How often do you speak to close friends?

[forgottenfriend]

Just that really. I don't mean on the phone, can be messages.

How often do you speak to friends you would consider 'close'? Even if its just a few quick messages?

I'm feeling pretty lonely. I don't have many friends and am single. But i'm starting to realise more and more, that my 'close' friends possibly don't put me in the same category. Say I have 3 close friends. All early - mid 30s.

Friend 1 - Known for 15 years. Don't message as much as we used to, but thats mainly from her side, I'd love to speak much more. I always aim to respond the same day if not day after. I am waiting for a response to a message sent from me on New Years Day where we exchanged some messages wishing each other NYE and asked each other what we had done to bring in the new year. The conversation has come to end, but not because of me and in the last message I had actually asked some questions that have gone unanwsered. She is married and has 2 kids.

Friend 2 - Long term friendship, can tell and trust each other with anything. But can go weeks without any contact from her. Meanwhile she updates her Socials and I know from seeing her in person she is always chatting on messenger to someone. We both make the effort to arrange meetings every month or so, but these few weeks of radio silence in between don't feel like how a close friend should be? Like I don't figure in her world hardly at all and feel like i'm hardly thought about. She is single.

Friend 3 - Came back to the area for Christmas, when I messaged her before hand she told me she 'couldn't wait to see me'. I left it when she returned to see if she would get in touch. Apart from a generic Merry Christmas and HNY, theres been nothing and so we didn't end up meeting up. She is single but has lots of other friends.

Just interested to know if this is normal in thirty somethings friendships. I don't feel as close to my 'friends' that I did in my 20s but I don't think thats because of me!

Can be months or has even been more than a year for some of my dearest friends.
I know they are there and they know I am there. If any of us needs each other, but we aren't in and out of each others lives on a daily basis.

If you work together, or house share, or go out socialising 5 times a week which are all likely in your late teens and 20s, then you speak daily, but, as your lives settle down (1000x more if you have dc) then you don't have that same daily contact with so many people. Doesn't mean they are less good friends, just that the friendships move on as your lives do.

My closest friends I can go literally months without speaking to. We message any important news. When we do chat on phone it can be a couple of hours. I have 3 local friends that I try to meet every couple of months of possible but normally initiated by one of them. If left to me I would lose contact with most of them as very disorganized.

It can be months between contact with some friends, and then we might speak/text a couple of times in a week. I might not see a close friend for a year and then see them twice in a month. It really depends. Because of living distances away from old friends, there are quite a few I haven't seen since before covid, so easily 2 years ago.

I guess the term 'close' friend is an interesting one - people will define it differently. For me it's people I formed a real connection with at the time. We may no longer be living near each other, but we can pick up where we left off, even if it's been a long time time.

I understand where you're
Coming from.

It can feel lonely when you are the
One who is good at getting in touch.

Men seem to keep in touch daily/hourly ,even when they have families.

To answer your question OP, I do thinks it's normal to feel like this as you get older, unless you've been able to accumulate more friends through the years.

One of my best friends (have known her for 20 years) would agree with everything you say. She is late thirties, single, no children and has a very small number of friends. In my 20s I was a much more available friend to her - I didn't have children, I lived near by and we used to meet up at least once a week. Now...15 years later, I have made a lot more good friends (through having children, moving area, different jobs etc). My friend has made a couple more close friends in that time, but her life circumstances mean she has much less opportunity to meet people. We live an hour from each other and I now see her about 3-4 times a year. I don't love her any less, but I know she gets frustrated that I don't have as much time for her any more.

I think the only answer is to make more friends - but that's a glib reply and I know it's not always easy.

My closest friend and I speak most days via text, call maybe twice a month briefly, meet maybe once a month. Close friends most days, we have a groupchat which makes things quicker and easier. Other friends every few months but they're always there when needed.

I've noticed friends who aren't married, don't have kids etc are around more but I got married at 19 so we're all at different stages and have gone through phases of having lots of time or no time for each other

I have quite a lot of friends. Maybe 8 out of 25 of them I would consider very close.

As an example, this weekend I’ve exchanged numerous texts with all of them, spoken to 2 of them and seen only one.

My close friends message daily if not more.

I have one friend who doesn’t answer messages and ignores questions re meeting up and I think I am going to drop her.

I Meet up for coffee once a week with close friend of 25 years.

Text another close friend every other day and do regular text chats. We've know each other for 35 years.

Other close friends of 20 years and 40 years are monthly text chats and meet up every 6-12 months.

When the going gets tough your true friends stay. Sometimes this is the only way to know who they are.

I think you just get into patterns with certain friends. I have a friend I hear from almost every day but others with whom it’s much more sporadic. All three of the friendships you describe in your OP sound normal to me. I’m not too bothered about people not replying to messages unless we’re trying to sort something socially.
Difficult though if you’re feeling lonely and there’s silence or people aren’t following through on intentions to get in touch/meet. I guess you need to be as proactive as you can, even if sometimes this just means liking a post or sending a funny meme or whatever. And maybe (if possible) look to boost other connections or interests in your life.

I think it's a sign of the times. People don't seem to ring each other anymore, they use social media and then not always very well and are so busy juggling their social accounts that they're not focused on say, one phone call at a time. That's just my opinion anyway. My friends are rubbish at texting back and only use the phone if I ring them. Sad really.

A few times a week. Not ringing (we NEVER do this, we have a very millennial hatred of phone conversations), but What’s App messaging, sending memes or links to funny articles. That sort of thing.

It would be very unusual for me to have a day when I hadn’t been in contact with a single friend. And I tend to see someone (different friends/groups of friends) about once a week got drinks/dinner. However, none of us have kids yet, so plenty of free time!

Mostly daily or twice a week for 5 close friends. Monthly for the other 2.

If it's months, as previous posters have said, then I don't consider that to be close friends.

One of them several times a day, by phone message and in person. Another less often,but we're very close. I have other close friends, one of whom lives abroad (and I really miss her) where contact is much less frequent and by message rather than phone but we know we're there for each other.

The first is my age, the others younger.

I can relate to a lot of what you're saying, OP. I'm not single but I consider close friendships to be absolutely vital, and I don't really feel close to people unless there's regular contact. I do have friends who I can have great conversations with and who I love even though we don't speak regularly, but I believe frequency is important in maintaining close relationships of any kind - at least it is for me! But there's very little you can do if someone else doesn't want the same level of frequency. I've discovered this the hard way - my closest friend, who I'd happily exchanged daily messages with for years (we lived in different timezones) slowly but surely stopped responding as much. It hurt me because I considered the contact to be a permanent and ongoing thing (as it had been for years) and her pulling away was a sign that she didn't want to maintain our level of closeness. I have one other friend who I message every day or other day, another who exchanges messages a couple of times a week and then some others who I might message every few weeks.

I accept that people are busy and that frequency of contact can shift, but I do believe that close friends can and should make the effort to respond to each other as much as possible, and where things get in the way, to explain why and try and make up for it later. Otherwise the other person will be left feeling resentful and hurt that the effort is all on their side. The close friend I had didn't ever explain why she pulled away and messages on group chats all the time, so it didn't feel like it was an issue of being too busy. Other friends who are going through big life changes like having children, moving, bereavement etc I can definitely make a lot more excuses for.

I feel similar I miss the closeness of the friendships I had in my twenties. I have two old friends we chat on socials probably every week or so then meet every couple of month but these are people I couldn't get through the day without speaking to at one point. I have tried to arrange nights out etc but usually doesn't happen. I also have a group of friends in village who I noticed for the most part it was usually me messaging/making the effort. I stopped getting in touch as much and a few of them never got in touch back. I see a couple of them for a coffee or park with kids maybe once a month or so. I feel slightly better now as these people do get in touch with me too so feels more equal but sad cause I would like more from my friendships. Im trying to be open to making new friends whilst excepting I'm also pretty busy with family etc so may not have time to invest right now in new friends. It's hard I think socials have taken some of the closeness of friendships it's just not the same messaging as meeting or talking in the phone.

It varies, unsurprisingly.

My close friend who lives locally and I see most weeks, we also message/phone about something most days.

Other local friends, maybe weekly, and see them monthly.

Friends who live further away, we message infrequently, and see each other a couple of times a year.

My sister who's single joined meet up and met a few friends on there . I haven't as struggle to do nights out but would consider it down the line.

I have a group of girls from school and we have a WhatsApp group where we might message once a week or maybe every few weeks but this could be memes etc (depends what's going on with covid) then there's a smaller group from this group (4 of us) where we try to get together every 6 weeks or so. I do have my 'best friend' from home who has totally changed on the message front since she had her dd and she just doesn't come back to me or reply to messages as much which has taken me a while to get used to although we do speak on the phone every few weeks but I think it's just due to her life changing, mother struggles etc and I know she still loves me.

Local friends of which I have a small group will be once every 2-3 weeks depending on whats going on but we do holiday together.

Reading your message I thought that all seems pretty normal to me although I can relate to not getting enough back, I always reply and expect the same and don't understand if people don't because we're all on our phones all the time nowadays but saying that you don't know what's going on with the other person so try not to read too much into it.

Once or twice a week usually, depends what's going on in our lives. If one of us is having a tough time we might check in daily.

A lot. I'm lucky enough to have 3 really close friends and we have a group chat and one or more of us usually messages every day. Another close friend and I usually check in with each other daily or every other day, we've made a point of doing so after lockdown.

I'm the one in my group who organises things. I met them through our school class year weekly coffee morning. During lockdown I got everyone to meet up virtually every week.
I have since moved away and when I visited two months later I organised a lunch. They remarked that they hadn't seen each other since I left. It is also harder as their kids have all left school so there's no 'after drop off' commonality. I said they must make more of an effort and I'm pleased to say they have.
I have two really tight friends. One I've known for 30 plus years. I now live near her so we try and meet up every week if possible. When I was away I was in touch and she'd visit me for a few days but two or three weeks or more could easily go by without communicating. The same with my other friend but in reverse. I'd see her several times a week when I lived nearby. Now we don't do we do an online training session together but text chats are no good so a week or two could go by.
By the responses here many people let time slip by, which has been very easy to do in the last couple years! You must instigate stuff - not because people care less for you than you them, but that people are pretty bad at reaching out themselves.

I'm not good at communication unless I see someone in person.
I dread messages and the ability that someone can just stop me doing whatever I'm doing and demand my attention via messenger/WhatsApp. I rarely reply, as it takes up a lot of my energy.
Me and my close friend usually just send memes to each other and that's fine, it doesn't take a lot of brain power to be thinking of things to say but when we see each other in person it's different we are always chatting.

If it's months, as previous posters have said, then I don't consider that to be close friends.

Whereas some of those friends I might not have spoken to in months, I have 45 years of history with.

I completely agree with @Moonlaserbearwolf, here: For me it's people I formed a real connection with at the time. We may no longer be living near each other, but we can pick up where we left off, even if it's been a long time time.

I don't think there is any correlation between the closeness of a friendship and the number of times you speak to someone. You can be friendly with a colleague and 'chatter' away throughout the day, but it doesn't mean that is the person you would go to if you really wanted some advice or support, that is just circumstances dictating you spend a lot of time together.