Friendship

[Mr Rayon]

Does everyone think its harder to make friends when you're an adult than as a child? I've heard that the friends you make as a child can be life long while those who you make with as an adult will be less meaningful and be more susceptible to wither away as time passes. Also as adulthood approaches, one steadily loses their innocence as they absorb the ways of thinking society has predisposed them to think. Adults hide things, they scheme, they talk behind their friends' backs, they become more malicious and selfish with the preoccupation of accumulating unlimited wealth through long work hours making extra-curricular activities and bonding with those you have met in the past nearly impossible. What does everyone think? Are everyone's closest friends their childhood friends?

[ydoaPs]

If anything, it's easier once you can legally sit and drink a beer with someone.

[Mr Rayon]

If anything, it's easier once you can legally sit and drink a beer with someone.

 

But what if, say hypothetically, the consumption of beer was illegal in your country.

[Mr Skeptic]

As a child you have more free time and less options who to spend it with.

[ydoaPs]

As a child you have more free time and less options who to spend it with.

Fewer.

[A Tripolation]

Fewer.

 

^ That was an incomplete sentence.

[ydoaPs]

^ That was an incomplete sentence.

So is your face

[A Tripolation]

So is your face

 

...dammit.

[the tree]

...dammit.

I know you are but what am I?

[lemur]

Probably the discrepancy you mention between childhood and adult friendship is an artifact of the very logic you are conceptualizing as an adult. I.e. adults who feel that adult friendship is less "true" than childhood friendship may seek out childhood companions in the hope of transcending the adulthood they've come to disdain. If the former childhood friend they find shares their romantic view of childhood innocence, the two could bond on this basis. I would still say that the bond is based on an adult emotion of romanticizing childhood in contrast to adulthood seen as corrupt. Without that sense of corruption, childhood would probably not seem that attractive to adults. They would just view it as the period of naive, exploitative self-indulgence that it is. Ultimately, I think this romanticization of childhood is just another example of the corruption of adulthood in that adults who romanticize childhood are revisionists seeking to exploit self-hatred of themselves and others as adults to produce a form of love that transcends the reality. Put simply, they're regressing to a romanticized fictional past in flight from a dark present that is ultimately nothing more than an extension of their true childhood, which was the foundation for their corruption and self-hatred as adults in the first place.

[CaptainPanic]

Does everyone think its harder to make friends when you're an adult than as a child? I've heard that the friends you make as a child can be life long while those who you make with as an adult will be less meaningful and be more susceptible to wither away as time passes. Also as adulthood approaches, one steadily loses their innocence as they absorb the ways of thinking society has predisposed them to think. Adults hide things, they scheme, they talk behind their friends' backs, they become more malicious and selfish with the preoccupation of accumulating unlimited wealth through long work hours making extra-curricular activities and bonding with those you have met in the past nearly impossible. What does everyone think? Are everyone's closest friends their childhood friends?

I think that, as an adult, you're more likely to make a little extra effort to keep old friends... and old friends are always a little special because you've (on both sides of the friendship relation) already invested so much time.

 

That doesn't mean that it's not easy to make friends when you're an adult. It just sounds like you've been a little unlucky in your choice of friends... the characteristics you describe are of people you cannot trust, and who think about themselves all the time, instead of investing in the friendship. In my book, that is not the definition of a friendship. A friendship is a relation that you both benefit from (can be just humor, sharing insights, support, but also in a material way). If that becomes a very much one-sided, then these people are using you, and they are not friends. Of course, they may not mean it, and you should confront them with it. It may simply be a mistake.

 

I disagree that there is a relation between the innocence or age, and the possible strength of a friendship. But I agree that there are certain people who are so preoccupied with materialism or with themselves, that they can no longer have true friends. They can only be acquaintances. If you realize that such a relation is only valuable if you both benefit from it, you should be fine.