I’m 26 and in the past year started to notice a slight shift within my friend group. Idk how to say this without sounding pretentious but I’m in a nice stable position with my career and just pretty ahead financially compared to my friends who just work min wage jobs. I’ve been spending my free time exploring new hobbies, traveling and just sort of learning to enjoy life outside of work. I’m the only one in my friend group in this position and most of them haven’t really done much or changed their life since high school.
So the issue is, it feels like a few of them are upset that I’m doing fine with my life. Just recently, one of them got upset with me because I never hop on to play video games with them when I literally dont have the time to. Theres one specific guy that’ll throw side comments that almost like guilts me for just living my life and its to the point where I just dont share parts of my life. I traveled to Japan recently and he was saying how I’m “fake” for going without the group and how we’ve been talking about going which could’ve been fun but kind of hard to plan anything when they spend their entire paycheck on weed and eating out.
Is it normal to become distant with friends as you become an adult and how did you decide which friendships are worth maintaining. I do have friends who are actively pursuing/improving their careers and I’ve been getting closer to them but just sucks because I’m starting to feel distant with some childhood friends who at one point where like brothers to me
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Just start showing up late so all the expensive stuff is already paid for
We have a big income gap in my friend circle from a dude who makes a bit over minimum wage (lets call him Matthew) to a guy who is probably pushing 500k a year between him and his wife.
We do a big outing every year for a long weekend, and Matthew brings the beer and the rest of us split the bigger expenses.
We try not to do anything that someone cannot easily afford to do.
Normal for relationships to change. Sounds like your friend misses time spent and is expressing it in certain ways. You don’t have to like how it’s being expressed.
Similar scenario… if these guys are mates, real mates, you should be making time for them and doing things together that you can all afford to do. Be modest about your own accomplishments, lots of people in the world struggle and it’s not a good look to be flash imo. Absolutely, take the time to do your own things that you can now afford, but do it for you, not to brag nor expect a welcome ear because quite probably you won’t get it.
Your true friends would be happy for you/would treat you the same. You’re still the same person regardless of your address and salary.
Don’t hide what you’re doing in your life, post it, treat them the same way you always have. And also just be transparent about how you’re in a diff era of your life. If after that, they don’t seem to be putting effort to change, then just match their energy and build new circles.
You can never have too many friends, you just have a problem when you have no close friends.
I’m the same age as you and am the lowest earner of my friend group. It bothered me for a bit but at the end of the day I’m just happy my friends are doing well. Luckily most of our interests are pretty cheap but when we do an activity that costs money everybody usually splits it proportionally to their income. We went to a baseball game a few weeks ago, two guys bought the tickets, 1 bought us all a beer and a hotdog at the game, and I paid for the gas to get us there.
Lmao that’s not your friend bro. Live your life and drink your pina colada too
My best friend lost everything in the divorce and had a sort of mental breakdown. He’s homeless now and his GF just died. Won’t take my invite to move in.
Point is that when he comes around, I don’t talk about money or happiness. I just shoot the shit like the old days over a few beers. If you can’t make time for your friends then you’ve become a slave to your job and if that’s the case, why even continue to exist?
Nobody knows what I make or what I’m worth. When they don’t get to do stuff I do, I chalk it up to my lack of kids. Most of my friends from high school didn’t really make anything of their lives so we grew apart.
It’s not unusual to grow apart. People change.
Totally normal, honestly. As you grow and your priorities shift, not every friendship grows with you. It sucks, especially when it’s people you’ve been close with for years, but sometimes distance just happens. Keep the ones who support your growth and let go of the ones who guilt you for it
Sounds like a small town mentality.
You’re reaching for the stars while they’re still digging dirt.
Find some friends in the same industry as you
You deal with it carefully.
It’s normal. Have different groups of friends for different things.
It’s normal for you to lose friendships and make new ones when your income/lifestyle changes. People often get jealous and become crappy “friends” because of it. When that happens, it’s time to move on with your life.
It’s possible those friends are not as “good” as you thought. I have a very tight group of 3 friends, we’ve all been friends since elementary-middle school. I was the first one to get a good job, all of my friends were always supportive and proud, and i was always happy to contribute more to shit when we went out. But it never got to a point of them mooching off me. Now we all got good jobs and still just as good of friends. We also never really did extravagant shit lol we were always pretty frugal people so that helped when the wage disparity was at it’s greatest
This is just part of growing up.
After high school my friend group had a pretty big split.
I jumped right into a 40 hr week, 9-5 career (I’d been working on my credentials through high school), my good friend start grinding out real estate, a few others went on to good universities. Everyone else in my old friend group is still working the same min wage jobs and working on their art, or streaming, or “investments” or doing whatever else they can to avoid being an adult.
Now me and the friends who worked hard take vacations together and do other fun stuff, while the rest are riding their bikes around the tacobell and smoking joints under bridges. No hate to them or anything, but I know what I wanted and worked for it. It wasn’t as fun as fucking around for a few years with them would have been, but I’m glad I did it now.
You’re lyin if you cant make time for an hour or two of games a couple times a week. Anyway I hope to get rich so I can treat my poor friends to fun experiences. Gotta spread the love