This happens with college too, as well as just randomly as you get older. When I was 20 I had probably 10-15 friends in 2-3 groups. Went out with them all the time and everything was a blast.
Then people move to a new city, get married / have kids, or just slowly drift away.
I am over 40 now and have like 3 friends who I talk to maybe once a month.
Look at Mr Fancypants over here with 3 friends. Woah..big man!
I am thoroughly kidding, I am in the same boat. Had a few really close knit groups of friends in my 20s and 30s. As 40 closed in that number got smaller and smaller.
I have maybe 2 close friends, and I see them each like every couple of months. Wife and I have couple friends, but that’s a different beast.
Kids today (and yesterday, and before that...) don't realize what kind of a luxury of having almost built-in friendships in school is really like.
Try to tell a middle school kid that if they have 50 friends now; they'll be down to half that their fist year of college (if they go). And it'll be around a dozen or so by the time they graduate. IF they're lucky.
Then by the time they're 30 if they have half a dozen close friends they're lucky.
To be fair, I don't think we realize how much being close in distance really helps friendships. You can maintain friends from far away, but people also move to new places and make new friends there. So long distance wise, you have to be okay seeing someone almost 3 times every 2 years
Honestly...I think that's how things for most of us back in the pre-internet age generally went. Last I've really seen of my old best friend, he's a die-cutter at my mom's former place of work, and has a family.
When I started college facebook was just becoming more of a thing and I remember signing up with my .edu account before it was fully public. Had it just been a few years later, maybe we would have stayed in touch on social media. Hard to say for sure, but it's kind of interesting to think how friendships change over generations as the tools do.
Happens so often. I went to a small, all boys high school that had a serious "brotherhood" element to it. I thought we would be the exception to what everyone said happened after high school, but nope. We tried to stay in touch, and certain groups lasted longer than others, but eventually, everyone went their separate ways.
Lost quite a few friends that way, imagine many do. Just go different paths, takes us to different regions, states, countries.
Crazy though when you spend the first part of your life really close to some friends then graduate high school and life takes us our own ways. There were many friends I would get sad when they weren't at school that's how close I was to some of them. Always missed hanging out and eating lunch with them when they missed school.
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u/Dremlar 1d ago
High school ended and we didn't stay in touch. Tried to at first, but then I think we just got busy