Friendship

[mamad]

what do you do when your best friend grow in different direction and you have less in common.

do you reduce the interaction and make it less intimate or you still stay close together?

[ValiantSalvatore]

I've made the "mistake" to still produce a lot of effort as I truely in a comradery sense loved my best friend. Yet, I noticed I liked people more who are on my new life path. Simply because of the shared level of experience. We still meet from time to time, yet in my personal experience it's just not the same anymore. I would not produce as much effort as I did in the past and put that energy into finding new like minded people. Although it feels very good to connect back. I think this is just normal as interests grow and develop. 

Even when you are far apart in your life path, you can still feel connected and interact from time to time. That's my opinion and experience. 

If you both interact in a way that indicates you both can stay close together I would definitely cherish and enjoy it as long as it is there, otherwise not.

 

[Tim R]

Best friend becomes ex best friend. Not over night, but slowly, steadily. It happens, people develop in different directions. And then, all they share in common is a set of memories (and perhaps some of the old traits). I wouldn't intentionally reduce interaction (I didn't with my ex best friend), let it develop naturally. Stay in touch to the degree you want. 

[Yarco]

You can be friends with people on a shallow level. It's fine to meet up with friends from school just to have dinner or play video games once a month. Just try to grow your social circles and meet new people to fill up most of your time. The saying that you're the sum of the 5 people you spend the most time with is pretty true.

 

[somegirl]

@mamad you just stop being friends in that case. It's natural and is part of life. 

[Cathal]

that has been difficult. i pretty much had one decent friend my whole life since i was 13, so 12 years now, who i never disliked no matter what and we bonded through our love for fantasy worlds, mmorpgs, pussy and science.

we both started to get pretty mentally fucked when we left school, but we stayed in contact on and off. eventually we started messaging each other about our mental issues like being suicidal (kind of generic guys who don't talk about those things) and yeah. i tried to make him aware of how powerful psychedelics were to show him that this one deep crevasse of perception (mainly deeeeep depression) doesn't have to be the only experience of life and i just know it would blow his fucking mind as it did me but he's too sceptical, we were seriously materialistic anti-religious atheist kinds of people.

i think at some point he'll do it and see more truth and pull himself out of his rut because he talked to me about ending it a few times. there is like this kind of trust i could never find with other people, he is a really nice guy

we just say wassup every several months now

[NoSelfSelf]

I have friend that we meet once every 3-4 months...i created the list of importance for how much i put in the effort in people, if you are on top you get vip status,if you are on bottom its superficial friendship..rang people based on importance and how much you are in same boat...

[Vivaldo]

@mamad depends....

You need to understand if they want to be friends or not. And you should not expect anything from them. 

[puporing]

Drifting apart is a natural part of life especially if you're growing alot and/or in different directions, you can still have love and compassion toward them, appreciation for the times you've had, whilst moving on.. sometimes this happens mutually other times you might have to have a more explicit conversation so the other person isn't utterly confused by it.

Edited January 13, 2022 by puporing