Maintaining Friendships as an Adult
See also: Managing FriendshipsIt can sometimes feel hard to keep up with friends as an adult. Life has a habit of getting in the way. You are no longer at the same school or college. You are expected to work for a living, and you may also be in a romantic relationship. As you get older, family commitments and work take more of your time. Before you know it, it may be several years since you last saw old friends, and you may even have lost touch with some altogether.
This is a pity, because having good friends and friendships can improve your mental and physical health, and even extend your life. Research shows that happiness depends on the quality of your connections with other people. It is therefore well worth taking the time to nurture and maintain friendships. This page provides some ideas to help you to do so.
Top Tips for Maintaining Friendships
How can you best maintain friendships as an adult?
There are several important things that you can do to help ensure that your friendships stay happy and healthy.
1. Make time to be together
It is possible to keep friendships going at a distance, even over a long period. There are some friends that you have known for so long, or been so close to, that distance and even time become irrelevant. You simply are friends.
However, good relationships—and that includes friendships—are those where you want to spend time together. You want to chat, to catch up, and to know what each other is doing. If you don’t have this wish, then it is possible that your friendship isn’t quite as strong as you thought.
This means that one of the best things that you can do to maintain friendships is to make time to spend time together.
This might be in person, or it might simply be a regular catch-up by telephone, or an ongoing email or text exchange. Social media has made it very easy to stay abreast of people’s lives—but not necessarily to understand what’s really happening.
It is therefore a good idea to be in touch on a more personal level from time to time, and find out what’s going on in the lives of your friends.
2. Be there for your friends when they need you
As well as regular check-ins and time spent together, it is important to ensure that you are there when it matters.
Friends remember important things about each other, like significant birthdays, and anniversaries of important events, both good and bad. They know when you have to do something hard, or that something significant is happening. They take time to send a message or card, so that their friends know that they are in their thoughts.
Friends also notice when bad things are happening in your life. They keep in touch during those times, and make sure that you’re managing. They provide help and support when you really need it. They might find out what’s going on via social media—but then they reach out on a more personal level.
Case study: “You really know who your friends are at times like this!”
When Sam’s father died, lots of friends sent sympathy. There were messages on social media, text messages, and even a few cards.
However, over the next few weeks, months and even years, she noticed something interesting.
A few people kept texting and emailing every few days over the first weeks of her bereavement. They simply wanted to check she was OK. A few more sent a message on the day of her father’s funeral. Over the next few months, those friends continued to email periodically, although the contact gradually got more infrequent.
She was surprised at who did this. Not the person she considered her best friend—but a couple of other friends who had also known her many years. She was also interested to note that the same friends were in touch again on the first anniversary of her father’s death—and the year after, too.
Reflecting, she realised that perhaps you only know who your friends truly are when you need them, and they know that without you asking.
Fundamentally, good friends are there when you need them—which means that you need to reciprocate.
3. Show your friends that you care
We all like to be appreciated—and nobody knows that unless you tell them. It is a good idea to show your friends that you care about them from time to time. Send a card or a message on a birthday. Invite them to meet up for a coffee. Tell them how much you like spending time with them, and then show them by enjoying the time that you spend together.
They may already know how much you value their friendship—but it’s always worth showing too.
4. Do nice things together
Friendships are about having fun together—so make time to do that.
Consider trying something new together, especially if one of you really wants to do it, but is a bit nervous about doing it alone. Or do something that you both love, so that you have an excuse to both do that thing, and spend time in each other’s company.
Friendships aren’t always built on big things. Sometimes they rely on small, shared experiences, like walks or time spent chatting over coffee. Put in the time, because it will be rewarded.
5. Stay in touch
When you really don’t have time to do things together, or even talk on the phone because you’re so busy, here’s a golden rule: stay in touch.
It doesn’t have to be much. Even an annual Christmas card or message is helpful. It shows that you’re still thinking about them, and that you don’t want the friendship to fade out altogether. Social media is brilliant for this, because you can see what they post, and respond with a quick comment. If they don’t post at all, you can always send them a message saying that they haven’t posted anything, and you hope all is well. It really doesn’t need to take long.
When you have time again, you can then pick up the friendship.
If you find that you don’t want to pick up the friendship—well, that’s a different matter. You have at least given yourself the option to do so.
6. Be honest and apologise if necessary
Sometimes things go wrong in friendships, as in any relationship.
If you want the friendship to survive, you will need to be honest about what happened—both to your friend, and to yourself. You should be truthful about the effect of your friend’s words or actions on you, and how you felt about it. However, you should also listen openly to their point of view, and hear how they felt. It is then a good idea to apologise sincerely for your actions (or inactions).
Beyond Maintenance: Why Friendships Break Down
Like romantic relationships, friendships are not necessarily forever. They too can break down. This might happen with a ‘bang’, through an argument or disagreement. However, it might also be with more of a ‘whimper’, when the friendship just fades out over time.
When this happens, it can feel very painful. You may well have invested a lot of time and emotional effort in the friendship, possibly over many years. Abandoning it can feel hard.
However, it is important to remember that people—and therefore friendships—change and evolve.
You are not the same person that you were in your teens or early twenties. You may not want to think so, but you have grown and changed over time.
This means that the people that you were closest to then may not be those that you want to spend time with now or later in life.
Your interests may have changed, as may your views on issues that you feel are important. A minor divergence in opinions earlier in your lives may now have become a gulf that feels unbridgeable. You may also feel that your needs within the friendship are not being met: that you are always giving, and never able to take, for example. This might just be a phase, or you may have recognised that it is a long-term pattern. If so, you may not want to allow it to continue.
You may also just want to do different things now. This is likely to be particularly true if your life paths diverged—if one of you chose to have children, for example, and the other did not. However, you may also find that once your children are ‘grown and flown’, you and your old friends are doing similar things, and you want to spend time together again.
Friendships ebb and flow all the time. Sometimes they come back together, sometimes they don’t. This is normal and natural, and it is helpful to appreciate this.
A Final Thought
There may come a time when you feel that it isn’t worth making the effort to maintain a particular friendship, because your lives or views have moved so far away from each other. If you are sure that you won’t want to spend time together ever again, then it is probably best to move on.
However, it is also worth remembering that nobody has that many really good friends.
It may therefore be worth hanging on to friendships even when they are going through a low patch—especially those with very old friends—and wait to see if the tide changes again. Keeping in touch via social media, or through a Christmas card each year, is really not very arduous while you wait.