How adult friendships change

Among the many things that change as we grow up, along with lifestyle, habits, hobbies and ambitions, there are also friendships. It’s inevitable and might be scary, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. This is how relationships with friends evolve when you grow up.

You don’t feel like it every day.
Work, do the shopping, call the plumber, go to the doctor, clean the house, pay the bills, remember the overhaul of the car … With all the tasks to be faced daily, it is not easy to carve out half an hour for a phone call; some evenings, it is not even gathering the energies (physical and above all mental) to send a message on WhatsApp. The important thing is to stay there for the things that really matter.

We see little.
If keeping in touch on a regular basis is difficult, meeting is a real challenge. Pinning up the diaries of two (or more) adults is a bit like searching for a soul mate on Tinder: not impossible, but incredibly frustrating.

We don’t organize the crazy evenings of the past.
Until recently, going out meant getting in gear, going to the disco, taking out an undefined number of gin and tonics, coming home at dawn and spending the next day in bed trying to reconstruct the events of the previous evening. What now instead? Now we organize after-work aperitifs, dinners in nice restaurants, weekends away from home and lunches at home. And a couple of glasses of wine are enough to get drunk.

You have new topics of conversation.
The promotion you just received, the increase in gasoline, the new plant you bought for the living room, the boss asshole, the pizzeria you tried a few nights ago … As adults we talk, also and above all, of topics like this: certainly not very cool, but that’s the way life goes.

Groups shrink.
Growing up you learn that the way of saying “better few but good” is especially true in friendship. Once the time for large groups is over, you begin to appreciate the most intimate and sincere relationships with a few people, those you can always rely on, not only on Saturday nights but especially in dark moments.