Friends with age/career/wealth
Hi,
So I just wanted to see what some of your experiences have been over your lives, whether you're relatively young or not.
I'm a partner at a nice firm, have ample free time and live very comfortably. I also have a great wife and am quite content with life.
Despite this, I really miss my friends from school/high school who I feel I had the most in common with and had the best times with. I've managed to stay best friends with one guy from high school but apart from that, I don't talk to any of the other people I knew well during my school/high school years. I feel it's my line of work that's caused this and I can't help but let it get to me. I never really got on with anyone at college and didn't make an effort due to the fact I lived at home while I attended.
Growing up pretty poor, I still really think of myself as a blue-collar guy and those are the kind of guys I best get on with. I feel it's due to the fact my interests/hobbies are still really what they were 5-10years ago. In my current situation, I don't really get exposure to any guys who have these similar hobbies and interests as me and so I end up befriending people I don't truly get on with.
What have your experiences been with friendships once you got into your careers or with age?
I hardly have anyone I consider a true friend anymore. There are just people I used to work with who I'm friendly with and the husbands of my wife's friends.
I still speak to one guy I went to college with, but it becomes rarer and rarer over time. I'm down to a few phone calls every year at most, at this point.
Can't say it really bothers me though. That's part of life, especially for a man.
true. OP.. get used to it..
true. OP.. get used to it..
this is one of the more depressing things i've read from you, especially that last sentence. your honesty is usually spot on, this one is more like jeez where's the nearest rooftop i can jump off
i guess the lesson is if you want friends as you grow older don't shit out kids nor work banking hours
(caveat - my comment is coming from the perspective of a 30 y/o guy who lives in brazil, no wife/kids, i work 45hrs a week for a startup, and have some of the best friendships i've ever had in my life. to each his own.)
This is sad to hear. Sorry I can't give advice, but I definitely am coming close to your boat.
"Get on" ...
Why don't you just reach out to people and see what they're up to?? If you no longer enjoy their company no loss, you can go back to being disconnected.
Damn, this is sad. I'm gonna try to avoid this happening to me. And I don't really even have close friends now at 22 - just a bunch of acquaintances I secretly hate.
Are you a teenage girl?
College senior here. The level of competition in college and work (even mundane social stuff) makes it hard to open up to people without revealing weaknesses that could later be used against you. Enjoying one's company =/= close friends.
This is why you don't make your close friends in college other finance people. Hang out with people from other majors and you'll see how silly competing over internships/offers/etc is, as well as how one-dimensional people in that major can be. Granted they'll think you're a workaholic but at least you get perspective.
Hunting, fishing, toys (motorcycles, sno-mobiles, jet-skis etc), fixing shit, ragging on about their wives, sitting around drinking and sports. Those are pretty basic interests, but standard among the 'common clay of the new west' (name that movie). If you're well-off or have any other interests they just aren't compatible with you and generally they aren't the brightest people either. You can easily find compatible friends with at least some of those basic interests. I don't even talk to my best friend from growing up, I think he's a store manager now and still plays a lot of video games. How am I supposed to relate to that?
For me, it's weightlifting, boxing, fast cars, sheesha, my religion to some extent and a few less intense interests. I would say most my free time rotates around those hobbies and in particular boxing/lifting (spend on avg 2-3hrs daily on the two)
In my line of work, I find it hard to meet people with anything above one of these interests. I work in the sustainable energy industry and am very passionate about it but the people are generally boring. I guess my interests really stopped at those of a 17yo thug and it's hard to enjoy hobbies such as golf/horse racing/fishing. I guess what I'm trying to say is I'd fit right in if my career were as a rapper but it's not... While at boxing, I get on great and genuinely like a few of the people at my club but their lifestyles are just so different. Pretty much like the best friend you described.
Sad to hear so many people's university lives are so sad. I've got many friends in overlapping circles from my university days in the mid to late 90s. The main core of 40 - 50 of us did some intensive volunteer activities and partying together and saw each other at our best, our worst and our most sleep-deprived. That subsequently formed the foundations for friendships which have been built further and stayed strong since. Almost all these people are not in finance.
I've made a fair few good friends since. Most of those are not in finance.
Both you and OP point to friends outside finance. Maybe that's the key to long-term friendships...the income gap and life-style (open to interpretation) difference? Sounds douchey but opposites attract.
My non-finance friends range widely in income - from surgeons to teachers to house-husbands. All are fairly middle class in lifestyle. No one is consciously slapping their wallet on the table in a "who is bigger" contest and none of us would be impressed by anyone who did.
The attraction for most of us is interesting people talking about interesting things. Diversity in backgrounds (rather than opposites) likely helps as its more interesting hearing about stuff you're not familiar with, there's diversity of views, plus it reduces the risk of falling into competition, as there are less success benchmarks in common.
On the other hand, I'm a shit networker and terrible relationship guy as I find social conversations with a lot of finance and clients are pretty shallow and vacuous and would prefer to hang out with my friends.
I find most finance people to be either amazingly friendly and good people or complete cunts. I just get a bad vibe off some of them.
You're pretty blessed to have met so many great people in uni. Out of curiosity, are these the people you're most in contact with now or do you have new friends you chat to more?
I'd say it's the people I know outside of work I hang around with more often too. I'm friends with them and get on well/socialise a fair bit but the way I see it, somewhat how you described it, close friends are built on crazy experiences together. At our age, these don't really occur as often... It's been quite a while since a night out turned into a crazy vegas/amsterdam weekend. I think this is where it comes down to me feeling like I'm missing out not being in touch with those high school/college guys.
Yes, but it's complicated as I'm on the other side of the planet to most of my university friends. I keep a lot of contact with them via Facebook, e-mail and a trip or two back a year. A few are here in NYC and ~5 travel through in an average year.
My wife and I are lazy making new friends, largely because we spend most of our time here hanging out in each other's company and we've got a handful of university-era good friends living in NYC who fill out our social schedule comfortably. We've picked up a few friends, so we're not complete social retards.
In my case, knowing that I've got a large base of friends, even if on another continent, reduces the urge to make new friends a lot.
Mmm
What's gay is that you're projecting. No one will call you gay for talking about your feelings here, just remember to clear your WSO browsing history and hide your Prince Fielder ESPN collection.
this is part of the natural order of things OP. Dunbar's number (150 people, +-50) essentially states that you can only maintain deep relationships with 150 people or so, and it makes sense if you think about why your group of friends dwindles later in life. you can look it up, but basically Dunbar studied primates and found that they formed groups that were well functioning until about 150 members or so and then they started to break apart and form new groups until they got down to 150.
this is not specific to you, OP, but some of what I saw in my own life, my parents' lives, and my friends' lives, hopefully it will help.
early life: priorities are not getting picked last in baseball, not peeing your pants, and writing cursive (do they do this anymore?), so pretty simple. doubtful there's more than 150 kids in your grade, but including friends, family, teachers, coaches, and teammates, you're nowhere near 150 people, so life is good.
teenage years: you might have a job, but same basic principles. you have some coworkers, family, classmates, teammates, etc. but unless you went to a massive high school, you had plenty of capacity. my high school's class was around 400 so if I was friends with 100 of them, that left plenty of room for relatives et al. life is still good.
college: here's where it gets tricky. assuming you don't got a tiny LAC and you're not a shut in, you'll meet hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people in your first few months. let's say you go my route and pledge a fraternity, I easily met over 100 guys and 100 girls in that week alone, and all of your high school friends are doing the same. now, not every one of these new friendships will usurp old ones, but there's conflict. you want to belong to the frat, which has let's say 100 guys, uh oh. you're out of room for friendships, you have to either kick out family (not an option), coworkers (kinda hard if you still have the job), or old friends (best option). so you lose high school friends in favor of college friends, but it's complicated because there's this constant battle. you have a large pool of possible friends but the same constraints (150), so you have to be much more selective.
late college/early 20's: you have your core group of college friends and any high school friendships that will last have will have made it this far, so you might have dwindled a bit from the 150 number, but not by much. now it's time to get a job. so you make relationships with people at your internship, start networking, volunteering, etc., and it's important to make those meaningful relationships, so maybe some fringe friendships naturally go away. these were likely people you hung out with in a group setting anyway, so no real harm done there. if you're still close to where you went to UG, you still hang out with many of your college friends. for me, it was a long distance girlfriend still in school so when I would visit I was just another one of the boys, not an alum with a paycheck. those were some of my best years from a fun perspective: college living with post grad pay (albeit low).
mid 20's: oh boy, here's where it's really tricky. assuming you've moved away from your college town, you have to make a whole new group of friends to hang out with during the week so you don't become a hermit who's afraid of the sun. that stresses some of your old college friendships, so those deteriorate and shrink in number. compounding this is the fact that all of your friends are doing the same thing (moving away, starting jobs, etc.), so you likely only have time to hang out with friends who are local or your very best friends.
one thing to remember is that if you have clients, you have to include the bigger ones in this 150 number. I recognize this because I'm in PWM but I'd imagine it works in other parts of finance as well. the 150 number doesn't care if these people are college buddies, cousins, coworkers, or clients, it's 150 period. so for someone like me whose life revolves around his clients, as I grow my practice (at the top end hopefully), the number of friends I can have reduces precipitously. that being said, I won't have a deep relationship with everyone, but most successful PWM practices have 25-50 clients with whom you should be very close, that's 1/3 of your capacity at the top end, not much room for friends (you can't get rid of family unless they die in my opinion).
this is the stage of life I'm in even though I'm on the older end of that age spectrum. I'll tell you firsthand that if you dwell on it you'll go into depression. the best you can do is hope that some of your coworkers or neighbors are cool, keep in touch with your very best friends by phone once in a while, and plan recurring guys' weekends so you're still seeing those people in person (face time is important). apart from that, spend time with your family and your work, won't be much time left after that anyway.
have you thought about just reaching back out to those old high school friends? I mean really just out of the blue saying "hey man, I know I've been a ghost the past several years but I miss the old days, wanted to see what you've been up to." they'll likely empathize because they've been just as shitty about staying in touch. you'd be surprised.
I'd also try to go to more sporting events. if you have any of the major sports in your area, plenty of opportunities to meet blue collar people at tailgates.
either way, don't sweat it too much, it's natural and you can't do anything about it.
Old friends are best, people are happiest when they surround themselves with old friends; friends that have been through alot with you. Our instinct and habits are like 10,000 generations old and back then we made all our friends at a young age. So the older we get the less common it is for us to make "new" friends. Dating also followed the same format back then.
my experience is that its harder to make new friends now. Cant really explain it fluently but fewer opportunities and more having to be aware of self image.
That doesnt mean I dont enjoy meeting new people and interacting with them, I was actually thinking about this last night that I need to expose myself to new people more frequently.
I notice I act alot nicer when I meet new people even when they dont deserve it. Sometimes I need to learn that being nice is good, but I also need to have respect for myself. IF that makes any sense.
assuming you're in finance, how do you still not know alot is not a word?
reach out to your high school friends you grew up with my man
Could you elaborate on the "respect for myself' portion. Do people think that you're spineless for being nice?
sure I think this quote sums up what I mean.
"Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy"
It totally hear you and it's a trend in life as men age. My solution; our college crew (mostly athletes, which is it's own tight bond) had a friend die and decided to hold a weekend in his honor (that's how we got the idea past the wives/girlfriends). We're now on our 12th year and it's a built in thing that wives don't fight and we all get together and rekindle our friendships. Attendance has ranged from 8 - 20 over the years. Yes, we don't have a lot of work or neighborhood friends but now we call each other, rag on each other in group emails, etc. It fills a void - and probably for life.
One thing that surprised me about university in the uk was how little friends people made. There was even an article about it in one of the major newspapers about how people only hang out with each other for the sake of it at university. Then the relationship dies. Maybe things are difference in the USA where you have fraternities and you are hundred of miles away from home that you are forced to change your circle. But here everyone does things with their high school friends and never meet uni friends in the holidays. I dont think I will keep in contact with anyone from university. I also think that I will keep up with high school friends when I start working.
For me and most of my friends at Uni in the UK, it's down to two things:
a) Logistics - not going to travel all over the UK (expensive!) to see people that I've been living with for months in the holidays b) Balance - I've lived with uni friends for 12 weeks and not seen any of my old school friends, when I'm home I want to catch up with everyone and see where they're at
Have to disagree though regarding not making friends at uni, me and those around me have great friends at home and at university and I'm pretty sure we intend to stay in touch!
Have at least 3 good friends and you'll manage.
At my private liberal arts college-- and I suspect this is similar at other top-tier universities as well-- you can divide students into the following tiers:
1) Smart, Poor Kids: The kind of people you actually thought you would meet in college. Can be nice, if not a bit eccentric, but there tend not be as many as you think.
2) Overachieving Kids: Usually very competitive and don't have very many friends (by definition). Think Tiger Mother. Hard to be friends with due to doughiness.
3) Rich Kids: Admitted to grow the endowment and associate the university with connections. Can range from spoiled to nice, but generally live very sheltered lives and don't understand the cultural proclivities and financial hardships of anyone less privileged (read: the entire middle class).
Add to this the expectation that "College is the time of your life" (a myth designed to legitimate sky-high tuition prices, without doubt), and its just a recipe for disappointment. Granted, I had friends that attended state school and just hung around the same people-- but did they really grow?
I only talk to about 5 people from college.
I agree with your last paragraph. The notion that "college is the time of your life" is one of the greatest myths out there.
Generally speaking, the number of close friendships declines over time. Life in general is a lonely existence punctuated by family, some close friends, cool experiences, etc. Most of the people you consider to be a "friend" when you're young will drift away from you. They were nothing more than glorified drinking buddies. not true friends who are with you through thick and thin.
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