Adult Friendship
When I first turned 30, I remember thinking, “I don’t feel 30!” “I don’t look 30!” That was clearly the 29 in me yapping on it’s way out. I can now say with absolute certainty that I look and feel 30. I can no longer see my 20’s in the rearview mirror, even with my prescription glasses. Occasionally my grandma will ask me how to add a photo to Facebook, and for a moment, I will once again feel 22. However, generally, it’s just me, asking if Tik Tok is an app or a website and how everyone knows the same dance routines. Because let’s face it, at 13, I was not a savage. I was just 1 of 5 girls with braces performing Bye Bye Bye in a garage while wearing flare jeans and an Old Navy fleece vest.
There is something distinctly different about 22 and 32. At 22, our office intern referred to Britney Spears as, “the judge from The X Factor.” At 32, I took immediate offense to the idea that Britney Spears was anything less than the reigning princess of pop, Justin Timberlake’s first true love, THE one, THE only, Britney Jean Spears. As you can imagine, the differences are more far reaching than changing perspectives on early 2000 pop icons. Your thirties can change the way you think about and interact with your health, finances, time, and relationships.
Your thirties can also significantly change the way you view and interact with friendships.
Why the shift? As Jessie Spano would say, "Time! There's never any time!" (caffeine pills, anyone?). In our thirties, we begin to take on more commitments. Our careers advance and we assume more demanding roles at the office. We seek meaning and involvement in our neighborhoods. communities, and places of worship. Many get married, become parents, start businesses, and purchase homes. Friendship begins to feel novel, like travel, painting, and reading; as though reserved for a world without responsibility. Friendship gets pushed to the bottom of our to-do list, where it often stays until we notice it, miss it, remark that we should do better, and pat it on the head as we start back up at the top of our list.
In a society fairly consumed with the idea of romantic love, friendship can often seem a lesser love. After all, people are rarely inspired to write songs about friendship. People rarely write movies where friendship is the lead storyline. Rather, the best friend is often a supporting character, offering full support to the lead regardless of how the love story is unfolding, only to disappear once love is fully found; almost as though a friend were a placeholder for companionship until a spouse can be properly secured. Though romantic love is certainly worthy of tribute, song, and film (I can swoon with the best of them), friendship is also a love worth remembering and celebrating. It is a different, yet valuable part of our relationship catalog. After all, I have sat with lonely newlyweds. I have talked with young mothers who feel completely isolated. Friendship, like any relationship, is not intended to resolve all of life’s problems. However, friendship can be a great source of comfort, joy, and encouragement during life’s worst and best moments.
It has been said that friends come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. I write today with the latter two in mind. I write about the friendships, whether old or recent, we will likely take into the future. The kind of friendship worthy of our thirties. I am fortunate enough to have a few such friends here in the city. Though we were once a group of single college girls, we are now a collection of single, dating, and married men and women; parents and non-parents; downtown-dwellers and suburb-families. We have grown together, not apart. We have stayed close for 15 years during some of life’s most transformative events and seasons. However, we still fail. We still learn. We still try. What I offer today in lieu of solutions and answers, is merely personal experience and perspective.
If you cannot find time, make time: With friendship, it is often not an issue of time, but of priority. Friendship, like fitness, work, or finances, requires discipline and intentionality. “If only we lived closer, I would…” “This is a busy season of life for me. Once it’s over, I’ll…” “Once work slows down, I’ll be better about…” Spoiler alert: you likely won’t. I likely won’t. We somehow believe that one magical day in the future our to-do list will be done on the same day our friend’s to-do list is done, and then we will finally enjoy a time of sweet friendship. That day may come. However, until it does, time will need to be carved out for friendship. Sacrifices will need to be made. Plans will need to be changed and rearranged. If you cannot find time, you need to make time. Throughout the past 15 years, there have been moments where one or more in our friend group took a small step back, didn’t feel like coming to events, or needed some space. Please hear me, there is always room for that. There is always grace for that. However, generally, we have been present. We have kept saying yes. We have kept showing up. Sometimes, that’s 95% of friendship.
If 90% of your life is spent on the mundane and ordinary, you must open that 90% to friendship: If you frequent my Instagram page, which I assume everyone does, you will find photos from many fun friend events. You will not, however, see a photo from the Saturday afternoon I spent sitting with my friend in her living room surrounded by a mountain of clean laundry as we folded and talked. It’s a common myth of friendship that you must identify a 4-hour block of completely uninterrupted time to enjoy each other. Or that you must choose an interesting activity and a cool location in order to have fun together. Friendship can be spending a Sunday afternoon meal prepping together. It can be wrapping gifts together during the holidays. It can be going for an evening walk together. If 90% of our lives are spent on more mundane and ordinary tasks and we do not invite our friends into that 90%, we will be left scrounging for time in the 10%. Invite your friends into the boring, the mundane, and the ordinary. In doing so, you may just find it is not as boring, mundane, or ordinary together.
Old memories are to be treasured, but are not meant to replace the making of new memories: There are few things as gratifying as sitting across from an old friend and reminiscing. We laugh until we cry as we think back on all of the silly things we did together so many years ago. Some friendships will always exist in the past. For example, a childhood friend from your hometown that you try to catch up with over the holidays. However, sometimes our closest adult friendships can fall into this reminiscing pattern. We have no new memories, so we simply talk about old ones. It’s time to make new memories and experience new things and places together. Our friend group certainly reminisces about our college days. However, we also reminisce about the trip we all took to Iceland 2 years ago. We talk about New Year’s Eve this past December where we stayed at a cabin up north. We are constantly treasuring old memories, while creating new ones.
Like a family, create and keep traditions: The annual calendar fills up quickly. My friends host an annual Turducken party, typically in November. It’s as simple as it sounds. We host a party where we eat a turducken (a chicken stuffed in a duck stuffed in a turkey stuffed in us). Last fall, sometime in early October, we decided to choose a date for the 2019 turducken feast. Within our text chain we could not identify a single weekend day between October and December 31st where we could all attend. Let that sink in. A group of 8 (including a few couples who share schedules), could not find a single day when given 1/4th of the year as an option. So, we hosted the event the first week of January. We found a way to keep and enjoy the tradition. For years, one of our favorite summer traditions has been visiting a vineyard in Southern Minnesota for a beautiful outdoor dinner. This year, due to the pandemic, the vineyard did not host the annual dinner. We decided to carry on the tradition by hosting our own dinner. We cooked, we planned, we laughed, and we enjoyed a memorable night together, as we always do (photos below). Creating shared annual traditions ensures both present and future time together while creating new memories in every season.
I have often heard older friends and relatives reflect back on their favorite seasons of life. Some loved their twenties, some their thirties, some their forties, some their fifties, and some their sixties. Most recognize highlights from each, unable to choose any one decade. It may just be that life is beautiful at every age; and a friend, a gift at any age and any life stage. Friendship is not reserved for the young or the old. If we are fortunate, friendship is something we will find, make time for, and cherish throughout all of our years.
