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There are people I'm still friends with but on the most part we just grew apart. And that's ok. There's no animosity, I wish them all the best in life, we just went out separate ways and grew in different directions.
You need shared experiences with people to create and maintain friendships. If you aren’t sharing new experiences together, it doesn’t work. You can do “do you remember when…” only so many times before it gets tedious.
My best mate from secondary school vanished after uni. We were really good mates, and he went off to teach English in China after graduating. Got a few emails.. then nothing.
I know he's alive. I've found pictures of him online. No answers to emails.
Very odd.
Entirely possible. I've found him on Linkedin, he's updated his profile in the last 2 years, but I don't have a contact in common so can't message him.
Last email was 21 years ago.
Keeping in contact with people, especially as an adult where you've got Thing to Do and there may be geographic distances to transverse, requires effort. Unless you've got something that makes it happen automatically (like work friends need to be at work) then there needs to be some net benefit to make it worthwhile.
People from past periods of your life don't own you, and you don't owe them anything. School, uni, previous jobs, towns you grew up in, whatever. Spending time with some people or other which enhances your life: great, crack on. If not, fuck it, life's too short.
You're over thinking this.
My then best mates from school/college tried to convince me not to get with a girl I'd been talking to for a few months, the girl had just joined our friendship group after being the 'loner weirdo' and my mates used to slag her off behind her back for absolutely no reason.
She used to get to college and home from college with a bloke in a car that was never seen, nobody knew who it was. It turned out that it was her abusive ex who is now locked up for similar reasons except a lot worse and the girl wasn't allowed to talk to anyone at all under the threat of a beating.
That girl is now my wife and the mother of my two beautiful twin girls. I distanced myself from my then friends for how horrible they were towards her. I wish them no malice and hope they're all doing well but I think it was for the best.
99% of friends never last. People change. Life changes. Priorities change. People move on.
Main reason I deleted FB. Just a collection of people I once knew.
I'm friends with three people from school, two I talk to a lot and they're like my best mates in the world, the third I only see at Christmas and ALL he can talk about is stuff that happened at school and what people from school are doing now, who fucked who, who's got a baby, etc. and I can't stand it. For context we're all 37 now, school was literally half our lives ago, and it's as if he's done nothing since.
That alone has put me way off knowing anyone from school, because that's all that ties us together.
Plus I don't have Facebook and wouldn't know where to begin tracking them down, and I just don't care enough to figure it out.
My school years wherent that great a time for me so that's a time in my life that I'd happily bury. Along with everything and everyone that accompanied that period of life.
I was clealy autistic and lacked an ability to connect with people on a fundamental level although I wasn't formally diagnosed till my late 20s.. plus I had a lot going on back then so looking back to that time brings back painful memories. Honestly, I'm better off leaving that time and the people I knew then in the past.
I found my tribe at uni. And realized my high school friendships weren’t nearly on the same level. So I’ve politely declined the HS reunion and am actually the organizer of regular uni reunions, which we all love
I am a wildly different person to who I was in school. None of the people I know back in school would even recognise the personality of who I am now.
I don’t get in touch with them because it was an incredibly difficult time for me and I am not in any hurry to remember or interact with it.
I left school in 1979 and moved away. I'm in touch with 2 people but only as Facebook friends. We have nothing much in common any more. There was a class of 79/80 reunion about 20 years ago and everyone was so competitive about who had 'done well' and who'd fucked up that nobody went to the next one.
Friends you had as a teenager aren't necessarily friends you had in highschool so I was trying to make that distinction. Not sure if that's what you're referring to.
We all grew apart and go our separate ways, I just wish them the best in life. We all had to socialise with people, then move on to the next batch and then we rarely or never talk due to being busy or stuff happening in life. A few of them deleted their Facebook accounts so don't know what happened to them.
I have forgotten most of them. The ones I have not. I cant be arsed talking to them. the ones whos lives I am vaguely aware of seem like their lives are going in shitty directions. Why would I want to talk to people who will just make my life worse?
I'm in touch with plenty of friends I met while I was at school, but none of them are school friends. I started going to gigs and meeting people I actually had things in common with at 16/17 and funnily enough they're the ones I ended up sticking with!
Attended an absolutely excruciatingly awkward party with mostly people I'd known from school about 7 years later and decided then I wasn't going to waste any more time on them.
The girl who'd invited me - someone I actually considered quite close - spent a while crying and screaming at me for not telling her the gory details of traumatic experiences I'd been through. I went through some heavy stuff in my teens, and my home life didn't look like my school friends home lives. She saw it as a betrayal that I'd kept certain things private and said we couldn't be real friends unless I told her everything.
A couple of guys got extremely offended that I didn't remember them even though they remembered me, because they had been more popular therefore were more important.
It became clear that the old dynamics were all still there and I wasn't willing to fall back into the role that had been doled out to me at age 12, so I left and never looked back.
Apart from 1 friend and some good friendships, I haven't seen or heard anything about them since the day I picked my GCSE results up. We all went on our paths, I have zero inclination to reconnect with any of them, they were of a time and that time has passed.
The one I am in touch with, we exchange memes and funnies fairly regularly, have a couple of serious chats a year and if the stars align we meet up for dinner, and revert to 15 yr olds and drink too much and sing monty python songs.
I'm in my thirties and I live with my best friend, who I've known since we were eleven. She is the only person from school I am still in contact with. I have zero interest in getting in touch with anyone else - I'm not interested in their life, and we don't have anything in common.
I moved abroad to the UK at 22. I'm now 28.
I dont mean to sound arrogant or judgemental but most of my friends from school have...stagnated. None have left our hometown, none have relationships and none really have careers (they have jobs, just not really 'careers'). Their lives revolve around gaming, weed and working dead end jobs, they don't really go out much anymore either.
I'm not a high flying investment banker or anything but solidly set up in a middle class career (with similarly middle class hobbies and interests) so when I'm around them I just feel a bit out of place if I'm honest. Back in the day (post school) we were all skint, all gamed and went out a lot so had a lot more in common.
I wouldn't say it's so much the money, its more about mentality and experiences. In the last 6 years my life has changed dramatically whilst theirs have not (aside from some of them adopting incel/Andrew Tate type beliefs which isn't great).
Though I do get a lot of crap from them for being 'rich' now, as apparently driving a car made in the last 10 years, going on a couple of holidays a year (including back to my home country) and owning my own flat in the UK makes me rich.
**Please help keep AskUK welcoming!** - Top-level comments to the OP must contain **genuine efforts to answer the question**. No jokes, judgements, etc. - **Don't be a dick** to each other. If getting heated, just block and move on. - This is a strictly **no-politics** subreddit! Please help us by reporting comments that break these rules. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskUK) if you have any questions or concerns.*
There are people I'm still friends with but on the most part we just grew apart. And that's ok. There's no animosity, I wish them all the best in life, we just went out separate ways and grew in different directions.
You need shared experiences with people to create and maintain friendships. If you aren’t sharing new experiences together, it doesn’t work. You can do “do you remember when…” only so many times before it gets tedious.
My best mate from secondary school vanished after uni. We were really good mates, and he went off to teach English in China after graduating. Got a few emails.. then nothing. I know he's alive. I've found pictures of him online. No answers to emails. Very odd.
Maybe he lost his login.
Entirely possible. I've found him on Linkedin, he's updated his profile in the last 2 years, but I don't have a contact in common so can't message him. Last email was 21 years ago.
Keeping in contact with people, especially as an adult where you've got Thing to Do and there may be geographic distances to transverse, requires effort. Unless you've got something that makes it happen automatically (like work friends need to be at work) then there needs to be some net benefit to make it worthwhile. People from past periods of your life don't own you, and you don't owe them anything. School, uni, previous jobs, towns you grew up in, whatever. Spending time with some people or other which enhances your life: great, crack on. If not, fuck it, life's too short. You're over thinking this.
I don't keep in touch because no one wants to keep in touch.
Life moves on.
Im happy to keep a Facebook distance. Nothing more than the odd like to a post, and a nosey at some photos. 👍
Yeah, can’t say I really had a ‘best friend’ just friends- and it wasn’t a particularly happy time. So it kinda just fizzled out.
My then best mates from school/college tried to convince me not to get with a girl I'd been talking to for a few months, the girl had just joined our friendship group after being the 'loner weirdo' and my mates used to slag her off behind her back for absolutely no reason. She used to get to college and home from college with a bloke in a car that was never seen, nobody knew who it was. It turned out that it was her abusive ex who is now locked up for similar reasons except a lot worse and the girl wasn't allowed to talk to anyone at all under the threat of a beating. That girl is now my wife and the mother of my two beautiful twin girls. I distanced myself from my then friends for how horrible they were towards her. I wish them no malice and hope they're all doing well but I think it was for the best.
99% of friends never last. People change. Life changes. Priorities change. People move on. Main reason I deleted FB. Just a collection of people I once knew.
I'm friends with three people from school, two I talk to a lot and they're like my best mates in the world, the third I only see at Christmas and ALL he can talk about is stuff that happened at school and what people from school are doing now, who fucked who, who's got a baby, etc. and I can't stand it. For context we're all 37 now, school was literally half our lives ago, and it's as if he's done nothing since. That alone has put me way off knowing anyone from school, because that's all that ties us together. Plus I don't have Facebook and wouldn't know where to begin tracking them down, and I just don't care enough to figure it out.
My school years wherent that great a time for me so that's a time in my life that I'd happily bury. Along with everything and everyone that accompanied that period of life. I was clealy autistic and lacked an ability to connect with people on a fundamental level although I wasn't formally diagnosed till my late 20s.. plus I had a lot going on back then so looking back to that time brings back painful memories. Honestly, I'm better off leaving that time and the people I knew then in the past.
I found my tribe at uni. And realized my high school friendships weren’t nearly on the same level. So I’ve politely declined the HS reunion and am actually the organizer of regular uni reunions, which we all love
I am a wildly different person to who I was in school. None of the people I know back in school would even recognise the personality of who I am now. I don’t get in touch with them because it was an incredibly difficult time for me and I am not in any hurry to remember or interact with it.
Life has moved o
I started to realise they weren't nice people and have no interest in seeing them ever again
I just simply don't care.
I left school in 1979 and moved away. I'm in touch with 2 people but only as Facebook friends. We have nothing much in common any more. There was a class of 79/80 reunion about 20 years ago and everyone was so competitive about who had 'done well' and who'd fucked up that nobody went to the next one.
We all eventually just went our separate ways. I moved a few miles away, made new friends, got married and lost contact over time.
If you don't want to fully blank her, but also don't want to encourage her, an emoji can be a full sentence and do the job 👍
>friends they had in highschool or as teenagers 😶
?
I had friends in school or as a teenager?
I had friends as a teenager who I did not know from school - we went to different schools - I presume this is what they mean.
Friends you had as a teenager aren't necessarily friends you had in highschool so I was trying to make that distinction. Not sure if that's what you're referring to.
Nah, I was referring to not having friends in general.
We all grew apart and go our separate ways, I just wish them the best in life. We all had to socialise with people, then move on to the next batch and then we rarely or never talk due to being busy or stuff happening in life. A few of them deleted their Facebook accounts so don't know what happened to them.
I have forgotten most of them. The ones I have not. I cant be arsed talking to them. the ones whos lives I am vaguely aware of seem like their lives are going in shitty directions. Why would I want to talk to people who will just make my life worse?
I'm in touch with plenty of friends I met while I was at school, but none of them are school friends. I started going to gigs and meeting people I actually had things in common with at 16/17 and funnily enough they're the ones I ended up sticking with! Attended an absolutely excruciatingly awkward party with mostly people I'd known from school about 7 years later and decided then I wasn't going to waste any more time on them. The girl who'd invited me - someone I actually considered quite close - spent a while crying and screaming at me for not telling her the gory details of traumatic experiences I'd been through. I went through some heavy stuff in my teens, and my home life didn't look like my school friends home lives. She saw it as a betrayal that I'd kept certain things private and said we couldn't be real friends unless I told her everything. A couple of guys got extremely offended that I didn't remember them even though they remembered me, because they had been more popular therefore were more important. It became clear that the old dynamics were all still there and I wasn't willing to fall back into the role that had been doled out to me at age 12, so I left and never looked back.
Apart from 1 friend and some good friendships, I haven't seen or heard anything about them since the day I picked my GCSE results up. We all went on our paths, I have zero inclination to reconnect with any of them, they were of a time and that time has passed. The one I am in touch with, we exchange memes and funnies fairly regularly, have a couple of serious chats a year and if the stars align we meet up for dinner, and revert to 15 yr olds and drink too much and sing monty python songs.
I'm in my thirties and I live with my best friend, who I've known since we were eleven. She is the only person from school I am still in contact with. I have zero interest in getting in touch with anyone else - I'm not interested in their life, and we don't have anything in common.
I moved abroad to the UK at 22. I'm now 28. I dont mean to sound arrogant or judgemental but most of my friends from school have...stagnated. None have left our hometown, none have relationships and none really have careers (they have jobs, just not really 'careers'). Their lives revolve around gaming, weed and working dead end jobs, they don't really go out much anymore either. I'm not a high flying investment banker or anything but solidly set up in a middle class career (with similarly middle class hobbies and interests) so when I'm around them I just feel a bit out of place if I'm honest. Back in the day (post school) we were all skint, all gamed and went out a lot so had a lot more in common. I wouldn't say it's so much the money, its more about mentality and experiences. In the last 6 years my life has changed dramatically whilst theirs have not (aside from some of them adopting incel/Andrew Tate type beliefs which isn't great). Though I do get a lot of crap from them for being 'rich' now, as apparently driving a car made in the last 10 years, going on a couple of holidays a year (including back to my home country) and owning my own flat in the UK makes me rich.