To ask how you cope with friendship abandonment anxiety

[OptimismvsRealism]

I think my best friend (I know this is a weird term for adults!!! I don't use it in real life but it's true) is going to move a few hundred miles away. We see each other at least once a week - it is going to be so upsetting. We've known each other since we were 12 (30 years).

Over the last few years I've lost a couple of friends and I hate it (one because her husband told her to stop speaking to me as he disliked me and the other I have no idea I think issues of her own) and I know it's not too late to make new friends and life is complicated and social relationships are always in flux but I feel so sad about it. I don't want to end up with no friends I really don't do well with only my own company.

Maybe (probably )I need therapy.

But before that - how do you handle this stuff? Maybe I am being too sensitive and need to grow up. Friends are probably a post industrial revolution luxury anyway.

Irony bump

I guess adults need to either become more sociable or accept a quiet life

I regret the friends I've lost so much

Well, life eh

Friends really do appear to be a post industrial revolution luxury these days; I know exactly what you mean! It will be hard, but you can make new friends at any age with some effort.
You can also keep the old friend if you work at it.

I know you're right - in the modern age it should be easy for us to keep in touch and if I can stay positive there will be new friends. I just fear loneliness so much. I have had times living away from home where it has felt so hard to make connection and I think that has shaped me.

I should work harder and stop being such a moany cow. A chat over coffee per week is more than our ancestors got!

No suggestions OP but sympathy. I spend a lot of my life feeling quite lonely. I had a really close best friend but she moved a bit further away (still under an hour) and I had a baby; the combination meant we hardly ever see each other now and she has such a busy job she barely even replies to my texts. It makes me so sad.

I don't think you are being moany at all. I think our lives are far more lonely these days as social media friendships have taken over. I often crave connection and am not ashamed to say so. Sometimes I get it, sometimes I don't. I have moved around a bit and lost a lot of friends due to that, and other reasons.

The older I get the more I think we're too blazé as a society about moving around. When you're young adventure makes perfect sense but now I just think social connection back to the beginning are so precious. I know easy to say now I've done my adventure and no doubt other people just have a great time and never look back.

I find being socially anxious makes it worse :(

Lucky to have my partner and a place away from the maelstrom, though.

What was your 'adventure'? I don't think people are necessarily prioritising social connection by not moving around, I think it just doesn't occur to some people as a possibility, while others are driven further afield by jobs, or migrate for economic reasons -- I left my home country with virtually all my graduating class because there were no jobs, and only returned nearly 30 years later.

I also don't think that moving around deprives you of longtime friendships. My closest friends/family members I'm also friends with are scattered around the world, and I've lived longterm in five different countries. My friends are really important to me. I'm currently in France staying with French friends from my postgraduate days in the UK, and last night we had dinner with their former neighbours, who now live in Vienna. We had the teenage son of old friends from the US to stay with us earlier this year for an internship in DH's workplace. At one point, my closest friend was living in Iceland while I lived in the ME.

If you want to stay in touch, you put your energy and imagination into it. And money and house room, too. You have people to stay with you, and you travel to them. When a friend of mine was in hospital during Covid, I travelled for four hours by train and taxi to sit under her window so we could talk on the phone and see one another, even if only in the distance through glass.

I know that what you are going to miss with your departing friend is just having her nearby, and not having to seek her out, but if this friendship matters so much to you, you will find a way to keep it going.

(And yes, therapy would be a good idea to talk through your fears.)

Nice post @FemurRobinson . I have not been as successful as you in keeping friends, but you give me hope.