How To Keep Your Friends As Your Lives Diverge

Three years ago, I was sitting in Hyde Park, London, reading an article about how our friendships change as we get older. Journalist Julie Beck wrote for The Atlantic that as we get married, have kids, settle into serious relationships and pursue our careers, our friendships are the first things to drop down the priorities list. We are biologically bound to our family members and legally tied to the person we marry, so our friends are more tenuous connections; easier to disentangle ourselves from when life gets busy. I was 28 at the time, just starting to watch as friends wed and procreated, and this idea frightened me so much, I did two things: One, message my best friends to suggest some sort of lifelong, legally binding friendship contract with a minimum number of contact hours per month and two, write an 83,339-word plea for society to relearn the value of friendship, a book called The Friendship Cure. I’ve spent the past few years thinking about friendship and in particular, how we might hold onto it when our lives change around us.

It can be extremely difficult to maintain friendships. Not least because so many of us forget they need maintenance at all. We tend to have this idea that friendship is a certainty in our lives, something we deserve without having to earn it. We often think that friendship should be forever, too; that somehow these connections we make at school, at university, at work or by chance will last our whole lives. First off, a reality check: Sometimes friendships end and that’s OK. As we get older and more sure of who we are, hopefully we develop a better system of quality control for all the relationships in our lives and sometimes this means acknowledging that friends we once adored no longer belong in our lives.

Women have told me that they realised who they still wanted in their lives when they sat down to write their wedding invitation list. Deciding who they wanted by their side that day allowed them to realise who still belonged in their lives and they were able to see that with the sort of clarity we aren’t capable of every day. But we don’t all have to limit these epiphanies to wedding planning – it can be helpful to do a little audit of our friendships now and then and truly ask ourselves who still belongs by our side. We all hold onto friendships that do not lift us up, out of fear or complacency, and sometimes it’s important to end them. That’s just as much a part of maintaining friendships as we age, as anything else.

Oxford University evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar says that we should all have a maximum of 150 friends in our lives; that’s just how many friendships our brains can handle maintaining. That number is broken down into categories of intimacy, and we should really all have a core group of about five close friends, which can include family. Take that out to 15 for our most important social group, then from there it really becomes acquaintance territory. So we do not have the capacity to have unlimited friends, particularly when you have to invest so much time and energy, so it’s wise to keep funnelling in as much love and loyalty as you can to those top five.

Second, a reminder: good quality friendships require an active investment of time, energy, interest, compassion and loyalty. They are not guaranteed to last simply because you like a person or you watch their Instagram stories religiously. Keeping the friendships that matter as we grow older and as our lives diverge for various reasons – marriage, divorce, kids, work, travel, sickness, life – means conspicuously and deliberately cherishing them. It means pushing past small talk and asking proper, investigative questions so you stay in touch with who your friend truly is. It means carving out actual time in your life for them, whether that’s for a coffee, a wine or a Facetime chat. It means making them a priority in your life, and making sure they know that they are. It also means adapting, when lives change.

Robin Dunbar suggests that we lose two friendships every time we get into a romantic relationship. This is one of the most common ways we abandon friends – partly because seeing our beloved tends to take priority, partly because our values and schedules change when we get into something serious romantically. But it’s not the only way. There are so many variables and so many reasons we disappear from each other’s lives. I’ve spoken to married women who cannot connect properly with their single friends anymore because they built their friendships on drunken nights out, gossipy phone calls, sleepovers and feverish texts – and now they don’t have time or love for that sort of thing, since they got a mortgage and decided to get pregnant. I’ve spoken to single women who don’t understand why their married friends won’t make room for them in their lives anymore. I’ve spoken to exhausted new mothers who do not have the time or energy to see other human beings because they’re so consumed trying to keep their small one alive and well. I’ve spoken to people who guiltily admit they got carried away with a new boyfriend and just forgot to text their friends back, only to find they’d all disappeared when they broke up with their beloved. I’ve spoken to women who unexpectedly lose their friends in the divorce or break-up, women who move across the planet and forget to call their mates, women who get a new job that takes up so much of their time they can’t meet for Friday night drinks anymore.

If you’re being candid with yourself, you will know when it’s time to end or drift from a friendship. Sometimes, you need to explicitly end a friendship, and for that I’d recommend actually giving a little break-up speech (which can be done by text or email, if need be). Ghosting friends, or just disappearing from their lives without explanation, is particularly cruel as it just leaves them wondering why they’re unlovable or what they’ve done wrong. Other friendships will simply drift by way of mutual unspoken consent and lack of interest, and that’s OK to let that happen naturally. It’s a deeply personal judgment call, and one you might like to talk over with family, your partner, other friends or a therapist.

The secret to solving all these friendship dilemmas is to work out how much your friends mean to you, and behave accordingly. If you get married and still want your single friends in your life, find a way to reconnect with the single version of yourself and understand what they’re going through. Invite them to a BBQ, go out for a drink or keep up text contact until you find something in common with one another again. If your friendship was authentic, you’ll find a way to be together again. If you’re single and you feel left out by your married or in-love friend, tell them exactly how you feel and ask them to invite you back into their life. Be ready to attend child-friendly barbeques instead of big Saturday nights out, and probably adjust to a new pace of social life with them. If that’s not OK with you, then maybe the friendship needs a breather.

If you or your friend moves to another city or country, use technology strategically to keep in touch, Whatsapp all the time, Facetime, Skype, send each other dog photos on Instagram DM. Be candid and vulnerable in your communication to keep up the intimacy between you. Do whatever you can to keep the friendship going until you have the opportunity to meet face to face again. If your friend sides with your ex in a divorce or breakup, it’s probably best to realise where their loyalties lie. Speak to them about it if you can, ask them what happened, and be prepared to walk away from a friendship that may not be what you thought it was. If you or your friend gets a swanky new job and has trouble making time for friendship dates, wait out the initial adjustment period and then make a concerted effort to reconnect, even if it’s only briefly or not that often. Keeping some contact hours is important if you want to keep that person, and we all need a reminder that our personal lives matter, especially when we get consumed by our careers.

Whatever the change in your lives, it really comes down to this: Do you still want this person in your life? If the answer is yes, be diligent, kind and committed to keeping them there. It’s as simple, and as complicated, as that.