Comedian humorously nails the reality of modern adult friendships
"Would I turn up at their house unannounced?"
When you're a kid, friendships just sort of happen. The kids in your neighborhood, school, place of worship, sports or other activities are the pool of kids you pull friends from, and friendship in childhood mostly revolves around sharing common interests and having fun playing together. As you move to the teen years, friendship becomes more about "hanging out" and bonding over emotional things, and then adulthood comes along and throws the whole concept of friendship all out of whack.
As you become entrenched in career and family and full-on-grown-up responsibilities, friendships can be harder to maintain, at least in the way we're used to. Time becomes a trickier commodity to manage, and what friendship looks like changes. That's not good or bad, it just…is.
Comedian Jake Lambert hit the nail on the head with a bit about various realities of modern adult friendship, pointing to relatable friendship norms such as:
Not really knowing what your friend does for work:
"What's my best friend's job? Something to do with numbers…I once heard them use the phrase 'project manager.'"
"No, I don't know exactly what they do for work, but I do know about every single one of their colleagues, who they hate and who's sleeping with who."
What forms the basis of adult friendship:
"Are we friends because we like the same things? No, we're not children! We're friends because we hate the same things."
The reality of rarely getting together:
"Oh we hang out all the time. What is it now, September? Well the last time I saw them was…I wanna say June? But we talk every day. I mean, not on the phone, on WhatsApp. I mean, not on WhatsApp, but we send each other memes on Instagram. But we message properly as well. Like we'll message to say we need to catch up soon, and then we do catch up, within about two or three months."
Unannounced visits? No thanks. Unannounced phone calls? Also no.
"Would I turn up at their house unannounced? No, not unless I wanted to give them a panic attack and completely ruin their day. I mean, I wouldn't even call them without a text to warn them first. You know, that's real friendship."
People totally related and added their own friendship realities to the mix in the comments:
"Say what you will but not talking to a person for months and picking up like you never stopped talking when you finally get together is a new level of friendship unlocked 🙌❤️🤣😂"
"Texting to warn them before calling is friendship!!!!!!!!!! It is!!!!!!💯"
"I wouldn’t even call them without a text to warn them first is my love language."
"Also, you have known each other for 10 years and have 3 photos together."
"The shame of how accurate this is 😂😂😂😂😂😂"
Adult friendships may be challenging to maintain fully, but they're still valuable and research shows that we may be missing out on some of their benefits. According to one analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s "American Time Use Survey" Americans are spending significantly less time with friends—and more time alone—than we did a decade ago. From 2014 to 2019, the time we spent with friends dropped by 37%. Then the pandemic hit, and we all know how that turned our social lives upside down. The most recent data, from 2021, showed even more of a drop in friend time, from a little over 4 hours a week in 2019 to a little less than 3 hours a week in 2021.
Spending time alone doesn't automatically mean feeling lonely—some people genuinely prefer to spend time by themselves—but humans are social creatures in general and research shows we are facing an epidemic of loneliness and isolation. A few reasons might be how increasingly online our lives have become, how anxious and exhausted many of us feel, and the connections that got disrupted during the pandemic. Whatever the reason, a whole lot of people are lonely these days.
Nurturing friendships in-real-life could be a way to counter that. Focus on quality over quantity. You don't have to have a ton of close friends—focus on the ones you share similar values with and who bring out the best in you. Even if you don't have time to get together often, check in regularly with more than just a meme. Even a simple, "Hey, I'm thinking about you and wondering how you're doing," can go a long way. Scheduling get-togethers on a monthly basis (a first-Saturday-of-the-month set coffee date or something) can make it easier to see one another rather than always trying to coordinate schedules. Long-distance friendships can be trickier, but we do have loads of technology to communicate long-distance and don't underestimate those "We need to plan a get-together" messages. Acknowledging that you miss one another and want to see each other despite the difficulty of actually making it happen means something.
Friendships as adults may have some comical quirks, but they're still important to our well-being and life enrichment. Keep sending those memes and get together when you can. You'll rarely regret making the effort.
You can find more from Jake Lambert on his Instagram page here.