Friendships or how you recalibrate as you get older

It's about quality and not quantity

I was talking to a friend recently and she said that as she’d aged she’d noticed that her friendships had reduced significantly.

‘Sometimes I feel lonely because I’ve fallen out with a couple of friends that were really dear to me.’

She described a friend who had continually drained her of all emotional energy, had never been around to support her when she needed it, and had been angry and emotional whenever an arrangement got cancelled because of everyday life getting in the way.

‘The thing is I’m just not willing to tolerate the stuff I used to. And I began to think - what is this woman actually giving me back? What do I have to show for this friendship? Once I started thinking about that then I felt this huge sense of relief that we’d fallen out and I no longer had to speak to her.’

I can relate to this too. Ageing means you know more about what you want and what you don’t. There’s also this other thing too. There seems to be less time for friendship too.

Two things have happened.

I’ve noticed that I don’t have much energy to invest in friendships (I’m generally in a siege mentality where I have to double down on kids, work and getting through the week) and so the friends I have I communicate with in short, sharp bursts.

And often not in real life.

A typical example is a WhatsApp chat that I have with two old friends where we share news on deaths, new TV shows, Kylie Minogue, old work colleagues (we are quite mean in this regard), pictures of our lunches, and the occasional selfie when we’re tired and emotional. We worked together for 18 years and this friendship has changed shape entirely. From seeing each other every day, we now WhatsApp instead. There is no preamble required. You can go straight in and resume the argument about Kylie without having to say how nice the weather is right now. If we don’t WhatsApp then we don't guilt trip one another. We accept that we’re busy, the world is ending, and so don’t have time to seek out memes of the hot priest from Fleabag to share.

The friends I’ve met on the school run are much the same- there are those that I make a beeline for in the park because I know that we can get straight to the meat of the chat and don’t have to nibble away at the edges.

‘What shit has happened to you this week?’ I say looking them up and down, ‘Those trainers are nice. Where did you get them?’

And they come back with their shit and give me the brand of trainers and we implicitly agree that we love and support one another and move on. Sometimes we go out for a drink but we don’t have to because we can get our concentrated conversation done in short, sharp bursts of authenticity.

Then there’s another category which is people on social media or living on my phone who I care about but have very little contact with at all. There may literally be one text every 4-6 months. These are usually - ‘we must have coffee soon,’ kind of thing. We never say the obvious thing. HEY NOBODY HAS COFFEE ANYMORE, DIDN’T YOU KNOW?!

The undercurrent to these friendships is - ‘ I dig your vibe but I have no time to investigate any further unfortunately.’

Actual friends that I see regularly? Friends like the ones I had at school where I had a bath with them, slept in the same bed with them, fought with them, hated and loved them all at once. Not many. The group of people that I would call true friends has got smaller. Our bodies shrink and so does our friendship circle. We are more discerning and we maybe get less tolerant too. We have to watch out that we don't become too rigid and insular.

The thing is I feel like this small concentrated bunch of friends, friends that I see not often but am always in touch with via my phone are like a condensed brew. Like a friend smoothie with lots of vitamins to keep me going. They are enough. I am up for new friends but have become highly discerning. This makes me sound like a bitch but with 25 years tops left on this burning planet I don’t want to talk about casseroles. Or curtains. Or school teachers. Or homework. I want to talk about sex, devil worship and who you want to kick up the arse today. Okay?

In my mind, when I think about friendship, the way in which it has changed, I see this visual of myself on a raft. The raft is racing through the rapids, water rushing everywhere, trees, branches, leaves all over the place. My hair is wild. I am clutching my laptop, two children, two cats and a partner who is holding on to the raft with both hands and being dragged behind. Objects are being dashed against the rocks left right and centre. The clouds are circling overhead and there’s a waterfall up ahead. The friend is on a raft on the other side. She smiles when she sees me but she’s also clutching a cat, toddler, laptop and a phone. She’s in the middle of sending a giphy of Ryan Gosling to the group chat.

We reach out and the tips of our fingers meet. The kids scream, the cats try and escape out of our arms. The sound of thunder claps in the distance.

‘Fuck this week is hard,’ the friend shouts.

I can barely hear her but I nod and with my one free hand I slap her outstretched palm.

‘I see you,’ I shout, ‘I’ve got your back!’

And we disappear in opposite directions. The flotsam, noise, chaos pushing us apart. The waterfall ahead signalling another mini triumph over disaster.