Navigating the Shifting Landscape of Friendship in Adulthood

As I get older, I wonder more about the types of friendships/relationships I have. When you're young and in your formative years, so to speak, it's quite easy to make friends. When you're quite young, you form mutual bonds, and every single relationship you have is, in some ways, unique. But as you become older, you find that many of those relationships are based on something else.

If anyone ever asks me about friends, I always joke that I don't have friends; I have acquaintances. But in passing conversation, I will refer to this person as my friend and that person as my friend. However, the reality is, is this someone that I could call up and ask them if they want to go for a drink? I possibly could, but they might deem that as suspicious.

If I look at my Facebook, I apparently have nearly 2000 friends because of my line of work. The connections I have on Facebook may not even necessarily be people I know. In my 2000 people, would I like to put a number on how many of them are actual friends? I probably wouldn't because I find the amount quite upsetting. I'm 50 years old, and I have been quite a transient liver. To elaborate on that a little bit, from about 21 until I was 40, I never lived in the same place for longer than a couple of years. Most of the friends I made in that time period were well before the days of Facebook, and as a result, those people are kind of missing from my life.

So if I think about who I consider to be my friends—friends that are genuinely my friends and have no connection to my partner—everybody I seem to know in some way may actually only see me as a commodity. I have very few commodities in my life, about as few commodities as I have friends. So what do I mean by a commodity in terms of a friendship? Every single person I know, I could reasonably say, wants something from me. It's either a connection with work, or a connection in film in some way, or a connection in that I have facilities available to people to use, and by being my so-called friend, you can use those at the drop of a hat.

As you get older, you become wiser, and as a result, you're probably a bit less trusting. How many times, if you're reading this and you're over 40, have you been let down by someone you consider a close friend? That's why I kind of live the way that I do. It's a lonely existence, bar one that I don't see a way out of. This week, my partner is in Central Asia; she's in Kazakhstan, and she's gone there for 8 days. Outside of her being here, what am I going to do with my 8 days? Well, five of those days, I'm going to be going to work, that much is for sure, probably 6. Then I'm going to come home, I'm going to feed my dog, and I'm going to sit and watch television. I'm probably going to have random chats via Facebook Messenger or email with different people, but am I going to see anyone? No, probably not. I'm thinking about the excitement of my weekend. What am I going to do with these two full days of nothing? Well, I'm thinking to myself I could take the dog for a long walk, possibly go to London and take some photographs. But as you can see, there's absolutely zero interaction with other people in either plan. Yes, my dog's going to have a great time, and I'm probably going to capture some amazing photographs, but what sort of existence is that? If I'm ever invited to do anything, it's something related to film because I run a Film Festival. Otherwise, anything else I'm invited to is as 1/2 of a couple. As a result, if the couple in that case, me and my partner, isn't available, there is no invitation.

I'm not crying out for friends, and this isn't a "please be my friend" post; I'm challenging the reality of our existence. I often talk to people who work for me and who are having various types of emotional crises. I ask them about their life, and I say to them something like, "Why don't you go out with your friends?" The majority's answer to that question, tragically, is that they don't really have any friends. That's not just people my age; that's people of other generations. For most people, coupling up becomes the center of their life, and when that coupling decouples, they find that not only have they lost their beloved, but they've also lost the relationships that came with that. So-called friends either choose to disconnect completely or just completely disconnect with you because as one individual, you no longer have a purpose in the same way as you did when you were part of a couple.

You can go online and join friendship groups and go on walks and a variety of other things, but to me and probably the majority of people, that friendship that bonds off the back of that feels somewhat automated, a little bit like having an AI friend. This isn't a friendship that you've made; it's a friendship that you've sought out without actually knowing the type of friends you're going to make. And I guess this challenges the perception of what is actually a friend. If I watch movies, a friend is someone that, in a time of need, you can call at 2:00 AM in the morning, and they're quite happy to engage in your phone call. A friend is someone that you can walk to the park with, go to the cinema with, have a meal with, go on a social night out with. As you read this, I challenge you to start thinking about the people that you regard as friends. Do they fall into that criteria, or is the myth that we watch or read about literally just a myth of friendship?