Disposable Friendships - Is This A Thing?

Hi! Decided to take a look at your channel. I’m older than you, and if I had to say… I think that you hit the nail on the head when you asked “where do you go to make friends”? Back in the day, there was something that is referred to as “third spaces” where friendships would be formed. That’s things like church, bowling leagues, bridge clubs, bars, knitting circles… all those things that aren’t either home or work. Back in the day, people didn’t move as much, the people you went to school with would become the people you worked with. And if you wanted to socialize, it had to be in person, in a group of people that you had probably known to some extent since you were kids. So you had that frequent in-person interaction. Which is good in a way, but I think it also meant at least some people had to live inauthentic lives. You didn’t tell your knitting circle you were gay if that went against the social norms, for example. But I think it also depends on how you define “friendship”. I went to the same hairdresser for years, over a decade, every 6 weeks for several hours per appointment (cut/color/highlights… it takes a long time to get done), and we would have some deep meaningful talks. At some point, he said that he considered me more than a client, that he considered me a friend, and if that I were ever in an emergency (it was California, so fires and earthquakes are always a possibility), that I could stay with him and his family for a while to get things sorted. Which has made me ponder what exactly defines “friendship”. Because, I liked him, liked talking to him… but I am not sure I would have considered him a “friend”. Acquaintance, sure. Someone I would help out in an emergency? Sure… not sure I would host his family, but I would help out some way. But I haven’t talked to him since I moved out of the area. Were we friends? Acquaintances? Really close client/contractors? If I still lived in the area, I would still be going to him, we’d still be talking together, and maybe that would be one of those “friendships that last for decades”. Or in other words, is the ability of people in earlier generations to keep long, long friendships at least partly because you just saw those people that often, and if they had moved to a different city in their 20s or 30s, they wouldn’t have stayed friends? It’s an interesting question, to be sure!