To think that transient friendships are not necessarily a bad thing

[andintothefire]

This morning I have been feeling slightly nostalgic about the six or seven years I spent in another city at school and university. I was very happy there at times, and it just struck me how many people I was friends with then but no longer see. A lot of my friends were people I did various hobbies with over a number of years. Others were people who I counted as good friends at the time and had a lot of fun with.

I suppose my AIBU is this.. I think it is very easy to feel sad at having lost touch with people, particularly given that they were my friends at a very important time for me as a young adult. Facebook obviously makes it easier at least to pretend that you have kept in touch. However, AIBU to think that actually there is something beautiful about going through life making different groups of friends at different points, and letting them go naturally as you move on to a different stage in your life? Obviously I have a handful of close friends who I hope will be there for life, but I just wonder if perhaps there is something enriching about having different transient friendship groups.

Has anybody else felt this? Or should I feel sad at those friendships being long over?

I feel the same. Sometimes people are there just at the right time in your life. Just because something doesn't last, it doesn't mean it isn't a great part in your life.

Agree.

Also would be abit odd not to mention unmanageable if you properly kept up with everyone you hung out with/liked at every stage of your life.

The rowing club at university. The young professional crowd I went drinking with after work in my twenties, the international friends I made when in the City. The NCT group now living all over the world. Now have a DH, two kids and a business there is no way on earth I could maintain proper contact with all these people no matter how nice some of them are.

Our friends now all have kids the same age and live 1 square mile from our house and that is no accident!

Agreed. I have lots of friends from various stages in life. We are different people now but at the time it was great and fun and we gave each other the type of support we needed then. We probably wouldn't click now, although I have them all on FB and wish them well. Everyone is up to different things and I think of them fondly. Nothing wrong with that at all!

Couldn't agree more. Some people are there at the right time in your life but wouldn't fit in now but that doesn't make the friendship any less worthy.

I have a couple of friends who were really important to me in the past but when we've tried to reconnect recently we've realised that it doesn't work now due to our current circumstances... still care for them dearly.

Agreed. I spent a year back in my home town a while ago, and got really friendly with a girl I knew from school but we had never been friends. We had a fantastic year, did lots together and had a real laugh. When I moved away the friendship fizzled out.

I don't feel sad that were no longer friends, I feel happy that we were both in the right place at he right time and looking for the same thing in friends for that year.

I think about this a lot OP, and maybe I should start thinking like you and appreciate old friendships for what they were.. I look back and feel sad at all the people I've lost touch with and drifted off from, and feel the urge to start it up again.. But it will probably be different. I think I just have seen too many weddings where people have invited every friend they've ever had, and I feel like I would want my old friends at mine, but would be awkward if I hadn't seen them in years! But then if I didn't then I wouldn't have many people to invite. It's one of the things that puts me off getting married, because my 'current' friends are few. I wish I was the social butterfly who kept in touch with everyone!

I've found this mainly happens when I've been in a group- I worked with an amazing group of colleagues in my early twenties and we socialized out of work all the time, similarly I had a group of friends in mid-late twenties and we went out as a pack for years. I'm not in touch with most of them now, but have very fond memories of that time.

Once I've made closer one-to-one friendships, I tend to keep in touch then, but they are much sparser. Once I've really bonded with a friend, I would keep in touch with them over the years, if that's what they wanted too.