April 18, 2025 • 45 mins
In our 20s there are four things we worry about more than anything else: love, money, the future, and our friendships. As we grow and change, the relationships around us will also naturally change and we may begin to notice how we are seeing our friends less and less, watching certain friendships fizzle out or completely outgrowing each other. It's not the same as it once was. This can cause a lot of panic. But underneath the fear of our changing friendships is a more primal fear of being alone.
In today's episode we break down the psychology behind our evolving friendships, the four types of friendship breakup, and how to adapt to these new kinds of relationship in our 20s, alongside the biggest friendship misconceptions that keep us in unfulfilling situations. All of that and more. Listen now!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to
the podcast, new listeners, old listeners. Wherever you are in
the world, it is so great to have you here
back for another episode. Today's episode, though you may have
already noticed, is a rerun, So over the next two weeks,
I am putting out some of my best episodes from
(00:21):
the last four years of almost NonStop podcasting as I
just take some time away to launch my debut book,
Person in Progress, A Roadmap to the Psychology of Your Twenties.
Do not fret. I will be back on the twenty
ninth of April, but I just wanted to give my
book a little bit of extra love these next two
weeks because it's a big deal and I'm not going
to talk about it too much. I'm sure you're just
(00:43):
here to listen to the podcast and probably sick of
me talking about it, but I just want to say
thank you. I want to say a huge thank you
for allowing me to write this book and put it
out in the world. This is only possible because of
you all. Because of you, guys, the listeners. Literally, that's it.
That's the only reason I'm able to do this. And
(01:03):
I've wanted to be an author since I was five.
Twenty years later, you guys made that happen for me,
So just thank you, Thank you so much. I would
obviously love it if you could pre order it, buy it,
gift it to a friend, but you've already done so much,
and I just feel honored to have had this opportunity.
(01:24):
Most of all, I'm just really pumped for you guys
to read it. I hope that you learn something. I'm
sure if you love the podcast, you will love Person
in Progress as well. But it's a really exciting time
and the main feeling I have right now is one
of gratitude. So thank you so much. Without further ado,
I hope you enjoy this rerun of one of my
(01:45):
favorite all time episodes. Hello everybody, and welcome back to
the Psychology of Your Twenties, the podcast where we talk
through some of the big life changes and transitions of
our twenties and what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody,
(02:12):
Welcome back to this show. Welcome back to the podcast.
New listeners, old listeners. Wherever you are in the world,
it is so great to have you here. Back for
another episode, Back for another topic. As we break down
the psychology of our twenties. When we think about our twenties,
I think there are four things that we worry about
(02:35):
more than anything else. We worry about love, we worry
about money, the future, and finally, our friendships. Today, we're
really going to focus in on that final point there
and examine the way that our friendships change during this
decade and why, despite a lot of the fear and
our anxiety and our discomfort, this experience is totally normal.
(02:59):
It's natural, and it's going to be okay. Every one
of us has had to witness as someone they were
once really close to slowly kind of drifts away replies
to their messages less and less finds new friends who
are maybe better for them, whilst you're left feeling a
little bit discarded, a little bit unmoored. Or maybe you
(03:20):
are the friend who has moved on and you're coming
to terms with the realization that you have outgrown the
people who are once your closest friends. The friendship group
has disbanded, your friend's just got a new partner. There
are so many ways that we see our friendships change,
and it's scary because those relationships are really what hold
(03:41):
us up during this decade is we sow, they kind
of separate away from the security of the family unit
and we're trying to form our own identity. Having a
broad set of friends in those moments to really rely
on and call upon is super vital, and it's also
really vital for our mental health. There's been so many
studies that have shown that people who have close friends,
(04:05):
close confidence, they're more satisfied with their lives, They're less
likely to suffer from depression, they overall just feel happier.
And in contrast, people with poor quality friendships or no friends,
they are twice as likely to die prematurely. Of course,
they suffer increased loneliness. So maintaining a really healthy, broad
(04:29):
fulfilling network of friendships is undoubtedly important. And it's not
just about the fact that they provide us with comfort
and are obviously massive contributors to our health. But friendship
is also just one of the greatest joys in life.
Right There are genuinely friends I consider family who know
more about me than any partner of mine ever has,
(04:50):
who make me laugh like beyond reason. That connection is
so deep that we never want it to face. In fact,
I think we never consider the fact that it might,
it might, it will. That is not where our brain
naturally goes to the conclusion of the friendship, because unlike
(05:11):
romantic relationships, I think friendships aren't meant to have an
expiry date. They aren't meant to go up in flames.
There isn't meant to be a breakup. We're not meant
to fall out of love with our friends. That is
kind of the beauty of platonic intimacy and connection. It's
meant to outlast a lot of other forms of love.
So it comes as a shock when we begin to
(05:31):
notice our relationships really shifting or drifting apart from people,
or realizing that we have mutually outgrown each other or
just need space. And a lot of the time, our
instinct is to a blame ourselves or be panic immediately
jump to the worst case scenario. What if I lose
(05:52):
all my friends and I end up alone. We don't
give ourselves the grace or the permission in these moments
of transition. Understand that some friendships just have a shorter
life cycle, and our friends scape is naturally going to
shift with age and time. And I think that reaction,
that entire sequence of events and realizations is what we're
(06:14):
really talking about today. Along with all of the psychology
that I think comes with watching our friendships change in
our twenties, we are going to explore the why, including
the literal scientific formula for friendship, the types of friendship
endings from the fizzle to the replacement or the breakup,
(06:35):
how intensity may actually shorten the lifespan of our friendships,
and the impact of simply just entering into a new
chapter of your life and dealing with some of the
loneliness that might come along with that. I think there
are a lot of friendship misconceptions that keep us stuck
in really really draining relationships. You know what, Am I
(07:01):
a bad person if I don't want to be friends
with this person anymore? Am I toxic because all of
my friends have kind of moved away and stopped talking
to me? Am I boring? How am I going to
adapt to this new reality? There is so much to
discuss here, especially since I think it is so universal.
It is such an important experience to explore because it
(07:23):
is inherently isolating, so we don't find ourselves talking about
it enough, which is to say, in the midst of
a massive friendship transition that I'm sure we are all experiencing.
I really hope this helps you. I hope that this
gives you a sense of guidance. So, without further ado,
let's get into the psychology behind why our friendships change
(07:43):
and why that is totally okay. This past year for
me has been a period of like rapid transition, and
with that, there's been this real shift in who I
spend my time with the friendships I have, and unfortunately
(08:03):
it's required a lot of reflecting on some of the
people that I have seen fade away from my life
and kind of feeling a little bit like my friendship
circle is unbalanced. The true biggest factors for me, I
think in that change has been firstly, seeing a lot
of my friends move away from the city where we
kind of all grew to knew each other when we
(08:25):
were at university. We all went to university at Canberra,
and I was talking to my boyfriend about this the
other day. But I think the reason I've been feeling
really isolated is because as we like enter into our
I think early in mid twenties in particular, a lot
of people choose to scatter, a lot of people move
away and of the people that I'm closest to, one
(08:47):
now lives in Paris, one lives in London, one lives
in Tasmania, which is like a kind of semi regional
island off of Australia. You know, one of them is
in Nepal, and everyone just makes the decision that's better
for them. They move on with their lives, and that
means that each of us is feeling I think uniquely,
very isolated. That distance is naturally going to change kind
(09:11):
of the dynamic because you don't have that same proximity
and the ease or access to this other person. It
requires more of an investment, and if you're not willing
to keep that up, you have to be willing to
see that friendship fizzle out a little bit, not be
what it once was, or kind of hope that they return,
(09:32):
and it's one of those magical moments where it's kind
of right back to normal. So I think that's like
the first big change I've seen in my personal life.
The second factor has to do not just with specific friendships,
but an entire way of socializing. The older we get,
I think we lose some of our interest in the
ways we used to hang out with our friends when
(09:53):
we were eighteen or nineteen or even twenty, particularly to
do with the drinking culture. I know for me personally
that when I was at UNI, it was like binge
drinking central, like that was part of how we socialized,
that was part of how we spent out, you know, Thursday, Friday,
Saturday nights. It is this thing in psychology called bad
(10:15):
behavior bonding, where we sometimes find ourselves really attracted and
attached to people who are on an equally chaotic and
self destructive path or in that same place as us
in that moment, and then we enable each other. But
when one person decides it's kind of time to outgrow that,
(10:36):
that they've matured past that kind of chapter, it comes
at the cost of the friends they made through those behaviors.
I think eighteen year old Gemma would be shocked to
hear that. You know, I don't go clubbing really anymore.
I don't really want to be up to two am
on a weeknight. I want to be in bed, I
want to be watching Seinfeld. My threshold for social interaction,
(10:58):
and I think most people's threshold for social interaction has
lowered significantly as I've entered, like my mid twenties. Some
of that is obviously environmental, but also some of it
is just psychological and personal, like that's not what I'm
really interested in anymore. And then there's the other factor
of the fact that I have met someone that I
(11:19):
have a partner. Now, when we enter into a relationship,
this center of our social universe, our emotional universe or
solar system, it shifts away from our friendships and towards
our partner, And if you're not careful, you kind of
fall out of orbit with those around you. You know,
you want to spend as much time as possible with
(11:40):
this person that you're falling in love with. You want
to see them all the time, You want to invite
them to everything that you're doing. That can sometimes come
at the expense of those platonic relationships that you've maintained
for much longer than you've known this person. So I
think it's these like two to three parallel changes that
have left me feeling pretty isolated, perhaps feeling like I
(12:03):
haven't adapted as quickly to these situations as I could have. However,
I also recognize that in our twenties, we are writing
what I like to call the friendship roller coaster. The
friendship roller coaster is this phenomenon I've noticed whereby we
can feel incredibly happy and fulfilled by our friendships, almost
(12:25):
overwhelmed with love, you know, one day, and then three
days later you can end up in this total thought
spiral about how we have no one, how we're totally alone,
how no one wants to spend time with you know,
with us. As if three days earlier you hadn't been
having the best time, you hadn't been feeling totally validated.
(12:46):
That is the friendship roller coaster of our twenties. There
are a lot of really high highs and a lot
of really low lows, and normally at those low points,
nothing really has changed except our mental state. And it
goes to show how so much of our experience of
feeling isolated or lonely is entirely subjective, and it's based
(13:08):
on what I think is a very instinctial, inherent fear
of loneliness that is not always based on the truth.
It is a false alarm. That is why we are
so fearful of our friendships changing, because underneath that fear
is a much more primal fear of being alone, and
(13:29):
so we become really hyper vigilant to any cues, small
suggestions that point to the fact that our relationships are weakening,
that people are becoming more distant. Sometimes that is true.
As sad as it is, we are naturally going to
lose friends. It is unavoidable, and I want to talk
(13:51):
about why we see that so often in our twenties.
In particular, this decade is a period of transition all
of us. Career transition, mental transition, emotional transition, even physical transition.
As we've spoken about, as we kind of move, we scatter,
we pursue different paths. Everyone is kind of on their own,
(14:13):
you know, I know it sounds cheesy, but their own journey.
In that moment, we are all trying equally as hard
as everyone else to just figure out what we want
from life and how we can actually do those things.
It's interesting because I think although we are all the
same age, we are all almost at like different life points.
(14:34):
We've all hit different milestones. Some of us are still
living at home, some of us have moved in with
like partners. We're living abroad, some of us are still
at UNI. We are all at these very different stages.
Whereas for the first eighteen years of our lives. If
someone was our age, we could assume that they were
doing a lot of the same things as we were.
(14:55):
We were kind of living parallel lives because of the
structures of childhood and adults essense. But in our twenties
that all splinters. It's kind of like a life path explosion.
It's at this point of I don't want to say,
you know, upheaval, but like significant growth and impact that
(15:17):
we see the relationships around us change as well, and
they will continue to do so for the remainder of
our twenties and the remainder of our lives. One of
the biggest moments that I think we encounter this is
following university or high school. When we are at Uni,
we spend so much time together. There is just endless
(15:38):
opportunities to be around your friends, opportunities to laugh, to
have fun, and we are having this very shared experience.
We're working towards the same goal to you know, graduate
at the end of all this, and our friendships at
that point are really really convenient. You are living in
the same place, possibly the same town, even sometimes the
(15:58):
same building. You're well going to the library every day,
you are eating together every day, seeing each other as
much as you can, and when we no longer have
a those shared experiences or be the shared environment, we
slowly lose that closeness. And to understand this, we really
need to look at the psychological principles underlying friendship. These
(16:23):
researchers back in the nineties, they proposed it there are
for key ingredients or factors that can basically predict whether
you and someone else will become friends and also whether
you'll be able to maintain that friendship. And these ingredients
are proximity, similarity, familiarity, and reciprocity. So proximity basically just
(16:49):
means physical closeness. How easy is it for you to
see this person regularly. They did a study on this
at university dorm rooms, and they found that how close
people's rooms were to each other actually predicted the likelihood
of them becoming friends. A lot of our friendships basically
(17:09):
come down to the ease of contact and the frequency
of contact. Secondly, we have similarity. We're obviously going to
like someone more if they share the same interests, hobbies, lifestyle, beliefs,
is us. But this also includes similarity in terms of
current and past life experiences or a similar sharing a
(17:31):
similar environment. Then we have familiarity that refers to not
just how long we've known someone, how close we are
with them, but also the depth of the connection. You know,
sometimes we think that the people who have known us
the longest know us the best. That is not always
the case. Sometimes we meet people and there is just
(17:53):
this intense, intense spark, this intense platonic chemistry, such that
we all automatically immediately feel like we have known them
our whole lives. Familiarity is basically just close knowledge of
another person. And finally, we have reciprocity, which is knowing
that what you give someone in terms of your love,
(18:16):
in terms of your energy, in terms of your time,
is going to be returned, is going to be reciprocated.
So those are the most important factors When we talk
about our friendships changing in our twenties. Nine out of
ten times I would say that change normally comes down
to a shift in one of these four conditions. For example,
(18:40):
when people move away or they get really busy they
start full time work, we lose that proximity. It makes
it harder to see them. When we lose those shared
experiences like no longer being university together, we have less
to talk about. When we lose that familiarity, we feel
like this person no longer knows us. And when we
(19:01):
begin to see a friendship as one sided without that
reciprocity we were speaking about, this is when it makes
us question how much this person really wants us to
be in their life. What I often say is that
friendships can survive a reduction or a change in one
of these conditions, but not to so. For example, it's
(19:23):
totally fine if your friend gets really busy at work
and can only see you once a fortnight, once a month,
as long as you maintain that similarity, familiarity, reciprocity. You
make time when you have time, and you talk about
things that are interesting and you want to see them.
But if suddenly you no longer have those shared stories, beliefs, values, interests,
(19:48):
and then you also don't see them regularly, that is
when the friendship starts to crumble, or if the friend
is not reciprocating your excitement or your investment in seeing
them again, we really begin to question them value of
the friendship or how much longer it can last. I
want to stress this again. I know that that feels
really painful. But it's not abnormal. You are not the
(20:13):
only one who is either going through these changes themselves,
struggling to connect with people you once loved, or watching
someone else feel the same way about your friendship, watching
the people around you suddenly almost disappear. Friendships change because
people change, and sometimes they just don't change in the
(20:35):
same direction. That is not a crime. It is not
because there is something wrong with you or something wrong
with them. I think the worst thing we can do
in response to that is actually act from a place
of anger or rejection, because you're not actually angry at them,
You're just hurt. You're just scared of losing them. You're
(20:55):
just scared of change. And your sadness and your panic
is in it self and indicated that you love them deeply.
So I think when we are in those moments where
we are really fearful that we're losing people, feeling like
we should push them away or you know, sometimes find
a replacement, we do just need to pause and approach
this very rationally. This is all about a transition. It's
(21:19):
all about a journey and where you are at now
with your friends. Like we said, it is the friendship rollercoaster.
It may not be where you end up. There are
other factors as well that I think also alter our
friendships irreversibly, and that includes really significant events like a
(21:40):
big breach of trust, a betrayal, misunderstandings. I think these
things differ from what we were talking about before and
when we encounter those things. There are four kind of
friendship breakups that we most often see. These are the
friendship fizzle, the replacement sided severance, and the breakup where
(22:03):
really drastic measures are required. So I would say if
we have a look at our friendships, the mutual and
you know friendships from the past, the mutual fizzle is
most common. There are some people we are not meant
to be around our entire lives. We are only meant
to be with them for a season before it is,
(22:26):
you know, time for us to move on. Maybe this
person just no longer fills your cup in the same
way you are friends at work, Now you no longer
have that shared topic to discuss. They were your ex's friends.
The keyword though, here is mutual. We both kind of
understand that we aren't as close as we once were.
The context around us has changed, and perhaps it's time
(22:49):
to actually just let the other person. Go, stop trying
to reschedule the plans, just let it fizzle. Then we
have the replacement. This one really hurts. It hurts so much.
Sometimes we have this really intense relationship with someone. They're
our best friend, we do everything together, and then slowly
they start mentioning some other person more and more, they're
(23:12):
spending more time with them. We feel shut out or replaced,
or perhaps, as we were talking about, before they meet
someone they meet a boyfriend or a girlfriend or a partner,
even though we know that we are not entitled to
all of their time. A lot of this comes from
a very I think justified place of jealousy. And it's
(23:34):
a jealousy we typically think is reserved for romantic relationships.
But when you love someone as deeply as you love
this person, another individual's kind of entrance into your relationship
or like the equation can feel like a real threat.
And it's these friendships, I think, those very very very
close friendships that keep us quite grounded, that actually form
(23:57):
a huge part of our identity and how we see ourselves.
So when one person seemingly moves on or stops investing
as much or starts investing more in someone else. It
can quite honestly leave us feeling really lost, maybe feel
like we should be sharing our time around as well.
There's also a saying about these intense relationships that really
(24:20):
applies here. The flame that burns twice as bright burns
out quicker. I see this all the time with those
really high intensity friendships. You're kind of like addicted to them.
You put a lot of pressure on them more than
other friendships. You have this really high expectation, this high
level of time that you spend with each other, and
a lot of demands for the other person that I
(24:41):
think can rarely be sustained without the occasional break or
some very solid boundaries. And I don't think that those relationships,
those really intense relationships can survive very long without one
person in that kind of dynamic choosing to make a change,
(25:01):
which is why I think not only do they hurt
a lot, but we also see them ending quite frequently.
And then we have this one sided severance where without reason,
someone suddenly detaches, doesn't want to talk to you, doesn't
want to communicate with you, doesn't really offer you any
(25:23):
kind of explanation. That is just I can understand how
devastating that is, I've had that happen to me before.
Sometimes people have their reasons they don't want to share
them with you. That's fine, but you're kind of having
to go through a friendship breakup all on your own
without the closure. We have to go searching for the
(25:44):
answers ourselves. I think when a true friendship breakup actually occurs,
we kind of both understand why. We know what happened,
we know our role in it, we know what we
need to take accountability for. But when we have these
one sided severances, you really you're kind of left in
the dark. You're left looking for your own answers. I
really do believe that friendship breakups hurt so much more
(26:10):
than romantic breakups because we never expect them. Friendships always
feel so permanent, and as we get older we quickly
realize that they're not. It is okay to grieve what was,
to think about them, to want to reach out, but
it's also okay to recognize that, just like the end
of a romantic relationship, this might have been for the best.
(26:33):
Sometimes not only do we grow apart, but we begin
to kind of realize and recognize how this person has
caused friction in our lives may not have respected our boundaries,
or maybe there was some event where suddenly you saw
them in a new light and you're just shocked that
this is actually who they are and you've never seen
(26:56):
that before. I actually had someone tell me the other
day about a friendship breakup they had with their best
friend of eight years, and they went on vacation together,
and throughout this trip, this person slowly realized that her
and her friend could not be friends anymore, that when
she returned it would have to be over. Her friend
(27:18):
was cruel, would yell at her, would ignore her when
other people were around, wasn't willing to compromise. That is
not a relationship we should prioritize. And sometimes we don't
see those parts of someone until we see them in
a new situation like a wedding, like an engagement, like
a baby is coming, or one of you is experiencing
(27:41):
like a lot of really great success and the other
person is jealous. I guess in those situations, it's better
to kind of feel lonely than to be around someone
or trust someone who obviously doesn't have your best intentions
at heart. And I guess that's one of my main
premises or argument here. Not all friendships are meant to
(28:03):
last for a good reason, and our fear of loneliness
should not keep us in relationships that do not nurture
and build us up and make us better people. We
should not sacrifice our boundaries or our needs for the
sake of company. You can find company anywhere. You can
go to the local coffee shop and have a chat
(28:24):
with some nice lady in her sixties, and then you go,
bingo bango, you have a best friend. When we continue
to pour attention and time and energy into these dead
end relationships, we lose out on a lot of other
opportunities to meet people who might suit this chapter or
season of your life better, even if it takes some time.
(28:46):
The saying that I always come back to again and
again and again. It is impossible to keep every single
friend you've ever had, especially as you add new relationships,
when your life circumstances change, or when you become aware
of key differences in your values and characters. It does
not make you a bad person to want to move on,
(29:07):
but it also doesn't make you a bad person to
grieve and still know that that was necessary. So what
I really want to discuss next is how to manage
your kind of changing friendship landscape, whether it is you're
seeing more of the fizzle, or there has been a
friendship breakup or people have moved. What other dos and
don'ts of evolving friendships in our twenties, So all of
(29:31):
that and more after this short break. There are a
few common misconceptions about friendships that I think make us
feel particularly panicked when we notice things changing in our twenties.
The first one that I think is perpetrated, especially during
(29:54):
this decade, is that we need to have a massive
group of friends in order to be happy. This personally
drives me insane because I have never been someone who
has had this one big, jolly group of friends who
do everything together. And I personally blame shows like Friends
and New Girl for this idea that we need this
(30:18):
one tight group of people from ages like ten to
sixty or whatever like for our entire adult life in
order to be happy, or this argument that we can't
be equally fulfilled by one on one friendships. When we
strip it down, what we really need friends for is trust, comfort, love,
(30:41):
and belonging, And it doesn't matter what form that comes in.
It doesn't matter if it's a huge group situation, or
if it looks different to what we see others doing,
you know, in social media, or what we see other
people doing online, or in the movies and the TV
shows that we watch. A lot of that is fiction.
And I don't think that we should buy into this
(31:03):
idea that just because you've never had a big group
of girlfriends or a big group of friends, that somehow
you are lonelier than the rest. The second biggest misconception
is that you should continue a friendship because you owe
it to them, either due to the length of time
that you've known each other or maybe because they have
(31:26):
a lot going on in their life. One therapist calls
this a sense of emotional servitude because it involves putting
effort towards a friendship, as if you're paying off a
debt or paying off you know, or paying them this
like energy this time without ever getting anything back for you,
like you are doing the emotional labor for this other person.
(31:46):
And I see this a lot with friends in a
situation where one party is really going through something really difficult,
but despite that, has no respect for the wellbeing of
the other person, has no appreciation for the other person's
boundaries has no appreciation for what the other person needs.
Sometimes that's understandable, right, if you're going through a really
(32:07):
hard season in life, you're not always that aware of
what other people are are doing. Empathy is kind of
not something that you can prioritize at that moment. But
that does not mean that you are not allowed to
set boundaries with this person just because you're afraid of
appearing disloyal or you're afraid of upsetting them. Right, that relationship,
(32:28):
when it gets to that point is actually, if you
maintain it without setting up proper parameters or limits, is
going to do a lot more harm than good. It
is going to end up hurting both of you. And
we see that a lot with people that have also
been friends with someone for a really long time, and
(32:49):
even though they just have nothing in common anymore, even
though this person may drain their energy may actually make
them feel bad about themselves, they stay because they don't
want to be labeled as someone who leaves. And I
think when you hold on too tight to people who
don't want to maintain their relationship or who don't appreciate you,
(33:10):
you're basically carrying a dead weight that is holding you
back from a new season of friendship and a new
season of connection for you. The third misconception is that
it's too late for you to make new friends, that
by our twenties we should already know the people who
will be in our wedding party, or be our children's godparents,
(33:33):
or who will mourn at their funeral. I think that
is absolutely incorrect. Research has shown that we replace half
of our friends every seven years up until old age,
which is to say that we are constantly in a
state of pruning our friendships, letting go of certain friends,
letting them drift, and then subsequently making new ones throughout life.
(33:59):
I read an article that put it really, really well
that you're not going to be the same person your
entire life, and you cannot expect other people to be
the same version of themselves as well. You have changed
so much in the past ten years, five years, even
the last six months, so it makes sense that those
around you those relationships have also shifted with time. Yes,
(34:22):
there might be certain friendships that have evolved to align
with this new version of you and this new version
of themselves, but it's sometimes just not feasible for you
to keep up with every single person who has known
you since you were a child, who is no new
since you were a teenager. There's just not enough time
(34:43):
in the week, like there genuinely just isn't enough time
in the day to maintain connections with everybody. So you
need to give yourself, I think, space to make new
friendships that might fulfill you more with being scared that
you will never find anybody. I kind of want to
(35:04):
reiterate that do not hold on to these relationships just
because you're scared that no one will fill their place
or feel that social need in your life. I think
that there are so many people that will just show
up in your life one day by surprise and change everything,
but you do need to leave space for them. And
(35:24):
leaving space means the following. Don't adopt the philosophy that
you already have all the friends you need. It may
feel true, but you never know. You truly never know
how much opening yourself up to that one extra person
could really like change everything for you. Also say yes
to things even when they scare you, to invitations to activities,
(35:47):
to joining sports clubs and your hobbies. Take on the
philosophy that everyone wants to be your friend. You are
magnetic you attract really good people. Don't isolate yourself by
thinking that you can only be friends with one type
of person, or that the length of time you've been
(36:09):
friends with someone is the only factor in your closeness,
is the only kind of indicator of compatibility. I think
that we buy into that a lot, that just because
we've known someone the longest must mean that they are
our best friend. And time and time again we see
that that is not true, That compatibility and chemistry and
(36:32):
love and platonic intimacy work in really strange and surprising ways.
And with that, do not buy into this idea that
you are past your friendship prime, because when you believe
that there was a time and a place to make
your lifelong friends, you've missed it. You've missed the boat.
You're subconsciously going to be less likely to initiate new conversations,
(36:57):
new connections, new relationships, because do you already feel like
you've lost, You already feel like you're behind. I also
think it's very important to not respond with fear when
we feel our kind of friendship landscape shifting, because fear
will have you reacting in ways that are irrational and
actually counter to your true intentions, which is to foster
(37:18):
deep love with those around you to feel like you belong.
Perceived rejection can really sting, But just because your relationship
has changed doesn't mean that it needs to be completely discarded.
I think about my friendships at least a lot of
the time in terms of levels. You have your top
rung kind of your ride or die friendships, then those
(37:40):
friends that you maybe wished you saw more or you're
slightly less close to it the moment you've got your
work friends, You've got your acquaintances who you would very
kindly have a chat with in the street and know
a little bit about their life but you're not super
close to. And then you have strangers. Maybe this person,
(38:02):
this person that you were thinking about right now, this
friend is just sitting at a rung lower than normal.
Does that mean that they need to be completely relegated
to the strangers category? Probably not. They're just at a
different point in their relationship to you. But you should
keep the door open for them to come back in,
(38:25):
for them to promote themselves back up to top wrong. Obviously,
this does not apply to friends who have totally crossed
boundaries with you or who have treated you terribly, but
just those who have maybe just have different priorities right now,
give them the grace that you would want in that situation.
So I actually have a story about this. I have
(38:45):
a very very close friend of mine, possibly my longest friend,
and we were incredibly close for the first three or
four years that we after we'd met, like we did
everything together, we knew everything about each other life. And
then we went through this period almost randomly without any
(39:05):
context of just like complete disconnect. We saw each other rarely.
I really did feel, like for certain that the friendship
was over, and it was really upsetting. It weighed really
heavily on my mind. But I didn't want to close
the door, and I know that she didn't want to either,
and lo and behold. Two years on, I think even
(39:26):
a little bit longer than that, now, like three or
four years on, we are back to that same level
of closeness, maybe even closer. She is one of the
best people in my life. And I think it's because
we gave each other permission, maybe even subconsciously, to follow
our own paths that our friendship has allowed to you know,
is allowed to be this strong because we've seen it
(39:47):
through moments of tension and moments of change, and we
knew that either we would come back to each other
or we wouldn't, and we would still be incredibly happy
for the other person. Change does not mean death, It
does not mean the end. The best kinds of friendships
change and evolve despite factors like time and proximity. Don't panic.
(40:13):
I promise the fear you have is temporary, and alongside that,
that fear may also motivate you to make new friends,
to go out there, and I don't know, actually put
yourself in a position that you haven't had to before.
Put yourself in a position where friendship isn't as convenient
and at once as it once was, but now you have,
(40:36):
you know, the opportunity to choose right. Someone once said
to me. I was asking this person. He was like,
I don't really have many friends, and I was like, why,
you know, aren't you lonely? Why don't Why wouldn't you
want a million friends? And he was like, well, the
people around you are who you become. And so I
think that it's actually worthwhile to be a little bit
picky when it comes to that. And maybe if you
(40:58):
are at a place where you are quite isolated, and
you are, you know, quite lonely. You have seen a
lot of friendships change. Instead of viewing it as this
like negative, like life ending thing of like I'm never
going to have what I once had, I'm never going
to feel connected or like I belong again, view it
(41:20):
as a new beginning. Be like wow, I get to
like I get to create the life that I want here.
I get to make the friendships that I would like
to make. I get to be surprised by the people
who are one day just going to walk in the
door and completely change who I am. I think loneliness
is just an emotion. It is just a message from
(41:41):
our mind telling us what we need. The same way
that hunger tells us. You know that our body needs
fuel or first tells us that we need hydration. Loneliness
and feeling disconnected to people tells you that it's time
to reach out. And I guess that's my final tip here.
Be honest with your friends. You would like to see
them more or you would like to chat more often.
(42:04):
I did this the other day with my friend's Steph
whereab I was like, I'm on the friendship roller coaster
right now and I'm at a dip. Can we make
time to see each other? And of course she said yes.
That openness, that vulnerability is vital here because often others
in our life don't really know what we're going through.
They don't know how we're feeling. They may not have
(42:26):
noticed what we have noticed that we have drifted. So
you can choose to say nothing, or you can choose
to be honest with with how you feel in that moment.
And ninety percent of the time, the people who truly
love you want you to be happy, and they will
respond positively to that, and they will make time for you.
It is just a matter of reaching out. And you
(42:48):
know what, in case I haven't said it enough times,
this is not just you. I know it's hard. Change
is hard. Human beings naturally fear change, isolation is hard.
But do not blame yourself or start to internalize what
are actually really common transitions here as a sign that
(43:09):
there is something wrong with you, or that you are
undeserving of good, long lasting friendships. You absolutely are, you
just may not have found them yet. I always think
of this quote and it brings me so much peace
and kind of these moments of catastrophizing you haven't yet
met all the people who you will love in this life,
and I think that is so beautiful. How magical is
it to imagine all of the people who are now
(43:31):
strangers one day being individuals in your life who you
won't be able to live without. These people who you
will one day meet, who will tell you the story
of the life they are now living. We are so young.
Sometimes it's so impossible to really appreciate how young we are.
It is not the end of the road. There is
(43:52):
so much more love to experience. And like we said,
there has been so many studies that have shown that
not only is this incredibly but a lot of us replace,
you know, fifty percent of our friends, eighty percent of
our friends every seven years. You are just in a
transition period right now, along with many many others, one
that you will come out of and you'll be able
(44:15):
to look back at and say I needed that to happen.
I needed to see these friendships fade away. I needed
to be alone for a while in order to really
appreciate how beautiful these new people in my life are.
So I really hope that this episode has helped normalize
this experience. There. I totally understand the fear. Please. I
(44:40):
feel like I live this fear every day, so it
was actually quite comforting to discuss this and to kind
of explore I think some of the reasons behind why
we see that happen. I really do hope that you
enjoyed this episode. I hope it brought you comfort. As always,
if you feel like there is someone in your life
who feels this who needs to hear this episode, please
(45:03):
feel free to sell them a link to share it along,
to share the love along, leave a five star review
if you feel coold to do so, and make sure
your following so that you know when new episodes come out.
If you have an episode suggestion as well, please follow
us at that Psychology podcast on Instagram. I love hearing
(45:24):
from you guys. I love hearing about what your twenties
has been like. You guys always have the most amazing
suggestions for topics I have never considered before, So follow
us over there, and as always, we will be back
next week with another episode.
Hello, everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to
the podcast, new listeners, old listeners. Wherever you are in
the world, it is so great to have you here
back for another episode. Today's episode, though you may have
already noticed, is a rerun, So over the next two weeks,
I am putting out some of my best episodes from
(00:21):
the last four years of almost NonStop podcasting as I
just take some time away to launch my debut book,
Person in Progress, A Roadmap to the Psychology of Your Twenties.
Do not fret. I will be back on the twenty
ninth of April, but I just wanted to give my
book a little bit of extra love these next two
weeks because it's a big deal and I'm not going
to talk about it too much. I'm sure you're just
(00:43):
here to listen to the podcast and probably sick of
me talking about it, but I just want to say
thank you. I want to say a huge thank you
for allowing me to write this book and put it
out in the world. This is only possible because of
you all. Because of you, guys, the listeners. Literally, that's it.
That's the only reason I'm able to do this. And
(01:03):
I've wanted to be an author since I was five.
Twenty years later, you guys made that happen for me,
So just thank you, Thank you so much. I would
obviously love it if you could pre order it, buy it,
gift it to a friend, but you've already done so much,
and I just feel honored to have had this opportunity.
(01:24):
Most of all, I'm just really pumped for you guys
to read it. I hope that you learn something. I'm
sure if you love the podcast, you will love Person
in Progress as well. But it's a really exciting time
and the main feeling I have right now is one
of gratitude. So thank you so much. Without further ado,
I hope you enjoy this rerun of one of my
(01:45):
favorite all time episodes. Hello everybody, and welcome back to
the Psychology of Your Twenties, the podcast where we talk
through some of the big life changes and transitions of
our twenties and what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody,
(02:12):
Welcome back to this show. Welcome back to the podcast.
New listeners, old listeners. Wherever you are in the world,
it is so great to have you here. Back for
another episode, Back for another topic. As we break down
the psychology of our twenties. When we think about our twenties,
I think there are four things that we worry about
(02:35):
more than anything else. We worry about love, we worry
about money, the future, and finally, our friendships. Today, we're
really going to focus in on that final point there
and examine the way that our friendships change during this
decade and why, despite a lot of the fear and
our anxiety and our discomfort, this experience is totally normal.
(02:59):
It's natural, and it's going to be okay. Every one
of us has had to witness as someone they were
once really close to slowly kind of drifts away replies
to their messages less and less finds new friends who
are maybe better for them, whilst you're left feeling a
little bit discarded, a little bit unmoored. Or maybe you
(03:20):
are the friend who has moved on and you're coming
to terms with the realization that you have outgrown the
people who are once your closest friends. The friendship group
has disbanded, your friend's just got a new partner. There
are so many ways that we see our friendships change,
and it's scary because those relationships are really what hold
(03:41):
us up during this decade is we sow, they kind
of separate away from the security of the family unit
and we're trying to form our own identity. Having a
broad set of friends in those moments to really rely
on and call upon is super vital, and it's also
really vital for our mental health. There's been so many
studies that have shown that people who have close friends,
(04:05):
close confidence, they're more satisfied with their lives, They're less
likely to suffer from depression, they overall just feel happier.
And in contrast, people with poor quality friendships or no friends,
they are twice as likely to die prematurely. Of course,
they suffer increased loneliness. So maintaining a really healthy, broad
(04:29):
fulfilling network of friendships is undoubtedly important. And it's not
just about the fact that they provide us with comfort
and are obviously massive contributors to our health. But friendship
is also just one of the greatest joys in life.
Right There are genuinely friends I consider family who know
more about me than any partner of mine ever has,
(04:50):
who make me laugh like beyond reason. That connection is
so deep that we never want it to face. In fact,
I think we never consider the fact that it might,
it might, it will. That is not where our brain
naturally goes to the conclusion of the friendship, because unlike
(05:11):
romantic relationships, I think friendships aren't meant to have an
expiry date. They aren't meant to go up in flames.
There isn't meant to be a breakup. We're not meant
to fall out of love with our friends. That is
kind of the beauty of platonic intimacy and connection. It's
meant to outlast a lot of other forms of love.
So it comes as a shock when we begin to
(05:31):
notice our relationships really shifting or drifting apart from people,
or realizing that we have mutually outgrown each other or
just need space. And a lot of the time, our
instinct is to a blame ourselves or be panic immediately
jump to the worst case scenario. What if I lose
(05:52):
all my friends and I end up alone. We don't
give ourselves the grace or the permission in these moments
of transition. Understand that some friendships just have a shorter
life cycle, and our friends scape is naturally going to
shift with age and time. And I think that reaction,
that entire sequence of events and realizations is what we're
(06:14):
really talking about today. Along with all of the psychology
that I think comes with watching our friendships change in
our twenties, we are going to explore the why, including
the literal scientific formula for friendship, the types of friendship
endings from the fizzle to the replacement or the breakup,
(06:35):
how intensity may actually shorten the lifespan of our friendships,
and the impact of simply just entering into a new
chapter of your life and dealing with some of the
loneliness that might come along with that. I think there
are a lot of friendship misconceptions that keep us stuck
in really really draining relationships. You know what, Am I
(07:01):
a bad person if I don't want to be friends
with this person anymore? Am I toxic because all of
my friends have kind of moved away and stopped talking
to me? Am I boring? How am I going to
adapt to this new reality? There is so much to
discuss here, especially since I think it is so universal.
It is such an important experience to explore because it
(07:23):
is inherently isolating, so we don't find ourselves talking about
it enough, which is to say, in the midst of
a massive friendship transition that I'm sure we are all experiencing.
I really hope this helps you. I hope that this
gives you a sense of guidance. So, without further ado,
let's get into the psychology behind why our friendships change
(07:43):
and why that is totally okay. This past year for
me has been a period of like rapid transition, and
with that, there's been this real shift in who I
spend my time with the friendships I have, and unfortunately
(08:03):
it's required a lot of reflecting on some of the
people that I have seen fade away from my life
and kind of feeling a little bit like my friendship
circle is unbalanced. The true biggest factors for me, I
think in that change has been firstly, seeing a lot
of my friends move away from the city where we
kind of all grew to knew each other when we
(08:25):
were at university. We all went to university at Canberra,
and I was talking to my boyfriend about this the
other day. But I think the reason I've been feeling
really isolated is because as we like enter into our
I think early in mid twenties in particular, a lot
of people choose to scatter, a lot of people move
away and of the people that I'm closest to, one
(08:47):
now lives in Paris, one lives in London, one lives
in Tasmania, which is like a kind of semi regional
island off of Australia. You know, one of them is
in Nepal, and everyone just makes the decision that's better
for them. They move on with their lives, and that
means that each of us is feeling I think uniquely,
very isolated. That distance is naturally going to change kind
(09:11):
of the dynamic because you don't have that same proximity
and the ease or access to this other person. It
requires more of an investment, and if you're not willing
to keep that up, you have to be willing to
see that friendship fizzle out a little bit, not be
what it once was, or kind of hope that they return,
(09:32):
and it's one of those magical moments where it's kind
of right back to normal. So I think that's like
the first big change I've seen in my personal life.
The second factor has to do not just with specific friendships,
but an entire way of socializing. The older we get,
I think we lose some of our interest in the
ways we used to hang out with our friends when
(09:53):
we were eighteen or nineteen or even twenty, particularly to
do with the drinking culture. I know for me personally
that when I was at UNI, it was like binge
drinking central, like that was part of how we socialized,
that was part of how we spent out, you know, Thursday, Friday,
Saturday nights. It is this thing in psychology called bad
(10:15):
behavior bonding, where we sometimes find ourselves really attracted and
attached to people who are on an equally chaotic and
self destructive path or in that same place as us
in that moment, and then we enable each other. But
when one person decides it's kind of time to outgrow that,
(10:36):
that they've matured past that kind of chapter, it comes
at the cost of the friends they made through those behaviors.
I think eighteen year old Gemma would be shocked to
hear that. You know, I don't go clubbing really anymore.
I don't really want to be up to two am
on a weeknight. I want to be in bed, I
want to be watching Seinfeld. My threshold for social interaction,
(10:58):
and I think most people's threshold for social interaction has
lowered significantly as I've entered, like my mid twenties. Some
of that is obviously environmental, but also some of it
is just psychological and personal, like that's not what I'm
really interested in anymore. And then there's the other factor
of the fact that I have met someone that I
(11:19):
have a partner. Now, when we enter into a relationship,
this center of our social universe, our emotional universe or
solar system, it shifts away from our friendships and towards
our partner, And if you're not careful, you kind of
fall out of orbit with those around you. You know,
you want to spend as much time as possible with
(11:40):
this person that you're falling in love with. You want
to see them all the time, You want to invite
them to everything that you're doing. That can sometimes come
at the expense of those platonic relationships that you've maintained
for much longer than you've known this person. So I
think it's these like two to three parallel changes that
have left me feeling pretty isolated, perhaps feeling like I
(12:03):
haven't adapted as quickly to these situations as I could have. However,
I also recognize that in our twenties, we are writing
what I like to call the friendship roller coaster. The
friendship roller coaster is this phenomenon I've noticed whereby we
can feel incredibly happy and fulfilled by our friendships, almost
(12:25):
overwhelmed with love, you know, one day, and then three
days later you can end up in this total thought
spiral about how we have no one, how we're totally alone,
how no one wants to spend time with you know,
with us. As if three days earlier you hadn't been
having the best time, you hadn't been feeling totally validated.
(12:46):
That is the friendship roller coaster of our twenties. There
are a lot of really high highs and a lot
of really low lows, and normally at those low points,
nothing really has changed except our mental state. And it
goes to show how so much of our experience of
feeling isolated or lonely is entirely subjective, and it's based
(13:08):
on what I think is a very instinctial, inherent fear
of loneliness that is not always based on the truth.
It is a false alarm. That is why we are
so fearful of our friendships changing, because underneath that fear
is a much more primal fear of being alone, and
(13:29):
so we become really hyper vigilant to any cues, small
suggestions that point to the fact that our relationships are weakening,
that people are becoming more distant. Sometimes that is true.
As sad as it is, we are naturally going to
lose friends. It is unavoidable, and I want to talk
(13:51):
about why we see that so often in our twenties.
In particular, this decade is a period of transition all
of us. Career transition, mental transition, emotional transition, even physical transition.
As we've spoken about, as we kind of move, we scatter,
we pursue different paths. Everyone is kind of on their own,
(14:13):
you know, I know it sounds cheesy, but their own journey.
In that moment, we are all trying equally as hard
as everyone else to just figure out what we want
from life and how we can actually do those things.
It's interesting because I think although we are all the
same age, we are all almost at like different life points.
(14:34):
We've all hit different milestones. Some of us are still
living at home, some of us have moved in with
like partners. We're living abroad, some of us are still
at UNI. We are all at these very different stages.
Whereas for the first eighteen years of our lives. If
someone was our age, we could assume that they were
doing a lot of the same things as we were.
(14:55):
We were kind of living parallel lives because of the
structures of childhood and adults essense. But in our twenties
that all splinters. It's kind of like a life path explosion.
It's at this point of I don't want to say,
you know, upheaval, but like significant growth and impact that
(15:17):
we see the relationships around us change as well, and
they will continue to do so for the remainder of
our twenties and the remainder of our lives. One of
the biggest moments that I think we encounter this is
following university or high school. When we are at Uni,
we spend so much time together. There is just endless
(15:38):
opportunities to be around your friends, opportunities to laugh, to
have fun, and we are having this very shared experience.
We're working towards the same goal to you know, graduate
at the end of all this, and our friendships at
that point are really really convenient. You are living in
the same place, possibly the same town, even sometimes the
(15:58):
same building. You're well going to the library every day,
you are eating together every day, seeing each other as
much as you can, and when we no longer have
a those shared experiences or be the shared environment, we
slowly lose that closeness. And to understand this, we really
need to look at the psychological principles underlying friendship. These
(16:23):
researchers back in the nineties, they proposed it there are
for key ingredients or factors that can basically predict whether
you and someone else will become friends and also whether
you'll be able to maintain that friendship. And these ingredients
are proximity, similarity, familiarity, and reciprocity. So proximity basically just
(16:49):
means physical closeness. How easy is it for you to
see this person regularly. They did a study on this
at university dorm rooms, and they found that how close
people's rooms were to each other actually predicted the likelihood
of them becoming friends. A lot of our friendships basically
(17:09):
come down to the ease of contact and the frequency
of contact. Secondly, we have similarity. We're obviously going to
like someone more if they share the same interests, hobbies, lifestyle, beliefs,
is us. But this also includes similarity in terms of
current and past life experiences or a similar sharing a
(17:31):
similar environment. Then we have familiarity that refers to not
just how long we've known someone, how close we are
with them, but also the depth of the connection. You know,
sometimes we think that the people who have known us
the longest know us the best. That is not always
the case. Sometimes we meet people and there is just
(17:53):
this intense, intense spark, this intense platonic chemistry, such that
we all automatically immediately feel like we have known them
our whole lives. Familiarity is basically just close knowledge of
another person. And finally, we have reciprocity, which is knowing
that what you give someone in terms of your love,
(18:16):
in terms of your energy, in terms of your time,
is going to be returned, is going to be reciprocated.
So those are the most important factors When we talk
about our friendships changing in our twenties. Nine out of
ten times I would say that change normally comes down
to a shift in one of these four conditions. For example,
(18:40):
when people move away or they get really busy they
start full time work, we lose that proximity. It makes
it harder to see them. When we lose those shared
experiences like no longer being university together, we have less
to talk about. When we lose that familiarity, we feel
like this person no longer knows us. And when we
(19:01):
begin to see a friendship as one sided without that
reciprocity we were speaking about, this is when it makes
us question how much this person really wants us to
be in their life. What I often say is that
friendships can survive a reduction or a change in one
of these conditions, but not to so. For example, it's
(19:23):
totally fine if your friend gets really busy at work
and can only see you once a fortnight, once a month,
as long as you maintain that similarity, familiarity, reciprocity. You
make time when you have time, and you talk about
things that are interesting and you want to see them.
But if suddenly you no longer have those shared stories, beliefs, values, interests,
(19:48):
and then you also don't see them regularly, that is
when the friendship starts to crumble, or if the friend
is not reciprocating your excitement or your investment in seeing
them again, we really begin to question them value of
the friendship or how much longer it can last. I
want to stress this again. I know that that feels
really painful. But it's not abnormal. You are not the
(20:13):
only one who is either going through these changes themselves,
struggling to connect with people you once loved, or watching
someone else feel the same way about your friendship, watching
the people around you suddenly almost disappear. Friendships change because
people change, and sometimes they just don't change in the
(20:35):
same direction. That is not a crime. It is not
because there is something wrong with you or something wrong
with them. I think the worst thing we can do
in response to that is actually act from a place
of anger or rejection, because you're not actually angry at them,
You're just hurt. You're just scared of losing them. You're
(20:55):
just scared of change. And your sadness and your panic
is in it self and indicated that you love them deeply.
So I think when we are in those moments where
we are really fearful that we're losing people, feeling like
we should push them away or you know, sometimes find
a replacement, we do just need to pause and approach
this very rationally. This is all about a transition. It's
(21:19):
all about a journey and where you are at now
with your friends. Like we said, it is the friendship rollercoaster.
It may not be where you end up. There are
other factors as well that I think also alter our
friendships irreversibly, and that includes really significant events like a
(21:40):
big breach of trust, a betrayal, misunderstandings. I think these
things differ from what we were talking about before and
when we encounter those things. There are four kind of
friendship breakups that we most often see. These are the
friendship fizzle, the replacement sided severance, and the breakup where
(22:03):
really drastic measures are required. So I would say if
we have a look at our friendships, the mutual and
you know friendships from the past, the mutual fizzle is
most common. There are some people we are not meant
to be around our entire lives. We are only meant
to be with them for a season before it is,
(22:26):
you know, time for us to move on. Maybe this
person just no longer fills your cup in the same
way you are friends at work, Now you no longer
have that shared topic to discuss. They were your ex's friends.
The keyword though, here is mutual. We both kind of
understand that we aren't as close as we once were.
The context around us has changed, and perhaps it's time
(22:49):
to actually just let the other person. Go, stop trying
to reschedule the plans, just let it fizzle. Then we
have the replacement. This one really hurts. It hurts so much.
Sometimes we have this really intense relationship with someone. They're
our best friend, we do everything together, and then slowly
they start mentioning some other person more and more, they're
(23:12):
spending more time with them. We feel shut out or replaced,
or perhaps, as we were talking about, before they meet
someone they meet a boyfriend or a girlfriend or a partner,
even though we know that we are not entitled to
all of their time. A lot of this comes from
a very I think justified place of jealousy. And it's
(23:34):
a jealousy we typically think is reserved for romantic relationships.
But when you love someone as deeply as you love
this person, another individual's kind of entrance into your relationship
or like the equation can feel like a real threat.
And it's these friendships, I think, those very very very
close friendships that keep us quite grounded, that actually form
(23:57):
a huge part of our identity and how we see ourselves.
So when one person seemingly moves on or stops investing
as much or starts investing more in someone else. It
can quite honestly leave us feeling really lost, maybe feel
like we should be sharing our time around as well.
There's also a saying about these intense relationships that really
(24:20):
applies here. The flame that burns twice as bright burns
out quicker. I see this all the time with those
really high intensity friendships. You're kind of like addicted to them.
You put a lot of pressure on them more than
other friendships. You have this really high expectation, this high
level of time that you spend with each other, and
a lot of demands for the other person that I
(24:41):
think can rarely be sustained without the occasional break or
some very solid boundaries. And I don't think that those relationships,
those really intense relationships can survive very long without one
person in that kind of dynamic choosing to make a change,
(25:01):
which is why I think not only do they hurt
a lot, but we also see them ending quite frequently.
And then we have this one sided severance where without reason,
someone suddenly detaches, doesn't want to talk to you, doesn't
want to communicate with you, doesn't really offer you any
(25:23):
kind of explanation. That is just I can understand how
devastating that is, I've had that happen to me before.
Sometimes people have their reasons they don't want to share
them with you. That's fine, but you're kind of having
to go through a friendship breakup all on your own
without the closure. We have to go searching for the
(25:44):
answers ourselves. I think when a true friendship breakup actually occurs,
we kind of both understand why. We know what happened,
we know our role in it, we know what we
need to take accountability for. But when we have these
one sided severances, you really you're kind of left in
the dark. You're left looking for your own answers. I
really do believe that friendship breakups hurt so much more
(26:10):
than romantic breakups because we never expect them. Friendships always
feel so permanent, and as we get older we quickly
realize that they're not. It is okay to grieve what was,
to think about them, to want to reach out, but
it's also okay to recognize that, just like the end
of a romantic relationship, this might have been for the best.
(26:33):
Sometimes not only do we grow apart, but we begin
to kind of realize and recognize how this person has
caused friction in our lives may not have respected our boundaries,
or maybe there was some event where suddenly you saw
them in a new light and you're just shocked that
this is actually who they are and you've never seen
(26:56):
that before. I actually had someone tell me the other
day about a friendship breakup they had with their best
friend of eight years, and they went on vacation together,
and throughout this trip, this person slowly realized that her
and her friend could not be friends anymore, that when
she returned it would have to be over. Her friend
(27:18):
was cruel, would yell at her, would ignore her when
other people were around, wasn't willing to compromise. That is
not a relationship we should prioritize. And sometimes we don't
see those parts of someone until we see them in
a new situation like a wedding, like an engagement, like
a baby is coming, or one of you is experiencing
(27:41):
like a lot of really great success and the other
person is jealous. I guess in those situations, it's better
to kind of feel lonely than to be around someone
or trust someone who obviously doesn't have your best intentions
at heart. And I guess that's one of my main
premises or argument here. Not all friendships are meant to
(28:03):
last for a good reason, and our fear of loneliness
should not keep us in relationships that do not nurture
and build us up and make us better people. We
should not sacrifice our boundaries or our needs for the
sake of company. You can find company anywhere. You can
go to the local coffee shop and have a chat
(28:24):
with some nice lady in her sixties, and then you go,
bingo bango, you have a best friend. When we continue
to pour attention and time and energy into these dead
end relationships, we lose out on a lot of other
opportunities to meet people who might suit this chapter or
season of your life better, even if it takes some time.
(28:46):
The saying that I always come back to again and
again and again. It is impossible to keep every single
friend you've ever had, especially as you add new relationships,
when your life circumstances change, or when you become aware
of key differences in your values and characters. It does
not make you a bad person to want to move on,
(29:07):
but it also doesn't make you a bad person to
grieve and still know that that was necessary. So what
I really want to discuss next is how to manage
your kind of changing friendship landscape, whether it is you're
seeing more of the fizzle, or there has been a
friendship breakup or people have moved. What other dos and
don'ts of evolving friendships in our twenties, So all of
(29:31):
that and more after this short break. There are a
few common misconceptions about friendships that I think make us
feel particularly panicked when we notice things changing in our twenties.
The first one that I think is perpetrated, especially during
(29:54):
this decade, is that we need to have a massive
group of friends in order to be happy. This personally
drives me insane because I have never been someone who
has had this one big, jolly group of friends who
do everything together. And I personally blame shows like Friends
and New Girl for this idea that we need this
(30:18):
one tight group of people from ages like ten to
sixty or whatever like for our entire adult life in
order to be happy, or this argument that we can't
be equally fulfilled by one on one friendships. When we
strip it down, what we really need friends for is trust, comfort, love,
(30:41):
and belonging, And it doesn't matter what form that comes in.
It doesn't matter if it's a huge group situation, or
if it looks different to what we see others doing,
you know, in social media, or what we see other
people doing online, or in the movies and the TV
shows that we watch. A lot of that is fiction.
And I don't think that we should buy into this
(31:03):
idea that just because you've never had a big group
of girlfriends or a big group of friends, that somehow
you are lonelier than the rest. The second biggest misconception
is that you should continue a friendship because you owe
it to them, either due to the length of time
that you've known each other or maybe because they have
(31:26):
a lot going on in their life. One therapist calls
this a sense of emotional servitude because it involves putting
effort towards a friendship, as if you're paying off a
debt or paying off you know, or paying them this
like energy this time without ever getting anything back for you,
like you are doing the emotional labor for this other person.
(31:46):
And I see this a lot with friends in a
situation where one party is really going through something really difficult,
but despite that, has no respect for the wellbeing of
the other person, has no appreciation for the other person's
boundaries has no appreciation for what the other person needs.
Sometimes that's understandable, right, if you're going through a really
(32:07):
hard season in life, you're not always that aware of
what other people are are doing. Empathy is kind of
not something that you can prioritize at that moment. But
that does not mean that you are not allowed to
set boundaries with this person just because you're afraid of
appearing disloyal or you're afraid of upsetting them. Right, that relationship,
(32:28):
when it gets to that point is actually, if you
maintain it without setting up proper parameters or limits, is
going to do a lot more harm than good. It
is going to end up hurting both of you. And
we see that a lot with people that have also
been friends with someone for a really long time, and
(32:49):
even though they just have nothing in common anymore, even
though this person may drain their energy may actually make
them feel bad about themselves, they stay because they don't
want to be labeled as someone who leaves. And I
think when you hold on too tight to people who
don't want to maintain their relationship or who don't appreciate you,
(33:10):
you're basically carrying a dead weight that is holding you
back from a new season of friendship and a new
season of connection for you. The third misconception is that
it's too late for you to make new friends, that
by our twenties we should already know the people who
will be in our wedding party, or be our children's godparents,
(33:33):
or who will mourn at their funeral. I think that
is absolutely incorrect. Research has shown that we replace half
of our friends every seven years up until old age,
which is to say that we are constantly in a
state of pruning our friendships, letting go of certain friends,
letting them drift, and then subsequently making new ones throughout life.
(33:59):
I read an article that put it really, really well
that you're not going to be the same person your
entire life, and you cannot expect other people to be
the same version of themselves as well. You have changed
so much in the past ten years, five years, even
the last six months, so it makes sense that those
around you those relationships have also shifted with time. Yes,
(34:22):
there might be certain friendships that have evolved to align
with this new version of you and this new version
of themselves, but it's sometimes just not feasible for you
to keep up with every single person who has known
you since you were a child, who is no new
since you were a teenager. There's just not enough time
(34:43):
in the week, like there genuinely just isn't enough time
in the day to maintain connections with everybody. So you
need to give yourself, I think, space to make new
friendships that might fulfill you more with being scared that
you will never find anybody. I kind of want to
(35:04):
reiterate that do not hold on to these relationships just
because you're scared that no one will fill their place
or feel that social need in your life. I think
that there are so many people that will just show
up in your life one day by surprise and change everything,
but you do need to leave space for them. And
(35:24):
leaving space means the following. Don't adopt the philosophy that
you already have all the friends you need. It may
feel true, but you never know. You truly never know
how much opening yourself up to that one extra person
could really like change everything for you. Also say yes
to things even when they scare you, to invitations to activities,
(35:47):
to joining sports clubs and your hobbies. Take on the
philosophy that everyone wants to be your friend. You are
magnetic you attract really good people. Don't isolate yourself by
thinking that you can only be friends with one type
of person, or that the length of time you've been
(36:09):
friends with someone is the only factor in your closeness,
is the only kind of indicator of compatibility. I think
that we buy into that a lot, that just because
we've known someone the longest must mean that they are
our best friend. And time and time again we see
that that is not true, That compatibility and chemistry and
(36:32):
love and platonic intimacy work in really strange and surprising ways.
And with that, do not buy into this idea that
you are past your friendship prime, because when you believe
that there was a time and a place to make
your lifelong friends, you've missed it. You've missed the boat.
You're subconsciously going to be less likely to initiate new conversations,
(36:57):
new connections, new relationships, because do you already feel like
you've lost, You already feel like you're behind. I also
think it's very important to not respond with fear when
we feel our kind of friendship landscape shifting, because fear
will have you reacting in ways that are irrational and
actually counter to your true intentions, which is to foster
(37:18):
deep love with those around you to feel like you belong.
Perceived rejection can really sting, But just because your relationship
has changed doesn't mean that it needs to be completely discarded.
I think about my friendships at least a lot of
the time in terms of levels. You have your top
rung kind of your ride or die friendships, then those
(37:40):
friends that you maybe wished you saw more or you're
slightly less close to it the moment you've got your
work friends, You've got your acquaintances who you would very
kindly have a chat with in the street and know
a little bit about their life but you're not super
close to. And then you have strangers. Maybe this person,
(38:02):
this person that you were thinking about right now, this
friend is just sitting at a rung lower than normal.
Does that mean that they need to be completely relegated
to the strangers category? Probably not. They're just at a
different point in their relationship to you. But you should
keep the door open for them to come back in,
(38:25):
for them to promote themselves back up to top wrong. Obviously,
this does not apply to friends who have totally crossed
boundaries with you or who have treated you terribly, but
just those who have maybe just have different priorities right now,
give them the grace that you would want in that situation.
So I actually have a story about this. I have
(38:45):
a very very close friend of mine, possibly my longest friend,
and we were incredibly close for the first three or
four years that we after we'd met, like we did
everything together, we knew everything about each other life. And
then we went through this period almost randomly without any
(39:05):
context of just like complete disconnect. We saw each other rarely.
I really did feel, like for certain that the friendship
was over, and it was really upsetting. It weighed really
heavily on my mind. But I didn't want to close
the door, and I know that she didn't want to either,
and lo and behold. Two years on, I think even
(39:26):
a little bit longer than that, now, like three or
four years on, we are back to that same level
of closeness, maybe even closer. She is one of the
best people in my life. And I think it's because
we gave each other permission, maybe even subconsciously, to follow
our own paths that our friendship has allowed to you know,
is allowed to be this strong because we've seen it
(39:47):
through moments of tension and moments of change, and we
knew that either we would come back to each other
or we wouldn't, and we would still be incredibly happy
for the other person. Change does not mean death, It
does not mean the end. The best kinds of friendships
change and evolve despite factors like time and proximity. Don't panic.
(40:13):
I promise the fear you have is temporary, and alongside that,
that fear may also motivate you to make new friends,
to go out there, and I don't know, actually put
yourself in a position that you haven't had to before.
Put yourself in a position where friendship isn't as convenient
and at once as it once was, but now you have,
(40:36):
you know, the opportunity to choose right. Someone once said
to me. I was asking this person. He was like,
I don't really have many friends, and I was like, why,
you know, aren't you lonely? Why don't Why wouldn't you
want a million friends? And he was like, well, the
people around you are who you become. And so I
think that it's actually worthwhile to be a little bit
picky when it comes to that. And maybe if you
(40:58):
are at a place where you are quite isolated, and
you are, you know, quite lonely. You have seen a
lot of friendships change. Instead of viewing it as this
like negative, like life ending thing of like I'm never
going to have what I once had, I'm never going
to feel connected or like I belong again, view it
(41:20):
as a new beginning. Be like wow, I get to
like I get to create the life that I want here.
I get to make the friendships that I would like
to make. I get to be surprised by the people
who are one day just going to walk in the
door and completely change who I am. I think loneliness
is just an emotion. It is just a message from
(41:41):
our mind telling us what we need. The same way
that hunger tells us. You know that our body needs
fuel or first tells us that we need hydration. Loneliness
and feeling disconnected to people tells you that it's time
to reach out. And I guess that's my final tip here.
Be honest with your friends. You would like to see
them more or you would like to chat more often.
(42:04):
I did this the other day with my friend's Steph
whereab I was like, I'm on the friendship roller coaster
right now and I'm at a dip. Can we make
time to see each other? And of course she said yes.
That openness, that vulnerability is vital here because often others
in our life don't really know what we're going through.
They don't know how we're feeling. They may not have
(42:26):
noticed what we have noticed that we have drifted. So
you can choose to say nothing, or you can choose
to be honest with with how you feel in that moment.
And ninety percent of the time, the people who truly
love you want you to be happy, and they will
respond positively to that, and they will make time for you.
It is just a matter of reaching out. And you
(42:48):
know what, in case I haven't said it enough times,
this is not just you. I know it's hard. Change
is hard. Human beings naturally fear change, isolation is hard.
But do not blame yourself or start to internalize what
are actually really common transitions here as a sign that
(43:09):
there is something wrong with you, or that you are
undeserving of good, long lasting friendships. You absolutely are, you
just may not have found them yet. I always think
of this quote and it brings me so much peace
and kind of these moments of catastrophizing you haven't yet
met all the people who you will love in this life,
and I think that is so beautiful. How magical is
it to imagine all of the people who are now
(43:31):
strangers one day being individuals in your life who you
won't be able to live without. These people who you
will one day meet, who will tell you the story
of the life they are now living. We are so young.
Sometimes it's so impossible to really appreciate how young we are.
It is not the end of the road. There is
(43:52):
so much more love to experience. And like we said,
there has been so many studies that have shown that
not only is this incredibly but a lot of us replace,
you know, fifty percent of our friends, eighty percent of
our friends every seven years. You are just in a
transition period right now, along with many many others, one
that you will come out of and you'll be able
(44:15):
to look back at and say I needed that to happen.
I needed to see these friendships fade away. I needed
to be alone for a while in order to really
appreciate how beautiful these new people in my life are.
So I really hope that this episode has helped normalize
this experience. There. I totally understand the fear. Please. I
(44:40):
feel like I live this fear every day, so it
was actually quite comforting to discuss this and to kind
of explore I think some of the reasons behind why
we see that happen. I really do hope that you
enjoyed this episode. I hope it brought you comfort. As always,
if you feel like there is someone in your life
who feels this who needs to hear this episode, please
(45:03):
feel free to sell them a link to share it along,
to share the love along, leave a five star review
if you feel coold to do so, and make sure
your following so that you know when new episodes come out.
If you have an episode suggestion as well, please follow
us at that Psychology podcast on Instagram. I love hearing
(45:24):
from you guys. I love hearing about what your twenties
has been like. You guys always have the most amazing
suggestions for topics I have never considered before, So follow
us over there, and as always, we will be back
next week with another episode.
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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