships from high school died one way or another. A handful dissolved just because we grew up to be different people. The other few were drama related. One stopped talking to me when I said her relationship was toxic (it really was lol), but she hit me up again when she got out of it. One got unfortunately successfully isolated by her abuser – they’re STILL together, RIP. The other two, it was a group of 3 of us and I was caught in between a fight of them. One of them manipulated me and made me pick a side.
I managed to mend the relationship back with the one I wronged, she said she had a feeling but she was too hurt to say anything about it. We met up, had fun, but of course friendship will still never be the same. Manipulated or not, it doesn’t change what I did.
For the few friendships I still have, we just randomly update each other about things going on in our life, or talk about random stuff that interests us. But because of work and life, the responses aren’t that quick anymore lol
By it being both sides maintaining the friendship. Final answer.
My longest friendship is 28 years old this year! I met this girl when we were both 6 and I’ll be her braid maid this September. We live in different countries now but the key to me is constant communication and commitment like every other relationship. We try to message each other every other day or so and we call each other when we have a bit of time to update.
Group chats, memes, and low expectations. Just checking in once in a while goes a long way.
You just don’t let the connection die. Even a quick “hey, thought of you” text can keep it going. Also, being okay with not talking all the time but picking up like nothing changed helps a lot.
Texting fr. Life gets too busy abd where I live theres no placed to hang out that doesnt require purchases or bearing extreme weather conditions outside (no shade right now). So sending memes and texting about various things, including our life progress, is very helpful to keeping up friendships in adulthood.
It also helps Ive been friends with some of my friends for years already, like my best friend Ive known since middle school. 🙂
My friend group is mainly high school friends. I think just consistently showing up and doing stuff together. Trips, book clubs, engagements, birthdays, baby showers, just catching up over drinks, calling, memes etc. It’s amazing.
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