How Do I Make Friends in My Thirties?

I can remember the first day I met her. We were in the fifth grade, on a classroom rotation schedule. I scurried into the room and sat near the front to have a better view of the blackboard when I saw a flowered pencil resting perfectly on the heavy wooden schooldesk, with the first and last name of its owner taped around its precisely sharpened body. Seeing as I was always misplacing school supplies, it was the perfect Goldilocks and the Three Bears situation; I would simply use this one. It was just right.

And so our friendship began, the girl that I met that sunny fifth grade afternoon on the playground with the same name as the flower pencil. If I did not have the words, she did. If I forgot my lunch money, she was always ready to share. If a guy broke my heart, she hated him too. When I needed extra bobby pins to hold my wedding veil in place, she, through tears, handed me the ones she knew I’d forget. Last week at a birthday party, my three year old skinned his knee. Guess who handed me a band-aid?

We’ve been best friends since we were ten. That is two decades of life lived alongside one another. College, weddings, pregnancies at the same time (twice!). I have always said as long as I had her in my life, that I would be alright.

But what about making close friendships as an adult? Can one really draw in a trusting relationship at an age where so much living has already occurred? Will there be common ground? Will she trust me, after having so many others before betray her heart?

The answer is yes. So much living has already occurred. But there is so much more life yet to live. 

I saw her across the room, in a bustling event, and recognized her almost immediately. I knew her as a respected writer, as we were both contributors to the same website. Turns out, we were both socially awkward, love Emily Dickinson, and Chick-fil-A. And that’s a good start to me.

Over the next year and a half, we traveled to a conference several states away, closed the mall play area down, watched as our children destroyed her living room with ninja turtle toys while we chatted around the chaos, went to hear a favorite speaker in Chattanooga, and really encouraged one another with the written word.

Then she moved several states away.

When you are a child, you are confined to making friends based on geography. The people in your classrooms, the kids on your tee ball team, the teens in the youth group. When you are an adult, friendships defy distance. My best friend and I live about fifteen minutes apart. My new friend and I live fifteen hours apart. Both I share life with on a regular basis. Through the thirty something years I have lived, friendships have been an integral part of who I was, who I am, and whom I will grow to be. My college roommates will always be a part of my heart. My “core four” who have held my hand through life as a mother will never change. But the surprising element about adulthood is that new bonds bloom. Even if you are in a season of life where babies are born, moving occurs more frequently than you would like, we use words like “mortgage” and “living will,” and you just are no longer sure who you are as a person, there will always be people floating on the life raft with you that have no idea what they are doing either.

CS Lewis once noted that “friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, ‘What? You too? I thought I was the only one!'” And whether you are five or fifty five, take heart. You are not the only one.