You still have friends. You just don’t see them anymore: Why friendships fade in midlife and what it takes to maintain them
- Phil McAuliffe
- 1 day ago
- 5 min read
At some point in midlife, you realise you don’t see your friends anymore.
This article explores why friendships fade and what it takes to maintain them.
Hello my friend
There was a moment when my heart sank and I felt lost.
It was the realisation that some of my most important friendships had faded to the point that I no longer felt that I could call them and ask them to listen to me as I shared something difficult.
My friends had been like family for me. We’d met at university and remained close in the years after.
We’d all gotten married and started having families and careers of our own. I’d assumed that they would always be there and that the effort needed to sustain the relationships would be minimal.
I was wrong.
Over time, I’ve come to understand that realising we don’t see our friends anymore is a common experience in midlife.
Let’s sit with that.
The trap we fall into with our friends in midlife
How many times have you caught up with friends and the event ends with someone saying, 'We should do this again soon'?
It’s genuine and well-meaning. You love your friends and love spending time with them. There is intent to catch up more frequently, but it never translates into another catch-up.
Soon never arrives.
There’s always something that gets in the way of soon. Work deadlines. Family commitments. Endless chores.
Catching up with friends becomes something that must get slotted into an already busy schedule. Not only your busy schedule, but openings in your friends’ busy schedules must also align.
Those alignments are rare.
The result is that the relationships we have with our friends wither.
Life with a different structure
There was a structure that helped you and your friends become friends when you were younger.
There was the structure of school or university and the regularity it provided. Perhaps it was regular activities in the community.
The framework you operated in helped create the environment in which friendships could form and grow.
That framework changes as we move through life. That structure becomes more focused on the individual or the family unit. Sometimes, that structure is difficult to break out of to do something spontaneously.
Friendship used to be built into your life. Now it must compete with it.
Have you noticed how hard it is to organise something with your friends? What were once spontaneous events now need to be scheduled months in advance.
It’s common for people to pull out at the last moment due to other commitments.
The assumption behind friendships
Our social needs don’t narrow. They’re still there, except our capacity to meet those needs feels diminished without breaking the framework our lives sit within.
As friendship expert Dr Miriam Kirmayer says in this episode of the HUMANS:CONNECTING podcast, friendships are important relationships that help sustain us through life. For some, our friends become our chosen family.
Beyond this, there’s an assumption that our friends will always be there. We believe that we don’t need to water and nourish our friendships, and that we can simply pick things back up whenever we want.
We treat friendship as permanent, when it isn’t.
In midlife, our lives are full of immovable obligations and responsibilities: work, caring and community. Friendships offer flexibility within that rigidity. As a result, we take our friendships for granted in midlife and expect them to continually adapt,to accommodate our other obligations, and grow without much care and attention.
You know how wrong that is simply by reading that sentence. Yet, the belief persists through our actions.
What we’re getting wrong
We need to address the fundamental tension in midlife.
We operate in narrower frameworks that we’ve cultivated over time to help us meet all the expectations placed upon us (and those we place on ourselves). Those frameworks treat meaningful connection – particularly with our friends – as an optional extra.
We’re getting this wrong. We show up better in all aspects of life when we are socially well and we’re meeting our social health needs (read this for more on social health).
This includes spending time with our friends.
The reframe
Friendships require intention and attention.
We need to prioritise friendships (setting the intention). We then need to spend time with our friends (giving them attention).
The risk
At some point, you’re going to need to call a friend and ask them for help. That help may be in helping you move house or it could be seeking their advice about your relationship.
But you don't want to interrupt them. You don't want to be a burden.
If I had a dollar for every time I've heard 'I didn't want to be a burden', I'd be writing these words from a beachside villa somewhere warm and sunny. Cemeteries are full of people - mainly men - who didn't want to be a burden.
Get over yourself.
If you're running the burden story, call it out for the BS it is and flip the script. Would you think that a friend was a burden if they called you asking for advice and support?
Of course not. You'd love to help them.
So let them in and receive their love and support.
Time to reflect
I have three questions for you to help you reflect on the state of your friendships:
Who have you lost touch with?
Who would you like to spend time with?
What are you waiting for?
Friendships are important relationships: as important as relationships with family and significant others.
They cannot be left to chance or to a mythical future state when you feel you have time.
A place to start
If something in this article resonates, it may be pointing to a deeper question: what kind of connection is meaningful to you?
The Connection Starter Course helps you understand the quality of your connections and take practical steps to strengthen meaningful connection in your life.
You’ll develop your personal Connection Plan - a practical way to get the connection that’s meaningful for you.
Friendships matter. They can’t be left to chance.
~ Phil
FROM THE H:C STORE
Important:
All views expressed above are the author’s and are intended to inform, support, challenge and inspire you to consider the issue of loneliness and increase awareness of the need for authentic connection with your self, with those most important to you and your communities as an antidote to loneliness. Unless otherwise declared, the author is not a licensed mental health professional and these words are not intended to be crisis support. If you’re in crisis, this page has some links for immediate support for where you may be in the world.
If you’re in crisis, please don’t wait. Get support now.
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