Friends or acquaintances

[doodle]

Does anyone feel as they get older that they have more and more acquaintances and fewer real  friends? This seems to also go hand in hand with a more advanced and fast paced society where people rarely  spend long amounts of time together or have the need to call upon one another for help.

I can only imagine the deep relationships that early humans must have had with one another and how comparatively lacking in depth the relationships in today's society must be. Bonding over drinks after work doesn't seem like it would forge the same connections as bonding over life threatening events would have. Over the course of someone's lifetime in a small tribe, I can only imagine all of the close harrowing events and situations that people would face together and depend on one another to get through. The only modern day equivalent that I can think of today would be the events that people face together while in war.

Anyways, it's ironic that in an interconnected world of seven billion people, it feels like many people (myself included) have fewer and fewer real relationships of depth and substance.

[Kshartle]

These are good points. I have made many many more acquaintances post-Army and I would trade virtually all of them for friends I knew a fraction of the time in the Army. Shared adversity brings closeness. By the end of basic training for example you feel as though you've known some of these guys forever. They are right up there with people you've been friends with for decades....or better.

The initial separation from the military can be extremely difficult for people because of this. The closeness borne through sharing difficult times and being completely reliant on each other is not easily replaced.

Maybe the solution is to go out and find challenges that require the help of others to succeed.

Who's up for a fight club? 

[MediumTex]

I feel like most people aren't interested in the investment required for a real friendship, and this is part of the reason that many people struggle to make marriages work.

[doodle]

These are good points. I have made many many more acquaintances post-Army and I would trade virtually all of them for friends I knew a fraction of the time in the Army. Shared adversity brings closeness. By the end of basic training for example you feel as though you've known some of these guys forever. They are right up there with people you've been friends with for decades....or better.

The initial separation from the military can be extremely difficult for people because of this. The closeness borne through sharing difficult times and being completely reliant on each other is not easily replaced.

Maybe the solution is to go out and find challenges that require the help of others to succeed.

Who's up for a fight club? 

I think they call it Crossfit nowadays

I feel like most people aren't interested in the investment required for a real friendship, and this is part of the reason that many people struggle to make marriages work.

Most people aren't interested in doing exercise or eating healthy either. I'm really starting to think of what we call "progress" in a negative way because it seems to continuously pull us further and further away from our original nature. The modern world at times can feel like a very odd an alienating place. It's almost as if at one level we have been conditioned to live and function in modern society, but at another level our biology is screaming to escape back to its evolutionary roots.

[flyingpylon]

I have made many many more acquaintances post-Army and I would trade virtually all of them for friends I knew a fraction of the time in the Army. Shared adversity brings closeness. By the end of basic training for example you feel as though you've known some of these guys forever. They are right up there with people you've been friends with for decades....or better.

Totally agree with this.

I feel similarly (but definitely not exactly the same) about the "shared adversity" of growing up together as kids.

[dualstow]

Sometimes I miss college days and having the comfortable position of whittling down the number of friends to a manageable level.

Everyone seems very far-flung across the country and across the globe now, and I'm not desperate enough to sign up for a birdwatching class to make new friends.

I do visit & get visits from a few regular friends who are not local, but I only rarely make new local friends. Mostly just acquaintances. As for the rest of the old ones, I guess it's easier to keep in touch online.