🧵 Thursday Thread: On Longing and Loneliness
Do you feel like you have enough friends? How do you know?
In our thread two weeks ago, the Friendship Experiment Thursday Thread, community members connected with each other for local and online meetups around all kinds of shared interests. Not just writing, but walking, swimming, full moon bonfires, and so much more. If you have not checked out that thread, you might want to.
After all, we’re apparently in what researchers call a “friendship recession.” Just a couple of facts on that:
The average number of close friends has declined: in 1990, 33% of Americans had 10+ close friends; by 2021, just 13% did.
Chronic declines in social connectedness are linked to higher rates of loneliness, poorer sleep, and greater risk of heart disease, depression, and premature death.
So, seeing those fledgling connections in our friendship thread has been so very inspiring to me, and it’s gotten me thinking a lot (again) about my own experience with friendship, which I’ve really had to work at in adulthood. I had to work at it in childhood and adolescence, too. It was hard to make and keep friends when my family moved every year or two. Being thrust into foster care in high school was an even huger impediment to sustaining friendships.
Almost immediately thereafter, getting married at 21 and becoming a mom at 22—and moving that same year to an isolated rural community—had a significant and lasting impact on my social life. I didn’t know any other young moms; the other moms around me were mostly ten years or more older than I was. Which was fine, but the gap between 22 and 32 is a pretty significant one in terms of social development. I had just kind of gotten my footing by the time I turned 32 myself, and then came my divorce.
Once again, back to square one, or, at least, mostly.
I could go on, but the point I am making is that my early imprinting with regard to making and keeping friends as my family moved from one apartment and house to another, one city and state to another, was effortful—and to some degree, I feel the effects of that struggle—that guardedness I developed as a self-defense mechanism—have persisted even into my current life. But because I am aware of this struggle that lives inside of me, I at least now work to transform it when I feel my old guardedness rise up.
I work at transforming it because I have come to see all the ways in which it just does not serve me. I feel that now, at age 57, entering what I think of as my third chapter, I want to know and be close to as many people as possible. I want to nurture as many friendships as I can in the time I have left. I want to be curious about everyone and wide open to new friendships while also being a good and loving steward of the friendships I’ve already cultivated and preserved so far.
I’m curious about all of you. What has been your journey with friendship Hearing each other’s thoughts on and experiences with friendship can be so illuminating—and it can also make us feel more seen, known, and understood.
Here’s a few more questions to get us started:
Friendship Over Time
Has your friendship style changed between childhood, adolescence, and adulthood?
Have you, like me, changed in regard to your beliefs and behaviors around friendship?
What about your parents as examples? Did they have lots of friends? Few friends? Does your social life resemble theirs, or depart from it?
Longing & Loneliness
Do you feel like you have enough friends? How do you know?
What kind of friendship do you secretly long for but feel embarrassed to admit?
When was the last time you felt truly known by a friend—not just liked or understood, but recognized at the core?
Change & Loss
Which friendship haunts you the most—the one that ended, faded, or never became what you hoped?
What does it mean when an old friend no longer fits your life? Is that a failure—or something else?
Have you ever grieved the end of a friendship more than the end of a romantic relationship? Why do you think that is?
If none of these questions call to you, feel free to riff on any friendship related theme that calls to you.
Love,
Jeannine
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