Our perspective of relationships and friendships is of course bound to change over time but it turns out that those changes happen in a pretty predictable way. An Atlantic article by Julie Beck in conjunction with William Rawlins mentions that the three expectations that are consistent in any close friendship are the “someone to talk to, somebody to depend on, and someone to enjoy”. This means that we need someone reliable to connect with and this person should be someone that we actually enjoy hanging out with. This is what we should be looking for in those early college days, beyond just making friends with our residence hall neighbors. I would personally argue that the importance of each of these three things depends on our own interpretation of a friendship. For example, I think the most important thing about a friendship is someone to enjoy. Too often have I found myself not actually enjoying the company of the people that I call friends and that’s definitely something that I wish to change in the future. Doing this project research has put me on the right track and shown me that although the three necessities of a friendship don’t really change, what does change with time is the way that those needs are met.

Beck writes that as we get older, it is very easy for our priorities to change such that we no longer have as much time for our friends. We can’t focus as much on our voluntary relationships because we have things that we have to do such as taking care of families, going to work, paying bills, taking care of the home, and other things that suddenly come along with being an adult. This article gave me the impression that when we start aging, friendships unfortunately take a back seat to the other priorities in our lives. This aligns with Beck’s assertion that we get worse at making friends as we age, partially because as we get older, we start making connections with people associated with other things that we already have going on. For example, while it’s probably somewhat unusual for middle aged people to go sit in their apartment lounge and make friends, it is a normal occurrence to become friends with another parent at your child’s school or with someone at your job. It’s like friends come with the activities that we do, instead of us seeking out friends individually.

This idea of friends slowly losing their place as priority number one does not last forever though, according to the socioemotional selectivity theory (SST). That theory suggests that as we get older, we start to really value experiences that are meaningful to us and emotionally stimulating. This theory goes in accordance with Rawlin’s perspective which is that we have lower expectations for our friends as we get older. We understand that priorities have shifted and so therefore we expect things to be a bit different in our relationships with our friends. Despite these differences, it is still important to remain connected in our old age because having social support can lead to us living happier lives and feeling less lonely.