001 - On Friendships in Later Life
Making new genuine friends and holding onto lasting friendships in adult life is so freaking hard and complicated.
Hi everyone!
I hope you are all keeping safe and sane.
Earlier this month was my third year anniversary living in Melbourne and on one rainy night I was scrolling through my gallery on my phone trying to gather some snippets and memories from the past 3 years so that I can post it on Instagram to commemorate my life in Melbourne. Then something just struck me. While those years I’d felt newly fulfilled - finally able to live abroad, graduated Masters with Distinction, got a job in a highly promising company - I feel like I’m missing something. The catalyst of this spiral was associated with my reassessment of my social life. It occurred to me that, after 3 years living in Melbourne, I’d barely built a close social network. I only hang out with the same, small group of people, the majority of my friends from uni have managed to drift away like a feather in the wind, I’m not talking to my coworkers outside work, and most days I only spend time with my husband - the last one is not necessarily a bad thing but you will see my point.
After a few days of being taken over by anxiety, I confided in my husband - that I feel like both of us don't have enough friends here. Somehow I can’t shake this feeling, this revelation hit me like a wasp, resulting in a newly minted fear that I was doing things wrong. Do I need to put myself more out there? Why don't I have dearest friends I would call for a catch up about life over brunch on Sundays? How can I both want people to hang out with me but I’m also the one who keeps canceling on them but feel no guilt over it?
Why this bothers me so much is probably because throughout my teenage life, I have spent the most of my time being a social butterfly. I had more than 3 different social groups that I’m confidently close with and I was so proud of that. I was someone who likes to hang out, be in a party or social gatherings, talk to different kinds of people and would instantly fit in, I made a lot of friends. I was under the impression that I’m a social person, no matter where I am in the world, I can make a lot of friends. But as I grew older and entered The Big 30, I’m experiencing this huge shift in my friendships. It seems like I was slowly but steadily shrinking my friend group. From more than 3 different social groups, now I barely have a group. I lose contact with the people I used to hang out with. That the only communication we have is the likes button on Instagram.
Similar conversations happened over the course of a few months with my dear friend, Shida (or Cabe as I usually call her). I’d just spent the previous day crying about feeling friendless and lonely. I have been struggling to make new friends and no one is checking up on me or asking me to have a cup of coffee. I told her that if I die, the only friend that will probably cry is her. I don’t know exactly why I think that but at that time I feel like she is the only constant communication I have in terms of my friendships.
She, while agreeing that she will bawl so hard when I die (thank you i love you), told me that she has been feeling the same thing about this friendship crisis. We talk about how the more we grow old, the number of people that are close to us will decrease. The older we become, the more difficult life becomes, with pressure, responsibilities and tasks. Things like marital status, childbirth, and settling into a career can all occur during this time span. Or even changes in interests. These major life changes could definitely cause friends to grow apart or fall out due to a shift in one’s values, focus, and priorities. The more we grow old, the more we begin to think about the energy and personalities that we want in our life.
This got me thinking about what friendship means to me, what kinds of friend interactions I find meaningful and how I might further seek those out, and what I need to do to (or not do) to preserve the ones that I already have. I think one of the toughest aspects of navigating friendships as an adult is putting an effort. We all get busy with our own lives, with our own problems, and we have less time. Yes we need to be humble about this, we need to respect each other’s boundaries and obligations. But it is also important to remember that, in order to make things work between friends, it requires effort. Friends don’t need to have everything in common to be compatible, friend’s don’t have to always be talking regularly; friends just have to show up and support each other, from time to time.
As I get older, it also becomes more clear to me that it is important to have people in my life who bring a positive energy, people I can trust, who appreciate and support me, who tell me if I’m wrong straight to my face, people I can be vulnerable with and messy with and be 100% myself with and no matter what happen, will always have my back. I saw this quote floating around the internet that says, “I no longer have the energy for meaningless friendships, forced interactions, or unnecessary conversations.” I have no idea who said that but I can feel this quote deeply.
So, I’m trying to keep reminding myself that this is just part of life and growing up. To be entirely honest, it’s exhausting to commit myself to hanging out with a lot of different people. So maybe I’m not actually struggling to make new friends, I’m just being realistic in choosing the right people to have a deep, meaningful friendship with. Maybe I only have fewer friends right now, but my 4 closest confidantes have been in my life for more than 10 years. We see each other through the good side, bad side and embarrassing side. I also have one great friend from uni who lives across the sea from where I am right now, but we still talk to each other and support each other through thick and thin. That the same small group of friends I have in Melbourne right now are the family I have here and they make my life in Melbourne a little bit easier.
With that being said, I need to stop wondering what’s wrong with me and how I should rebuild a new network of friends and wondering whether more friends would make me happier. Instead I should be grateful and invest myself in the genuine, meaningful friendship that I already have and love. I’d rather have 5 close friends who love and support me than 50 friends who I’m not really that close with. That’s not to say that having those acquaintances is a bad thing, it’s just that their values mean different things.
Because friendship as an adult means quality over quantity - and what I have right now is more than enough.
Smell ya later,
Gita
✿✿✿ SOME COOL STUFF FOR YOU ✿✿✿
🌸 A beautiful, magnificent house of Italian photographer, Massimo Vitali. It is located inside a 650-year-old deconsecrated church in the walled Tuscan city of Lucca. I want to live here.
🌼 I just recently finished reading Gunk Baby by Jamie Marina Lau. I have never read anything like this before. A very unique exploration on consumerism, capitalism, and labour. No traditional narrative structure and no plot. One of the weirdest yet coolest book.
🌺 This conversation between Karen O (my long time hero) and Michelle Zauner (my new hero) is so deep and profound and I can’t stop thinking about it.
🌷 Life lessons from Anjelica Huston.
💐 I can’t stop admiring and obsessing over this show, Betty, HBO’s series about a group of female skateboarders. It features beautiful sequences of the girls skateboarding across New York City. But what shines brightest is its documentary-adjacent moments of mundane girl talk: How to not respond to a fuckboy’s texts? Which strips to wax your pubic hair? What didn’t you know when you were harassed, or assaulted that time in the past, and how do you convince yourself it wasn’t your fault? These kind of conversations, with the characters in their natural habitats, so charismatic and feels like I'm talking to them as a friend.
🌹 Good Gnocci is one of my local resto slash bar. I love their food, their cocktails, the whole vibe every Friday nights, and they have the best playlist ever.
Thank you so much, Ta. And I promise I will treasure you forever.
Also, digging the cool stuff you shared! <3