Do you still consider childhood/high school friends your friends if you lost touch with them?

[Augie]

9 minutes ago, Joe Ferguson forever said:

17 jersey all day today

 

I hear ya! 

 

But the OJ jerseys were hot too.  🤷‍♂️

 

That is just ME. I fully realize I am the oddball here, so there is no need to pile on and explain why I am an idiot. I will stipulate that. 😋

[Another Fan]

7 hours ago, dpberr said:

Absolutely.

 

I think men value friendships built around shared experience much more than women do and are better at both building them and maintaining them.   The subconscious reason we all post here every day is that at its core.  It holds true for school and experiences like serving in the military, or you were a member of a core group of employees at a company.  Shared experience binds.  

 

Also, you crave friendships more as you age despite any outwardly curmudgeon status.  Especially for men, life can get lonely once you're out of college.  That loneliness compounds significantly when the kids are out of the house and then when you retire.   I think that's why a lot of people who blew off high school and college reunions in their 20s-30s, are avid, devoted reunion attendees in their 50s, 60s, 70s.   

Yeah my Dad who is in his early 70s was going to go to his college roommates door and knock on it after 40 plus years of no contact.  I suggested to him you know could that be considered stalking and thought social media would be the better option!   He couldn’t find his old friend on it though.   He hasn’t actually done it yet but his thought was I’m not going be on the planet much longer.  Why not?   
 

To some extent I understand his logic.  He’s more open now to friendships with old classmates than he used to be.  I think he said he joined a Facebook group for his high school graduating class or something like that 

[That's No Moon]

I probably suck, but I look at friends as people who come in and out of your life at a particular place at a particular time.  Sometimes you stay friends for a long time because that thing that brought you together stays constant, sometimes you drift apart and that's ok.  It's not that I don't like you anymore it's just that the thing that bonded us in the first place is gone. You have your stuff, I have my stuff. Rather than try to force that relationship to continue it's ok to let it fade and make new connections in your current place and time.  Out of all the people I considered friends in grade school or high school I still talk to one on a semi-regular basis.  He's a great dude, love him to death, but we've lived 300+ miles apart for almost 30 years now.  We've both moved on and grown in ours lives.  We touch base every now and again and it's nice to do that and if we lived closer it would be much easier to reestablish that bond but as it is I'm good with it.  Out of all my college friends I still talk to 3 and I only see one of them regularly. Not including the one I ended up marrying. I see her every day.  The one I see regularly lives near me, the other two don't hence I don't see them often.  Friends from former jobs? Yeah, nobody.

 

Grade school/high school people are hard. So many grew up to be so different from what you knew. I have people I used to know who are in prison for some unpleasant things and that's not the person I knew when I was a kid.  A bunch of my high school friends are dead. Several didn't make it out of their 20's. One of my college friends died before we got out of college.

 

I also don't do the social media thing anymore which probably makes it more difficult, but to be honest I feel like all of the is totally superficial and not really relationship maintenance.  It's LAMPing 99% of the time with the other 1% being heinous crap that makes you question why you liked them in the first place. Deleting all of that was the best move I've made in the last 10 years.  You miss the dopamine hits at first, but once that stops, you don't miss it at all and you become glad you're not part of it.

[Fr. Jerk]

No, ya dig?

[Augie]

On 11/13/2023 at 7:03 PM, That's No Moon said:

I probably suck, but I look at friends as people who come in and out of your life at a particular place at a particular time.  Sometimes you stay friends for a long time because that thing that brought you together stays constant, sometimes you drift apart and that's ok.  It's not that I don't like you anymore it's just that the thing that bonded us in the first place is gone. You have your stuff, I have my stuff. Rather than try to force that relationship to continue it's ok to let it fade and make new connections in your current place and time.  Out of all the people I considered friends in grade school or high school I still talk to one on a semi-regular basis.  He's a great dude, love him to death, but we've lived 300+ miles apart for almost 30 years now.  We've both moved on and grown in ours lives.  We touch base every now and again and it's nice to do that and if we lived closer it would be much easier to reestablish that bond but as it is I'm good with it.  Out of all my college friends I still talk to 3 and I only see one of them regularly. Not including the one I ended up marrying. I see her every day.  The one I see regularly lives near me, the other two don't hence I don't see them often.  Friends from former jobs? Yeah, nobody.

 

Grade school/high school people are hard. So many grew up to be so different from what you knew. I have people I used to know who are in prison for some unpleasant things and that's not the person I knew when I was a kid.  A bunch of my high school friends are dead. Several didn't make it out of their 20's. One of my college friends died before we got out of college.

 

 I also don't do the social media thing anymore which probably makes it more difficult, but to be honest I feel like all of the is totally superficial and not really relationship maintenance.  It's LAMPing 99% of the time with the other 1% being heinous crap that makes you question why you liked them in the first place. Deleting all of that was the best move I've made in the last 10 years.  You miss the dopamine hits at first, but once that stops, you don't miss it at all and you become glad you're not part of it.

 

My wife went to a sorority reunion at the beach. Her best friend arrived and asked “OK, what’s up with everybody? Not the FaceBook BS, what’s really going on? I’ll start, I have one kid in prison, one in rehab and a doctor and a lawyer.”  Things got pretty “real” as they say quickly after that. 

 

Your real, true friends are the ones you go to with the rough stuff. Everybody is there for the birthdays and graduations. Who is there to help you move or take you to the airport at an odd time? Who will go bail your kid out if you need it? Those are your true friends. 

 

 

. 

Edited November 15, 2023 by Augie

[WotAGuy]

I hate people so, no.  

[EmotionallyUnstable]

If you were friends and ended on good terms/lost contact for whatever reason, they are your “old buddies”

 

Friends stay in regular communication of some IMO, even if it’s texts, calls, etc.

[Just Jack]

I have a lot of high school classmates I consider friends, but the only time we communicate is through FB posts.  Several still live in the area, so we could get together regularly but we don't.  

[BillsPride12]

7 hours ago, Just Jack said:

I have a lot of high school classmates I consider friends, but the only time we communicate is through FB posts.  Several still live in the area, so we could get together regularly but we don't.  

That sounds like how life is in WNY too.  The problem is once you get to a certain age(30's are a big change from 20's) life just gets so busy and people don't have the free time to hang out like they used to.  There's a lot of people I don't talk to or see anymore and it just happened naturally because people are too busy it wasn't due to some sort of falling out.  

[Gugny]

If I haven’t actually hung out with them in person or spoken to them on the phone for decades, then I’d consider them “old friends from high school.”

 

I have a lot of those and am facebook “friends” with them. But I still consider them “old” friends. 
 

If I’m in contact with a person occasionally throughout the year, then yes … I call those people friends. 

[Augie]

2 hours ago, Gugny said:

If I haven’t actually hung out with them in person or spoken to them on the phone for decades, then I’d consider them “old friends from high school.”

 

I have a lot of those and am facebook “friends” with them. But I still consider them “old” friends. 
 

If I’m in contact with a person occasionally throughout the year, then yes … I call those people friends. 

 

I consider some of those people current friends if they take the time to keep renewing the restraining order.   😋

 

 

We have some old friends, I mean from decades back, who never miss a birthday or Christmas card. They are busy people too, but they give it a higher level of importance than most of us. The effort is appreciated. One lady in particular we met about 30 years ago, and moved away from them 13 years ago. Just last month the wife went to D.C. for her son’s wedding. 

 

I think the right answer is…….it depends. 

[Draconator]

I'm still in contact with a number of high school friends. I was in drama club, and the jock always went after us drama geeks. The one jock who stood up for us was the QB of the varsity football team. These days, he is 5 years into his battle with ALS. We go to the movies regularly. He's lost all ability to talk, but he can still walk and get in my car to drive to the theatre. 

 

The very first girl I ever kissed passed away a couple of years ago from cancer. We openly admitted that that was a special thing for us. 

[f0neguy]

I grew up in a small town in the southern tier where everyone knew everyone.  We all graduated in 75-77.  We get together for a weekend every three years or so.  Folks bring tents or campers, set up in a guys yard (who still lives in the same town) and eat and drink too much.  Last time we got together we had 20+ people (original kids and some spouses).  We’re all in our 60’s and we’re looking forward to the next one.

 

Don’t want to jinx anyone but we’re all still pretty healthy.