The Friendships We Notice and Those We Don’t
A table of women laughing before the senior center program. A group photo from the church retreat. Smiling faces in the park district newsletter after Bunco night.
It’s easy to look at moments like these and conclude that everyone else has found the friendships you’ve been searching for.
Those moments are real. But they’re only one expression of friendship.
Different Types of Friendship
We naturally notice the friendships that gather in groups because they’re the easiest to see. The friendships built over one cup of coffee, a weekly phone call, or a standing walk through the neighborhood are much less visible.
When you feel a twinge of envy toward a friend group, it may be more about visibility than connection. True connection is private and can’t be measured from a photo. Visibility often shows only a small part of the connection, or may even distort the connection that is actually present.
In either case, society idealizes the friendship group and tells us to judge all of our friendships by the same metric. But a friendship model that energizes one person can leave another feeling drained.
We Experience Connection Differently
That’s because not everyone experiences connection the same way. For some, closeness builds through doing – shared activity, rhythm, showing up side by side over time. For others, it builds through conversation – the kind that goes somewhere, that stays with you after you’ve said goodbye. Groups tend to be better at the first than the second.
The better question isn’t which group to join, but what kind of connection actually sustains you.
Friendships Change
Over time, our friendships naturally change. Work friends disappear once we retire. Children leave home and our relationships with our kids’ friends’ parents fade. You might move and lose your neighbor friends, or your neighbor friends move and leave you behind. There are many ways retirement reshapes our routines and relationships.
Many of us need groups to meet people. Retirement clubs, volunteer organizations, exercise classes, church groups, book clubs – they are all valuable because they bring us into contact with others.
The Real Gift
But being surrounded by people isn’t the same thing as feeling connected to them.
Sometimes the real gift of a group isn’t the group itself. It’s the one conversation afterward. The woman who lingers to chat. The person you discover you’d like to know better over coffee.
Or perhaps the purpose of the group isn’t to belong to the group at all. It’s to meet the one person you’ll want to know after everyone else has gone home.
The friendships we notice aren’t always the friendships we need. The ones that shape our lives are often the ones no one else ever sees.
Let’s Have a Conversation:
Which types of friendship sustains and nurtures you? Do you have both friend-groups and intimate friends? How did you meet each?
Tags Friendships
I do better at one-to-one friendships as opposed to groups. I always wanted a group of friends or so I thought. In college, I had a group of friends but that had to do with proximity…same dorm, classes together, seeing them at the dances, etc. Then, when they all pledged a sorority and I did not, I found the strength of my own company. Left college and never saw them again. I made friends one-to-one over the years. Not a lot of friends and based on working for the same employer. We are still in contact years later. In groups, there is always a queen bee, followers and the odd man out dynamic going on. I would rather have a friend than a social circle. I wonder how many friendship dynamics are based on our mother’s style? My mother had one-to-one friends as well. If the group works for others, that is great. Just not for me.
Michele, I love your distinction between wanting “a friend rather than a social circle.” That’s such a simple way to express what I’ve been trying to describe. I also think your observation about college friendships being rooted in proximity is important. Many friendships are built around a shared environment, while others are built around the relationship itself. Thank you for sharing your experience—it adds another layer to this conversation.
I don’t have many intimate/close friends. I have many friendships through work (retired now but keep in touch with a few and connect over dinners); and political groups and activism that I’m engaged in, as well as the people I keep in touch with over a lifetime of living via social media. Luckily I still have my husband, my best friend.
Thanks, Barbara. I think what you described is actually much more common than people realize. Many of our friendships are connected to different parts of our lives—work, shared interests, community groups—and they can still be meaningful even if they’re not deeply intimate. I also love that you mentioned your husband being your best friend. That’s an important relationship that often gets overlooked in conversations about friendship. Thank you for sharing your experience.