1d ago

Am I expecting too much from my friends, or is this just a natural drift?

A couple of years ago, I started building a house. It was a huge project, and while I didn’t directly ask my friends for help, I quietly hoped some of them might offer. No one did, which was disappointing, but I didn’t confront anyone about it.

At the same time, I was planning a wedding with my wife last year. We invited my entire friend group (about 15 people) and had a great time (August 24). The last time we all saw each other was at a New Year’s gathering—but since then, things have gone quiet.

What’s happened now is that about 7 people from the original group have started doing more things together, but they don’t regularly invite the rest of us anymore. I’ve noticed I’m no longer naturally included. We haven’t had a falling out, but there’s been around 4 months of silence now, and I haven’t reached out either—partly because it feels awkward after this long.

Since then, I’ve also changed my lifestyle a bit. I started going to the gym regularly and I’ve pulled back from drinking, which the group still does a lot of on weekends. So maybe I’ve distanced myself too, without fully realizing it.

Now I feel kind of alone. I have barely any social contact outside of two others from the group who also seem to be excluded. And honestly, it’s been getting to me. At my age (early 30s), it feels hard to find new people to really connect with. I do say hi and chat a bit with regulars at the gym, but that’s as far as it goes. I wouldn’t feel comfortable just asking someone to go out to eat or hang out.

So I’m wondering:

Is this just a normal phase of life and friendship? Was I expecting too much back then? And is it worth trying to reach out again, or should I just accept the drift and try to build something new (somehow)?

I’d really appreciate any outside thoughts or similar experiences....

It keeps getting me if I see posts from my friend group when they go on vacation or trips together and put it on their status. Even if I likely wouldn't have time I'd think it would be cool if they would just ask if I wanted to join? But I don't seem to fit in at all anymore.

19 comments

Do you think building the house having some expectation of your friends being there might have put you in some underlying tone of negativity around some of them? Like having a grudge for a long time? I believe this is partially drift, and partially different interests.
I get that finding new friends aren't easy in this age group. Friends kinda form out of nowhere when you put random humans together in a closed environment like school or work (or gym I suppose). There needs to be some reason to interact with each other, other than just being transactional

Nobody showed up to help with the building project when you didn’t ask, but everyone showed up to the weddings when you did? That says something. I think the saying “unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments” fits perfectly here.
As for growing apart - that’s just part of life. It happens to everyone. You’re not the same people you were when you first met. There’s also this idea of a “lonely chapter” in personal growth, where you’ve changed enough that you no longer fit in with your old friend group, but you’re not yet fully aligned with the new one.
I relate to this strongly. I haven’t spoken to my best friend in two years. Last time, I invited them out on my boat - they said no, so I figured I’d wait for them to suggest something next. But they never did. Now it’s been so long that I’d feel awkward asking again… and probably so do they.

Tssk, look at this 15 friend having guy in his late twenties

So common, it's normal.
You got married, built a house, and quit drinking. Soon, you'll probably have a kid. I suspect most of them can't relate, and more than one are at least a bit envious, and maybe feel like you left them behind. I was on the other side of this from you, I get why they aren't calling anymore.
- Yep, very normal.
  But I will point out this obvious fact: being normal FUCKING SUUUUCKS.
  So yeah, if you wanna spend the next 30 years trying to make water cooler banter and polite "hello"s at the gym substitute for real human connection, sure, be normal.
  But if you want to have a not-shitty life, then do what is necessary to preserve your existing relationships and cultivate new ones.

Communication.
Communication, communication, communication.
A running theme I'm noticing is a lack of communication between you and your friends about what's going on. You're asking us to tell you if it's normal or not, yet it sounds as though you haven't reached out to them to say something like, "hey man, what's up? Everything good? Sorry I haven't been talking as much, how's life?"
I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that you're cis male because this is a thing common with cis men: most of y'all don't know how to communicate with one another. It's totally possible that the ones who still do things together are actively communicating in the background.
So... What's stopping you from hitting them up on Facebook, discord, telegram, signal, Whatsapp, etc?
What's keeping you from trying to help carry the torch?
Relationships are two-way streets, after all. It's exhausting when you're always the one to initiate with someone. Like, trust me, that's me. I'm the one who's always having to initiate. Even as a very outgoing gal, it's fucking exhausting.
The people who don't regularly respond to my messages or only respond in short statements are the ones I let myself drift away from. They rapidly drain my energy and I lose interest in talking to them very quickly. Why would you hang around a brick wall?
The ones where I always have to initiate but are otherwise communicative are the ones that stay friends. Sure, I'm the one who has to remind them of my existence, but they have lives, they may have anxieties, they will typically have something interesting to say whenever I talk to them.
The ones who initiate with me are the ones who I end up being closest to. Those are the ones where friendship (or otherwise) feels effortless and will actually restore energy when I talk to them. They're the ones who end up at the top of my friend's list.
Communicate with your friends. See what's going on in their heads. If you can't do that, then of course you're gonna drift away. Like, sorry to be blunt, but you may come off as a boring person. You gotta remind them that you aren't by talking about hobbies and whatnot.

I can definitely say that my friend circle shrunk a lot as I got into my 30s. I also stopped drinking in my late 20s and while I kept a bunch of friends, there were also some I used to have that were so drinking focused in everything they did that we drifted apart naturally after that.
As we get older we get busier. I wouldn't assume it's personal. It takes effort to stay in touch in adulthood and both people have to make an effort and want to. I don't want to assume what you're doing, but that part about the house does make me wonder if you're falling for a classic pattern of expecting others to reach out even though you yourself don't? I've been guilty of this too sometimes, but I think it's good to remember that that kind of expectation can actually make what you're afraid of a reality. The other people might wonder if you still want to hang out since you never initiate.
Again, don't mean to assume about all that, so ignore it if it's not helpful.
- Well I offer my help where I can, but it always was like: "We are already enough people but thanks anyways." as responses before I built my house.
  So I asked my one friend who is actually the "organizer" of our friend group if he needs help moving but he always said: "Thanks I'll reach out if we need more people but we are enough thanks." And he never really reached out and asked for my help. Same goes with two others I offered to help them when moving in 2021 during Covid but they declined cause of Covid rules.. So yeah I offered everyone my help in some way in the past but no one really needed my help.
  So in my case I never helped anyone but I offered my help. That is one reason why I didn't directly ask my friends for help either because well I never helped them (even if I wanted to) so was hoping they'd just ask if I need help like I asked them.
  But in the end I would have also refused to get help from them but it would have been nice if someone asked.
  
  Holy shit dude, just tell your friends how you feel. Say "hey, I feel like we've been drifting apart the last few years, and I don't like it. What's up with that?" Then, go from there based on responses. It's literally that simple.
  
  Wow people are really absurd. "I want help but would refuse if someone asks but still would like people to ask."
  
  I think with a task like that it's hard to judge the response. Many people feel like they're being a burden asking for helpers with things like that, so they may have felt like they were doing you a favor by letting you off the hook when you asked.
  To be honest if I were you I would start inviting these people to fun stuff and see what happens. If you try that a few times and you just get dismissive or wishy-washy responses then you probably have your answer and can focus your attention elsewhere.
  If you're not hanging out with them already you don't have anything to lose by trying to push the issue a bit. If they really want to hang out they'll be receptive, even if you have to do some negotiating on a time that works for everyone.

There tends to be a naturally occurring separation between marrieds and unmarrieds, as well as drinkers/bar goers and non. Children vs dinks are yet another naturally occurring separation.
Dink = double income no kids

This is all my personal experience but as I’ve gotten older, it requires more time and effort to maintain friendships. People get busy with their own lives (work, kids, moving away, change in hobbies). Sorry this post is going to be a bit long because it requires some backstory.
Some of the things you mentioned sound like someone from my friend group, I’ll call him Steve since that’s his name. There were a bunch of us who were together every weekend in our 20s, usually going to bars, concerts, or sporting events and drinking a lot. Steve slowed down on the drinking earlier than the rest of us, then he got more involved in his church which is where he met his now wife. We didn’t see much of Steve after that and I eventually moved away. That friend group still does the occasional outing and I know Steve isn’t involved in those. I remain in contact with Steve and he texted me a few weeks ago about something he wanted to do, I don’t live in town so I suggested another friend and Steve replied that they don’t hang out anymore. This was my reply to him and I think it’s appropriate here: “There’s something my dad told [my brother] when we were growing up but I always remembered it for some reason, it’s about friends/spending time with them. It was something along the lines of “somebody’s gotta make an effort or nothing is gonna happen”.”
We all still love Steve and I always invite him out with the larger friend group when I go home which he usually takes me up on. But, I spoke to the friend I suggested to Steve and she that friend said that he hasn’t heard from Steve in months.
This is a really long way of me saying that friendships require work to maintain sometimes. If you want to join in or be thought of as someone to be included regularly, then you need to reach out and start the conversation or it might not happen. If they’re true friends, they should have no problem including you again and it should be like old times. If you have force your way back in or they’re still not inviting you regularly then maybe you have just grown apart. The other side is, if you are invited, you need to join somewhat regularly. If you say no all the time, they’ll just stop inviting you again.
- You got me with I’ll call him Steve since that’s his name
  
  I almost used a different name but thought fuck it, if he were to ever read this, he knows my thoughts since we had this exact conversation

Yeah, it's pretty normal for social circles to shift over time. It's inevitable even. Jobs change, people move, have kids, get sick, get religion; life is ever changing. Permanence is illusion when it comes to people.
The older you get, the more visit change happens, no matter how you struggle against it. Just the physical aspects of aging shift social dynamics, as well as our inner selves developing along the chaotic path existence tends to put before us.
But, relationships take work. Doesn't matter what kind. If your coworker and you never say a word to each other, how well are you going to interact on a project? If you and your mom never send each other letters or texts, or make calls, it is a very difficult thing to make small talk at Christmas, no matter how much love there is.
Friends take work. And it has to be mutual (as opposed to family where it should be, but often isn't). If you're building a house, get busy, and don't participate in the group chat, how they gonna know you even want to talk? They'd have to ask, right? It's a two way street, and it often only takes someone pulling off to grab a slushie before the rest just keep moving on.
Like, with your house. There was nothing to confront anyone about. There was no need for discussion after the fact. They're friends, so you either reach out when help is needed, or you don't. Did you invite anyone over for beers n bullshit when you were done for the day? Should a good friend have at least checked in to see how you were doing? Fuck yeah. That's what a friend does. Maybe not every day, or every week, or even every month. But if the other parties didn't put in the basic effort at friend stuff, then they weren't friends, they were just people you know, and there's a difference.
But, in your thirties, keeping a friend group together is harder than it is when you're young, or when you start moving out of middle age. Shit is busy from the late twenties to mid forties for sure. So seeing most of the group at one place twice in a year, and only for events, isn't unusual. It isn't sustainable and still remain a group, but that's the age range where friend groups tend to drift.
Me? If you want back into the group activities, I say either ask to be included, or invite them into your life again. Life has things drifting, so grab a rope and see if someone grabs it, you dig?

I have probably 5 close friends but really we only ever see each other on a yearly camp trip my brother organizes, even then one or two of us doesn't go so we are hardly all together at one time.
I never really thought about it since I'm busy most of the time commuting and working during the week and spend the weekends with my wife.
But recently I joined the local community emergency response team and that seemed like a good way to meet people, random people and a lot of firefighters and medics etc from around town which are always doing activites for the public plus free emergency gear

I'm Gen Z and I'm curious what is this "friendship" you speak of?
💀
I mean, how are you suppose to talk to people when your peers are all looking in their phone all the time throughout k-12 school.
Especially if your parents didn't also get you a phone, and now you look like some "poor weirdo"
The only time people would talk to you is "Hey look at this funny meme/gif/short-video/online-post/etc..."
The only topics of discussions, other than school subjects, is discussing the topics discussed on their group chats. If you didn't get in their group chat, welp, I guess you wont have friends.
Yay, Gen Z! 🙃

My man, I'm over 40 and I have exactly 0 friends outside of my immediate family. I have an SO and child which is enough for me, but I've given up trying to maintain friendships outside of coworkers at work for over two decades now. I've never had a "best friend" in my entire life, so again, my SO fulfills that niche.
Let's face it, in this world "acquaintances" is the best we can still hope for. No one has the time or the inclination to sacrifice anything for, well, anyone at this point.

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