Why We Don't Make Friends as Adults
A column about connection and an old fantasy come to life.
I wish they’d teach you that the friends you make in school are the best friends you’ll ever make. It should be part of the lesson plan, right there alongside calculus and the structure of a cell. “This is what a mitochondria looks like, and here’s how volcanoes are made, and by the way, the people you’re sitting next to at lunch are the people you’ll love for the rest of your life.”
It’s hard to make close friends as an adult. In truth, I haven’t made any. You just can’t replicate the bonds formed in college when you take a 12 hour bus ride with 150 of your panhellenic peers from Gainesville to Bourbon Street and get plastered on Hurricanes and fall asleep in the casino bathroom until six of your guy friends bust in to carry you back to the hotel. Try that as an adult and you’d get concerned calls from family and an appointment with your therapist. I’m 30 now. My days of interpersonal exploration are over. I am polished and in charge of myself and drink no more than two cocktails on any given night, usually bourbon served by bartenders who look like the Monopoly man, and who see me and probably think I look like a grown woman.
I don’t feel like a grown woman. I feel like a kid trying to pin the tail on the donkey, flailing around blindly while people laugh.
I didn’t keep in touch with any of my school friends. I don’t regret it, exactly. (I know who I am, which is to say, the kind of person who’s not built to keep in touch.) In the meantime, I’ve made other friends. Of course I have. Just not best friends, friends I love, the kind of friends I’d text at two in the morning and say, talk to me or I have a secret or remember when? Polite conversation in adult company is like a fortress; something to hide all your truths behind. Even after getting to know a person, after a dozen dinner parties and ski trips and weekends in New York, there’s something missing. That cinch of shared youth, maybe.
I sometimes fantasize about what it would be like to run into an old classmate from college. The friend in my imagining changes based on my mood, but the gist is the same. I’m out with my Adult Friends. I see an old schoolmate. I toss down what I’m holding (I’m always holding something) and run into their arms, and everyone is so surprised because here is true affection where before there was only courtesy and effort.
Last week, this actually happened.
I was at a coffee shop with my husband and sister-in-law. I’d just picked up my latte when I glanced over to see a familiar face. “Hold on,” I said. He looked up at the sound of my voice. We both just stood there for a second, that wide-eyed recognition. Then I set my drink down in a rush (told you I’d be holding something) and threw myself into his arms.
It was good. Better, even, because I’d fantasized about such a moment for years. I don’t know what we said to each other. I was too excited to absorb much of it. There was a rush of happy chatter. He recently moved to Seattle. He got a job here. Yes, he’d like to hang out sometime. Yes, he still has my number.
After, my husband shot me a baffled look. “Who was that?” His confusion only made me shine brighter. Mike has never known me to run into anyone’s arms. I don’t have friends like that, not as far as he’s ever seen, and we’ve been together 10 years.
I hardly knew where to start. How to explain that there are certain people who I once knew, and still feel fondly for, but don’t ever talk to or indeed, speak about? I smiled. “He’s a friend,” I said. “Just a really good, old friend.” ■
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Last Week’s Newspaper Clippings
A handful of questions, comments and replies from the column “The Real Reason I Go By S.G.”
I actually quite like Sarah, but I really identify with a lot of what you say. Hard, plosive sounds are very abrasive. I quite like the "m" sound. My daughter is Melinda Nicole, and I spent about 6 weeks after she was born settling on that. She hates it being shortened to "Mel".
My name is Shirley. I don't know what to tell you...it means "shire meadow". There are not many shire meadows any more, and when people have trouble understanding my name, there are no current famous people with the name any more either. (I used to say, "You know, like Shirley Temple or Shirley Bassey." Now people just look blankly at me and say, "Who?") I often thought about changing my name.
Hi Shirley,
It sounds like we're in the same boat then. My grandmother was Shirley and there was a short time I considered the name, but I'm not sure it suits me either. If you ever do decide to change it, know you're in good company.
- S.G.
I was named Margaret Pamela. I had trouble wrapping my tongue around Margaret and when asked it always came out as Margrit which was even worse! Pamela was ok but didn’t suit me at all sounding pretty & delicate. After years of mulling it over I decided I’d like to have been Beverley Pearce (best spoken in an American accent) and to go with the name I’d like to be petite and dark haired, neither of which I am! I’ll always be Margaret, Maggie or Mags but in my imagination…
Hi Maggie,
I can imagine how frustrating that must have been. It seems like many of us have envisioned alternate versions of ourselves, whether that be a name or image. I do love Beverley Pearce, it has a certain ring to it.
- S.G.
I was also thinking about using initials but then I've never felt that way about my name. I wasn't named for a few weeks, then my mom choose Malina randomly, I was almost Nicole (very popular in the late eighties. Sometimes I hate the way others will say (MAH-lee-nah or MEL-ee-nah, or just Mel) it and I want to shorten it but overall, I love it. I hope you'll find the same :) I do like Sarah and Gayle as names on their own, it flows together easily.
Hey Malina,
I think you have a very pretty name, though I'm sure it can be irritating if other people don't pronounce it correctly. That's the one good thing about Sarah. No one ever gets it wrong.
- S.G.
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I saw you wrote that in college you went from Gainesville to New Orleans, is that Gainesville, FL. Were/ are you a Gator? I am more than twice your age, but also went with the Gator Guard to Mardi Gras 2 times. One time I also got a little too much to drink and had to be saved by my friends. I also have not been in contact with any or those people in a very long time.
Roberta
The distance between friendship and love can very greatly at different times in our lives. Love as a young adult is starry eyed,
and dance until morning, and all about discovery. As we get older, and settle into a more mature love, something is lost and something is gained. Possibly as a psychologically protective mechanism, we either consciously or unconsciously choose never to make ourselves as vulnerable as we once were. Nothing fractures the soul like unrequited young love. And so by necessity, we look forward rather than backward and we choose the comfort of stability over the joy of a love that makes us completely out of control. This is the power of young love and young friendships, and why we often lose them to time, distance, and unattentive convenience.