Aging in America is mostly centered around education. Graduating from elementary to intermediate/middle school is associated with puberty. Graduating from high school is a coming of age story for many. Sometimes college is used as a back drop instead.

With popular sitcoms of the 90s focused on adult friend groups (Friends, Sienfield) it seemed like friendship in adulthood is a natural progression.

Instead the loneliness epidemic is greater than ever. And anecdodatly, seeing my family and friends age, they’ve mentioned seeing their friends less.

What I haven’t seen disucussed about this is that besides our partner and immediate family, relationships don’t last forever. Some friendships are situational, circumstancial, or you just grow out of them.

I’ve thought about this idea for a while, and how I had many close friends in high school, then afterwards we didn’t keep in touch. When the same happened again in college I knew it couldn’t be just me.

Years later I stumbled upon this podcast decsribing the phenomenon more elieuqntly. Later that day I looked around more and found an article mentioning the same points.

This chart visually depicts how we naturally become loneliner as we age.

Like everything else, relationships aren’t meant to last forever. This doesn’t make me sad about my inevitable loneliness, but makes me want to appraciate the relationships I have now, while I still have them, and cherish them.