Making Friends

Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends...

At their popular peak, Lennon and McCartney wrote this song for their band mate, Ringo, to perform. It is, in and of itself, an act of friendship.

Before Yoko, before Linda, before Hamburg, Germany, before they hit the speed-of-light trajectory as The Beatles, they started out as teenage friends.  While the life changing fame the Liverpool lads experienced will elude most of us, we can relate to making friends in our youth.

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A recent NY Times article by Alex Willliams titled "Friends of a Certain Age" touched on a funny subject for adults - 'making friends.'  The phrase is so embedded in our childhood years that by the time we cross into our post education lives, we have learned to take it for granted.  Making friends is like breathing in your teens and twenties.

As teens, we fish in a veritable ocean of pal possibility. We surround ourselves with best friends, great friends and good friends.  It may be awkward, sometimes painful, and often unsuccessful, but the opportunity is always inches away in our travels: school hallways, sporting events, club activities, hanging out.

The nexus of Facebook is friends - requesting them, accepting them, unsubscribing (aka rejecting)  them.  And while Twitter users can 'follow' other users, some statistics show users most often follow their friends. 

So what happens in 'midlife?'

"As people approach midlife, the days of youthful exploration, when life felt like one big blind date, are fading. Schedules compress, priorities change and people often become pickier in what they want in their friends," says the Times article.                              http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/fashion/the-challenge-of-making-friends-as-an-adult.html?pagewanted=all    

 I agree, in part.

Friendship in midlife becomes situational.  At work, we are thrown in with fellow employees with whom we share one thing - location.  Hopefully a friendship or two grows out of this, but it can be tricky.  Talking solely about work gets tedious, so you have to let go of what obviously brings you together and dig deeper.  It would be interesting to see how women and men shake out on mining for meaningful friendships at work.  My money is on women for taking the time.

My friend Heather and I met while working at the same company almost 20 years ago and continue to be friends.  We meet up and the conversation flows effortlessly.  It amazes and soothes me. 

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Becoming a parent lands us in our kids' worlds.  Finding pals at the same stage in life may not be hard but, again, it can be tricky. Your child is the launching point for the new friendship but going further to find out more about the person behind the parent takes sincere effort.  Parents swim in pools of common ground. However, talking about kids all the time is almost too simple and gets old.

I don't know if I would have written that when my daughters were very young.  I was so happy to have other parents to talk to about kids, school, activities, parenting.  Their support and humor have buoyed me.  What was essential before seems like an easy default now.  Too easy.  As my girls move on, I find myself titillated by talking less about motherhood and more about other topics.

 I could have kept a better balance but, I didn't.  Thankfully many of my "parent" friendships flourish like a long distance run rather than a sprint.


The Times article cites three ingredients sociologists have agreed (since the 1950s) are "crucial to making close friends: 1) proximity; 2) repeated, unplanned interactions; and 3) a setting that encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other."  Rebecca G. Adams, a professor of sociology and gerontology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro notes, "This is why so many people meet their lifelong friends in college."

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Was there anything better than late nights with college friends? No parents stepping in - the blissful freedom of it all!  I agree that college was the best time for making lifelong friends.  And yet, I don't keep in touch with any of them.   I had the same college roommate for four years - Kathy was as blond, blue-eyed as I am brown on both counts. She was funny, lighthearted, a guy magnet, joyful in every way.  I can only picture her laughing.  We would  always hold hands when having our picture taken. It confirmed our tight friendship.  She was a marvelous surprise!

Of course, Facebook has brought back some friends from long ago - it is comforting, fleeting, reasonable.  We send birthday greetings.  We connect at arms length. 

 Last week I saw country singer Mindy Smith perform at the intimate World Cafe in Philly.  Two guys sat next to me.  They were serious fans and hilarious audience members.  In between sets we laughed and talked like lifelong friends.   We skimmed the cream off the milk of friendship.

Those kinds of encounters are safe and reassuring.  I think they are the early bones of  friendship; people just plunked down together who seek common ground.

Laura L. Carstensen, a psychology professor and the director of the Stanford Center on Longevity in California is referenced in the Times article as a professional who "observed that people tended to interact with fewer people as they moved toward midlife, but that they grew closer to the friends they already had."

"Basically," she suggests, "this is because people have an internal alarm clock that goes off at big life events, like turning 30. It reminds them that time horizons are shrinking, so it is a point to pull back on exploration and concentrate on the here and now."

Do we hunker down to only nurture our current friendships as we age?  I don't think so.  I think we become clearer about what fulfills us. If our current crop of friends meets that threshold then we'd be fools to let them pass.  But I feel equally excited about anticipating making new friends.  Numbers don't matter but I believe more friends are out there for me.

An old Girl Scout round resonates as I think about who we let into our lives and when - it's as true today as when I was 12 years old (and listening to the Beatles).  PS: I miss you Kathy!

Make new friends, but keep the old; One is silver and the other's gold.