There exists a significant shift that most 30 to 40 year olds warn 20 year olds about (Since sub 20 year olds would seem too young to relate to and 40+ year olds have more important things to do than talk to 20 somethings). These involve the exponentials spikes of body aches and pains, extended hangover periods, the get-married (and/or) have-kids ultimatums that rears its ugly head up more often, the “future” planning that we’re now supposed to be magically equipped with etc. But one thing that usually slips through the cracks is warning about the changing nature of 30+ friendships. I would be reluctant to label it an ‘evolving nature of friendships’ since that would be generalising it as a positive thing for everyone, which from what I’ve witnessed is not the case always.
📽️ Flashback
Growing up, I was definitely not the one known for having a flock of people around me. Mostly from my averageness and equipped with the power of social invisibility, I just had the two close friends and as a trio we were as thick as a milkshake with an absurd ice cream to milk ratio (Yes, I’ve been reading a lot of recipes lately!). Right out of high school I plonked right into a coed group, which had its own share of complexities arising from the fact that there were a lot of hormones now at play. This was my foray into the social landscape, while still maintaining my identity as an introvert.
It was the whole moving cities for work that led to a need to battle the introversion from the abject fear of social isolation. Thus slowly I infiltrated the ambivert territory. The transition being so rapid, the resulting whiplash made me crave isolation at times. But most of my 20s were still spent juggling between the states of isolation and crowds. A large part of this ability came from the fact that there was a different benchmark on making new friends. There was a definite freshness in meeting new people sans the judgements at the drop of a hat. The ebb and flow of people within groups was intense since a lot of them were picking the next thing to do, moving cities, going off to study in a foreign country etc. These feelings weren’t always the same for me, since the drive to be constantly surrounded by people diminished drastically on the ugly side of 20s. And that’s when…
✋ You hit the brakes
To be absolutely honest the whole 30 as a number for the period of life change is absolutely arbitrary. Just like how the fashion, music and the aesthetics of the 80s did not stop looking so cause the clock struck 12am on 1st January 1990. For me the massive flip happened between the age of 27-28. My “30s” thus felt chronologically premature. But from that point onwards the noticeable wave of changes started occurring.
The rigidity of ideologies starts setting in, such as the solidification of a political stance or the opinions on worldly matters. The threshold is lowered for dealing with things that seem like a waste of time now. This was bound to happen from the accruing of experience over the years leading to better conviction on general matters. So you’d no longer want to spend time mulling over things that already seem foundational in thought.
You are no longer navigating through life as an empty vessel waiting to be filled with diverse experiences now. You’re no longer the naive kid clutching on to the copy of The Fountainhead pledging allegiance to the virtues of selfishness. You’re grown up now cause you believe you’re quite certain on how things are and how things ought to be. And hence you start noticing a wider standard deviation of opinions from what you believed to be the mean. And thus form…
⭕️ The circles of friend levels
As a kid, friendship levels are fairly rudimentary. The classification, for some like me, only distinguishing between the best friend and others. But as you age you build a much wider and complex classification system with your old school friends, work friends, a sub groups formed by friends of friends, your partner's friends, your niche-sub-culture/workout/sport friends, your ex’s stolen friends etc.
Now all of these lie theoretically within concentric circles with you at the center. The innermost being the closest and lifelong(ish) friends. The outermost which lie on the fuzzy spectrum of transactional or dwindling relationships which border on being just acquaintances. Bear in mind there’s the Dunbar’s number to factor in here, a notion that states there’s an upper cap of 150 people to keep track of in your life.
Post 30 there’s a fuzziness which starts building up between these levels and you’d notice people shuffling closer and farther in these concentric circles. And a lot of contextual reasons start factoring in: being single vs married, being human/pet parents, proximity & conveniences, political & ideological stances to name a few. And some might feel these factors undermining the nature of friendships to a very transactional state. And a lot of it rooted from our…
👯♂️ Desire for homogeneity
At the very danger of falling into echo chambers, we do tend to chose people around us who wouldn’t be too distant from the core values that form the central balancing mechanism of friends. There is no written law here on some inability to connect with a diverse set of individuals. But that connection with people who are too different from the central tenet would be tough to establish. Like a beer chugging party animal in a group of teetotallers, the handling of a misfit often requires a collaborative effort. And this effort comes with a cost.
This cost isn’t something new. It always exists. But with a stronger belief-system in place at 30+, the cost of incurring a misfit seems way more heavier. Perhaps at an earlier age the group of teetotallers would still be more likely to stage an intervention for the beer chugger. But after a point, the cose incurred for an action outweighs the gain.
And so in this process, the flattening of systems occur. The part where the group slowly start forming a unit.
From the previous generation, there seemed a recurring pattern of children of friends being around the same age. And oddly the average age between siblings was a strong 4 years. Even milestones such as buying a car or a house generally synced up around the same time. This arises from a need for community based unitary function rather than some form of inconspicuous competition.
The influence of the internet in the current generation has mostly dissolved this community dependence and hence make these systems less homogeneous; more independent. But some synced uniformity in behaviour still does exist. And it will, at least for some time. Since our biological evolution will always be the backbencher for the technological evolution that our brains are always trying to reconcile with.
This is not to paint some pessimistic picture of pure transactional relationships arising from calculative needs.
It’s this perceptional change in nature of friendships that can seem daunting during this age transition. As
we get older and the finite nature of time starts getting more obvious, we scrounge around looking to be around
things that we derive most value from. The resulting process of change can seem dispiriting, like having to
pick the most valued items from a burning house.
But the outcome of this process is being around the ones who
matter the most and with a greater conviction and surety of why.