Losing Friends as We Get Older is a Fact of Life Part of growing up and maturing means shedding the excessive or unnecessary, and realizing what you need and don't need in your life. You may realize that life is just simpler with less. You may realize that your priorities have drastically shifted over the years.
While people have known for years that friendships are unquestionably good for your health, experts say it's only natural for acquaintances and even friends to fall by the wayside as time goes on – and it's nothing to feel guilty about.
Do you keep losing friends and wonder why? Odds are, it has less to do with you and more to do with them and what's going on in their lives. The key is to train yourself to distinguish what kind of friends you have so you can open space for those who are around for the long haul.
Some reasons why friendships do not last:
They feel taken advantage of. One friend always wants to choose what they do together. The friends are not honest about how they feel about something. The friends have a fight and they do not make up.
According to a study from Oxford University, men and women start losing friends around the age of 25. Making new friends and maintaining friendships gets harder each year we get older.
Studies show that we begin to lose friends in our mid-twenties. Why? Typically around this period, we begin to reevaluate what is most important to us, including our relationships. Friendships are meant to evolve over time.
Quite often, we associate post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) with extremely traumatic events in our lives, but the loss of a friendship that we thought would fulfill us can also be extremely jarring and traumatic. Friendship PTSD is often caused by friendships that have ended suddenly and badly.
It found that the average person will make 29 real friends over the years but will lose at least five of those along the way due to arguments. We then lose touch with at least another eight of these 29 due to different lifestyles and moving house.
Research shows that most of us replace our friends, intentionally or not, fairly often. Live Science says that "when it comes to your close friends, you lose about half and replace them with new ones after about seven years." Here are a few reasons why this happens.
They don't have any friends.
If your new partner is somewhat of a lone wolf, that could be cause for concern. Jessica Harrison, a licensed professional counselor and owner of Courageous Counseling and Consulting, says a lack of long-term friendships is a major red flag.
"Lacking encouragement from family or friends, those who are lonely may slide into unhealthy habits," Valtorta says. "In addition, loneliness has been found to raise levels of stress, impede sleep and, in turn, harm the body. Loneliness can also augment depression or anxiety."
Some research suggests that loneliness can increase stress. It's also associated with an increased risk of certain mental health problems.
“In adulthood, as people grow up and go away, friendships are the relationships most likely to take a hit,” my colleague Julie Beck wrote in 2015. The older you get, the more effort it takes to maintain connections, because you don't have as many built-in opportunities to see your friends every day.
They make us feel valued, understood, and connected to something larger than ourselves. Our friends introduce us to new experiences and ways of being. Good friends are there to cheer our successes and console us when things go badly. Unlike [familial relationships], these ties are totally volitional.
What he discovered was that only about 30 percent of our closest friends remain tried and true after seven years, and 48 percent remain in our immediate social network (meaning we actually talk to or hang out with them on occasion).
Sometimes things just fizzle out
One of the most common reasons those relationships end is because they just fell through the cracks, Franco says. "Things fizzle out," she says. "Nobody really necessarily wanted the friendship to end, but people kind of got busy and didn't intentionally maintain the friendship."
There's no “right” number of friends you should have, but research says most people have between 3 and 5 close friends. Friendship is necessary, but it can feel challenging to find people who really “get” you. What's more, what you need from your friends might change as your life circumstances change.
While venting can be a natural part of working through our negative emotions, does it become toxic at a certain point? It turns out, it can. And that's when venting becomes trauma dumping — the act of oversharing your emotions in a way that becomes harmful to the other person.
While lost friendships are often considered unimportant compared to romantic partners, their loss can be just as painful and regrettable, says Neal Roese, PhD, a professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and author of If Only: How to Turn Regret Into Opportunity.
Emotional dumping typically occurs as a heightened reactive response to a triggering event that is relived and repeated within a conversation. There is no open feedback, no desire for a solution, and most often, a one-sided conversation.
Still, the early 20s are prime friendship years for good reason, experts say. It's often the point when people are, for the first time, on their own in a new job or community and looking for connections.
School, college, and extramural groups provide several opportunities to make new friends. But when you're in your 40s, making new friends might be challenging. According to research from 2020 , more than one-third (35%) of adults in the U.S. aged 45 years old and older report feeling lonely.