![]() To go along with their newly sophisticated approach to friendship, young adults also have time to devote to their friends. By young adulthood, people are usually a little more secure in themselves, more likely to seek out friends who share their values on the important things, and let the little things be. “They’ll change.” How many band T-shirts from Hot Topic end up sadly crumpled at the bottom of dresser drawers because the owners’ friends said the band was lame? The world may never know. Their friendships help them do that.īut “in adolescence, people have a really tractable self,” Rawlins says. In childhood, friends are mostly other kids who are fun to play with in adolescence, there’s a lot more self-disclosure and support between friends, but adolescents are still discovering their identity, and learning what it means to be intimate. “Especially for people who have the privilege and the blessing of being able to go to college.”ĭuring young adulthood, friendships become more complex and meaningful. “I think young adulthood is the golden age for forming friendships,” Rawlins says. The saga of adult friendship starts off well enough. But as life accelerates, people’s priorities and responsibilities shift, and friendships are affected, for better or, often, sadly, for worse. Throughout life, from grade school to the retirement home, friendship continues to confer health benefits, both mental and physical. The beautiful, special thing about friendship, that friends are friends because they want to be, that they choose each other, is “a double agent,” Langan says, “because I can choose to get in, and I can choose to get out.” The voluntary nature of friendship makes it subject to life’s whims in a way other relationships aren’t. But where once you could run over to Jonny’s house at a moment’s notice and see if he could come out to play, now you have to ask Jonny if he has a couple hours to get a drink in two weeks. You’re stuck with your family, and you’ll prioritize your spouse. ![]() In adulthood, as people grow up and go away, friendships are the relationships most likely to take a hit. The voluntary nature of friendship makes it subject to life’s whims in a way that more formal relationships aren’t. These expectations remain the same, but the circumstances under which they’re accomplished change.” “Somebody to talk to, someone to depend on, and someone to enjoy. “I’ve listened to someone as young as 14 and someone as old as 100 talk about their close friends, and three expectations of a close friend that I hear people describing and valuing across the entire life course,” says William Rawlins, the Stocker Professor of Interpersonal Communication at Ohio University. ![]() And though friendships tend to change as people age, there is some consistency in what people want from them. Still, survey upon survey upon survey shows how important people’s friends are to their happiness. You wouldn’t go months without speaking with or seeing your significant other (hopefully), but you might go that long without contacting a friend. And unlike other voluntary bonds, such as marriages and romantic relationships, they lack a formal structure. Sometimes it’s a panel, if that.”įriendships are unique relationships because unlike family relationships, we choose to enter into them. When Emily Langan, an associate communication professor at Wheaton College, goes to conferences for the International Association of Relationship Researchers, she says, “friendship is the smallest cluster there. This is true in life, and in science, where relationship research tends to focus on couples and families. Romantic partners, parents, children-all these come first. In the hierarchy of relationships, friendships are at the bottom. This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday.
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