26 October

It’s a well-established pattern that people tend to have fewer friends, the older they get. Some see it as a problem, but actually as this site talks about, that’s how life is supposed to happen. Friendship is like a practice run for the really meaningful relationships in your life - for love, and for family and public life. Of course people have friends until every age, but the relative importance of friendship should wane as a person ages. They maybe will have a handful of really close friends, as they get older, but not the teenage model of masses of friends (which has its place, for teenagers - what this meme is referring to I think). It’s not always a popular message, friendship is a bit worshipped in our cultures. It’s another aspect of the consent debate for me, Western interpersonal relationships tend to be superficial and lacking the complexity and nuance of other cultures. So we default so often to friendship, the teenage stage of maturity, because so many of our traditions have been stripped away. Things like courtship, manners (in the broadest sense of that word) - etiquette in general. Mostly replaced by masses of friends, with a bottle of grog in hand. Like an endless teen party. https://www.lifeadvancer.com/get-older-losing-friends/