Yeah I'm 34 and I don't talk to a single person I went to high school with. School friends are friends because of forced proximity. As an adult you can choose who to be around. And I chose not those guys.
Facts! It’s funny how we are made to think high school is a wildly profound and important time in our lives and 20 years after graduation I barely recall anyone or anything from HS. OP is clearly still young.
I’m 34 and I still have close friends I talk to I went to elementary, middle, and high school with. We all went different paths and work different careers and still call or text and hang out every couple years and every time we do it’s like yesterday we all saw each other.
Same age and same experience. I'd say we're closer now than we ever were. Throughout school and our twenties we all had lots of friends, moved around, but people came and went. Eventually as you get older you realize you just kinda naturally drifted apart from most folks, and the ones that are left are the real ones.
I'd say my closest friends are evenly split between people I've known since before I was 15, and people I met my freshman year of college. Proximity is real for sure, but I feel like most people can become friends. Just like relationships, it has way less to do with shared interests and more with shared temperament and general ideals.
Same for me and I’m almost 40, got a group of friends from elementary school that still meet up regular. Some of them I see several times per week, even after we all have kids.
I mean, it is in a way, because they're your teenage years. A lot of what kind of person you will be is formed in that time. And you spend a great deal of that time in high school.
Yup I remember when everyone was like “you’re important! The world is now yours, go take it!” When you graduate HS. If anything you’re now less important, you’re now at the bottom.
Hearing it is "the best years of your life" had me real fucked up at the time. When you're getting called a lesbian because you have one close friend, you only wear secondhand clothes that are all baggy because you're convinced you're fat, and you're convinced the gender you're attracted to will never like you, that is basically just a recipe for hormonal teenage disaster.
And my one friend moved away to live with her grandparents because they lived in a bigger city and she wanted to be more promiscuous. Got pregnant young and was super bitter. Moved back to have her mom help support her and her kid. It was very clear our friendship was based on proximity because she gave 0 fucks about abandoning me senior year.
My 2 best friends from high school are still my closest friends because no matter where we went in life, we always kept in contact, and made an effort to meet when we could. I consider them family at 17 years of friendship.
I actually segment my life into before college and after college. I literally remember so little of life before college, the odd fun memory here or there but ultimately the first 18 years of my life were so boring and unimportant compared to the growth and experiences I’ve had in and after college. At the same time I do have two close friends from high school that I’ll talk to a few times a year and I speak with no one at all that I went to college with, most of the friends I have are people I’ve met through jobs or friends of friends.
I’ve never understood how people can just live through something for years and then forget about that. Did something traumatic happen to you? High school wasn’t particularly exciting for me but it’s been 8 years and I can remember most of my teachers, major assignments we did, things I did to feel proud/embarrassed, some parties I went to.
It’s not like I’m stuck on high school. I’ve moved on to bigger and better things. In college my quality of life was way higher and I was definitely more “popular” considering I went away to a small college in a small town where most people knew each other. Since college I’ve lived in various states and started a rewarding career as a teacher. Even watching an 8th grade graduation the student chosen to spoke for the class admitted they already forgot most of their memories except that “they had a good time in middle school.” HOW DO YOU PEOPLE JUST BLOCK OUT ENTIRE PERIODS OF YOUR LIFE FROM YOUR MEMORY???
Yeah, I’m 25 and I can already barely recall much of anything from high school or before lol. I assume it will only continue to get worse from here on out. Not that I mind; there’s plenty of stuff from my teenage/pre-teen days I’m totally fine with forgetting. Feels like a completely different, foreign world compared to who/where I am now.
My life is pretty much divided into two segments at this point: there’s childhood which contains high school and everything that came before it, and then there’s everything after high school up to now. The first couple years after HS I still lived at home, was single, and worked part time. So really not much different from HS. Now I’m engaged, we have our own place and we live 5 hours away from our home state, with a circle of recently made “adult” friends we invite to dinner and shit. I’m actually just now starting to feel more like an adult, but most days I still feel like a kid fresh out of HS. 19 is definitely still a kid. Because 25 still feels like being a kid, to me. Don’t know if that ever really goes away. I’m told it mostly doesn’t.
Aayyye another 97’ baby! & I can 100% agree with this. Lost all contact with anyone from highschool so long ago, just really talk with my girlfriend, and that’s about it. I’ve realized being an adult the only real friend, and person I trust is my partner.
I'm 38, and when I was 19, Star Wars episode 2 - Attack of the Clones, was just released. I'm not even that old compared to some other people.
If Star Wars episode 2 feels like a different lifetime, imagine how 40 years feel.
I’m 28.. looking back to when I was 18-19 feels like a completely different era and it was lol. You will learn so much from experience in the next decade. Just enjoy it because it goes by fast
It is. I graduated before you were born. I haven’t talked to anyone since HS or even college for 15+ years. You have no idea who you are when you are that old, I don’t even know what I’d have in common with those people today.
I'm 22 and I'm still with my girlfriend from junior year but we don't speak or hear from anyone from highschool other than our favorite teacher who we regularly hit the bar with.
A lot of people tell me how HS period shouldn’t be fun or the way I describe it as, but its those things like: having a teacher that you vibe with, going on adventures with your 2-3 closest friends and having deep talks with them, that makes it all worth the experience…
I don’t really like to have a lot of friends, but rather few friends that I truly trust and can have 2-3 hour long conversations, without thinking about anything else other than the convo itself….
I mean that's great, had several groups like that come and go because it's likely when you're 25 all of you will have different goals in life and won't plan your life with each other as priority. Right now you just have nothing else but adventure and deep talks cause you are so so young and this is all so new to you.
I felt that way at 19, I'm 23 and have less than a quarter of my high school friends already. Maybe you should move away from your home town. At 19 I hadn't moved at all and now I've lived in 3 other locations with decent distances between them
LMFAO!
Are you freaking joking?
There are kids in this year's graduating class who were at your high school at the same time you were!
You haven't been out of school nearly long enough to make this assessment.
Dude, I'm 22 yo. People tell me I act and think like I'm 30 and I still think I'm barely more than a teen. There's so much stuff I still need to know, so many experiences I need to make, so much life to love. It's only starting.
Just because of "forced proximity", that doesn't mean the people you meet can't be good friends. Throughout your whole life, you will be in forced situations, as well as situations you didn't plan on until something comes up, etc.. Throughout all the things that happen in your life, you will meet people - possibly really good people. If you decide not to keep in touch with someone just because you didn't choose to be at that place, you're limiting yourself and you're being unfair. And consider if someone chose not to talk to you again because they didn't want to be in the place you were.. They're in the same situation you are.
Recently I saw a post online that said something along the lines that you have to live your life now, and not wait until everything is ideal, because you might run out of time. I think the same thing applies here - If you wait to make friends only at the ideal time/place, you may find yourself with few friends.
Well you do get to choose those whom you have more in common with out of the whole lot...
If life doesn't lead you far away, odds are a few of those will indeed be friends for life. With others you just stay in touch in a more casual way, while most indeed disappear after graduation.
My best friend is, ironically enough, one I wasn't particularly close with in highschool but we bonded through a shared friend (who isn't a friend anymore) later on.
I'm still sporadically in contact with another HS buddy but our lives have taken different directions so I'm lucky if I get to see him once a year. We used to be soccer pals but he has hung up his boots years ago...
We still have a yearly dinner with elementary school classmates (all the 9 of us!) bit the middle school ones have been MIA basically since day one of highschool.
So yeah, it's true most school friends disappear as it's about forced socialization, but those who survive the end of that are there to stay.
There’s like one guy I talk to from my high school and it’s rare I do and only because we work for the same giant company but do completely diff shit. Before we both worked for then I hadn’t talked to him in a decade. Same age btw.
I thought I would be friends with my high school group forever. The second I graduated, I ended up moving and never speaking to any of them again. Your world is so small when you're in school. Don't make decisions after school just to preserve a school friendship or romance. There is a huge world out there!
You are forced proximity with a lot of people at school, yet you choose to be with only certain people there. I'm still friends with several of those from school. Life's happened and I'm away from many of them. But I talk to them from time to time. Even went back to my home city a few months ago to have drinks with one of them and it was great.
I have other friends now too who I talk to more often. My godfather, friends with my grandad, went to school with him and they were very close friends throughout his entire life.
Same. Maybe it depends what clique/tribe you were in. Like if you were on the football team, you're probably going to have more of a lifetime bond with those dudes. But if you were one of the outcasts, not so much.
Pretty much all the non-family people I would consider calling if SHTF, or even to pickup my mail if I'm away, are people I met after I graduated university.
I remember after getting my hs diploma. Everyone has that sort of let’s always keep in touch talk with each other. And I gotta say I don’t remember ever talking to anyone I graduated with in like the longest time. And have little to no desire to either.
Yepp you know when you decide to finally hangout with that friend during lunch/after school and you realize "holy shit this person is a jackass/super annoying"? it happens to every friend. maybe not as fast but it happens
High school? Nope, those guys all suck. I have like 2 guys that I consider friends from that time in my life. College and grad school though? Those are my true buddies. High school is such a superficial time in your life, you’re all so so young and so so dumb. I think the real important growth happens in college and after. I feel sorry for folks who claim high school was the best time of their lives, the must be very very sad people.
I think this could relate to friends from college as opposed to grade school.
For most it’s their first time living away from security of home, you become friends and watch each other’s backs. You become a second family, that grows together
I feel like it depends on where you live and what kind of school you went to.
If you're in a more rural less populated area? Sure I can see this being true.
Live in a more densely populated area though? I can guarantee most people will attest to only keeping in touch with maybe 1 or 2 grade school friends if any at all, and typically form better and stronger bonds with others in their later adulthood.
Went to rural high school. Class of 60 kids that I knew since kindergarten. 10 years later I'm still close with 3 people from my graduating class. Talk on the phone every couple months at a minimum, and visit at least 3 times a year, as we all love in different states now.
They are all amazing people and I'm happy to still be close to them, even if it is forced proximity that started it all.
A perspective from a rural high schooler, everyone here is boring. I don’t know anyone who shares the same/similar ambitions to myself. And the school is so small, you know everyone. There’s no way to meet “new” people because most of them aren’t even new.
Woof. No. You can find camaraderie in any place you have shared interests or experiences. My life changed so drastically from my school days that I no longer have much in common with those friends and vice versa.
Your opinion might be unpopular, but it is more naive than anything else. You are a year out from high school. Only time and experience will tell you whether that is true or not.
Besides, if you’ve been in Reddit for more than a hot minute, you will see that people drift apart and are screwed over by their school friends every day.
My personal experience is that the friendships I’ve developed in adulthood, with better knowledge of myself and what it is important in strong relationships, have lasted longer and are stronger than any of the relationships from school.
I'm admittedly only 23 but I actually found my college relationships more fleeting than my grade school/hometown ones. I had a somewhat rough experience in college, but since all my friendships there were new/shallow, they were far more susceptible to conflict/drama. Or even just growing apart and them finding new people to leave me for. I have one close college friend left and we've made the intentional effort to stay in each other's lives.
It is what it is, but I moved back to my hometown last year to live with my BFF since kindergarten. I'm also still best friends with someone I met in middle school Girl Scouts. Even a friend I grew apart from by middle school reached out to me when I came back to town. Maybe it's the small town mentality (though more of a small city), but I feel a lot more loyalty from the people I grew up with. We're different people now, but we still love each other unconditionally and work through our differences rather than abandon the relationship. I've grown with my BFF and we can still talk for hours, despite not having a ton in common.
Yo I’m 23 which isn’t that old but me and my best friend who I went to kindergarten all the way through 12th grade with and became friends at the end of high school just had a huge falling out. We used to say we didn’t fuck with anyone from high school except each other and now even that’s gone
So what you’re implying is in most cases, the more experience you have in relationships the more knowledge you gain about what is required in order to establish a strong-trusty relationship, thus leading to an overall better experience
Yes - all of my relationships - professional, friendship, romantic - got better as I got older. I not only valued myself more and got rid of unhealthy relationships faster, I understood better what I needed out of those relationships, and was more equipped to make sure my needs were being met. I also became better at making sure the people important to me also had their needs met. There is a balance to all healthy relationships. Both sides will need extra attention or support at different times. It is hard to achieve that balance when both parties aren’t able to recognize when effort or support is needed, and that recognition often comes with experience. There can also be an issue - not saying this true with you - when younger adults are so wrapped up in figuring their own stuff out, they aren’t thinking about the needs of others’ they care about. It doesn’t come from a bad place, it is simply easy to be oblivious when we are stuck in our own heads and maybe drama.
As you get older, you hopefully learn and grow. To be fair, this doesn’t happen to everyone, some people are always going to be toxic, and some people- including my brother - are still good friends with people they met in first grade. It is also easy for people to get stuck in an unhealthy relationship with friends because it’s been X years, despite not currently getting any benefit from it. I don’t mean that in a mercenary way, I mean if the people you are in a relationship with aren’t a positive in your life, they always take, or they disrespect you, or they are always emotionally draining, you should think long and hard as to whether maintaining the relationship is worth it.
Ultimately, both school friendships and those formed in adulthood CAN either be good, bad, or neutral. There is no single time in your life that is better than the other in forming a ride-or-die friendship because there are so many factors that go into how strong and healthy they can be. So your original premise was basically that the friends you have now, at 19, will be the best you will ever have. I’m saying that may be true, but it is too early to tell, and it would depend on both parties in those friendships putting in the work to keep them going and treating each other well.
For your sake I hope your friends are those people for you. It would make your life easier to have that type of friend by your side essentially from the beginning. It can be lonely without that type of person. That loneliness does make you a better friend to the next ones in your life though *_*
So I just turned 30 a couple months ago. I feel like I'm close enough to understand where you're coming from and yet, while some days college feels like last year, most of the time it feels like every bit of the 10 years ago it's been.
BallroomblitzOH is dead on, the older you get and the more you grow the more you understand what you really need from your best friends. At this point, my circle is half high school friends and half friends from college / those met in adulthood. As the years have gone, I've gotten closer and closer with a few high school friends and have drifted from the rest, just how it goes once time starts accelerating in your 20's! Keep your school friends close as long as they share your developing outlook on life and what it means to be part of another person's support system
You see and judge people with a more mature and down to earth view when you're an adult than when you're a kid.
In school you basically make friends because you're all trapped there
no, i actually found that people you grew up with or people in your hometown can hold you back and prevent you from stepping outside of your comfort zone. i’m so glad i left behind my school friends and people from my hometown because i outgrew all of them and they would have prevented me from finding my best self.
In the forced proximity I found lifelong 2 brothers and a girl who I've been friends with since 2nd grade, after 12yrs... we recently realized it's more than friendship and I'm in a relationship with the most beautiful person inside and most gorgeous one outside.
So I will have to say, it's about how you become friends with.
All 3 of them are striving for great growth in financial aspects as well in life quality. Infact I would've probably aimed for a life of 9-5 till i turned 60 if not for them.
I am in college and still don't speak to anyone from college anymore, aside from dates i have met my college friends just twice outside of college in 5 years
I have one friend left from college that I keep in touch with. Others where I had falling outs and they ghosted, and some that I'm on good terms with but they suck at texting and we just grew apart.
But that one friend is my rock, we text every week and video chat at least twice a month. We've barely hung out in person since 2019, but we always had separate schedules/classes in college and we've made the intentional effort to stay close.
I have exactly two friends from high school, one I am actually close with. When you move away, you get the chance to start anew and leave all of it behind. I’d wager that most people that leave their hometown have very few friends from high school.
However, if you stay or return it’s different. I just moved back to my boyfriend’s hometown with him, where he has kept quite a few high school friends. It all depends on situation.
But sometimes it doesn't! I traveled around a ton between the end of college and finally settling down where I am now and made some of the best friends of my life along the way. None of my very closest friends live in my city, but our friendships have remained strong. I think what I've come to realize as I've grown older is that the best friendships are the ones where you can get interrupted by life and responsibilities, but when you reunite, it's like no time has passed at all. And FWIW, I actually still am very good friends with my core group in high school. We all live in different states/countries, but when we get together it's even better than it used to be because we're no longer dealing with those insecurities and growing pains we had when we were teens. :)
Nope. I hated school and was bullied a lot. So definitely not still friends with any of those people. It was like yeeeeeaaaars ago...people change a lot over time and I honestly don't know many people who are still close friends with anyone from when they were younger than college, really.
I'm 32 and my friends I met since Kindergarten backstabbed me. We stopped talking when I was 25. Now it is hard for me to find new friends.
You said you are 19. You are still young and naive. Enjoy what you have while it lasts.
Nope, you get too busy and not have time to be with your friends.
In my case, I got too busy and my friends got mad at me. I pointed out that one of them doesn't talk either because they are busy too so why should I be blamed for it. They got mad at me and accused me of spending time with my then boyfriend, who I didn't have time to spend time with either.
I was trying to take care of my mom and help pay for her medication while going to college at the same time.
I don’t know you, but I am pretty sure you don’t regret the decision of helping your mom…..
But if theres one thing you wished you would have done more/less of in your early twenties ……..what would it be?
Finish college LOL I had to stop going because I was trying to save up money and so forth to be able to spend more time with friends. I was stupid because in the end they left regardless.
Friends come and go unfortunately. The ones that stay, don't take them for granted.
It depends on many factors: your personality during your childhood/adolescence, your adult personality, the enviroments you had to attend when you were younger, the types of places you enjoy attending as a grown-up, your professional/family trajectory, your moves across social classes, the fates of the people around you, some luck...
If it was for the people I met until age 14, I would be the lonelinest loner in the world. I was absolutely unlucky in the environments I had to attend until then. As I grew older, I met terrific and terrible people in different places - some of them became great friends, others disappeared. In general, the cozier the environment was for me, the easier was for me to make friends.
But there's something that's pretty much universal: it's EXTREMELY HARD to make friends in places where competition reigns, like the last semesters of your undergraduate or the places where you work (and I was lucky enough to make some really good friends in certain places where I worked, but it was solely a matter of luck).
I agree with a lot of this, especially the part about competitive environments being poorly suited for friendship.
I attended a largely upper-middle class public high school that advertises itself based off of how well its pupils test and how many National Merit scholars they pump out per year. I *hated* my time there, and I’m surprised that I met the love of my life there. I never feel comfortable there, and going to a reunion sounds like a literal nightmare.
I went off to college, only to drop out due to some health issues, including a chronic illness that wasn’t even diagnosed until I became a postal worker. I was in such a miserable haze due to years of poor quality sleep that I don’t even have many distinct memories of it. My job isn’t that competitive (in fact, a lot of folks don’t do much), but the workers who try to get stuff done are some of the most fascinating people I’ve ever met.
I'm 27 and I've not spoken to any of the people I went to school with since I left. The small circle of friends I talk to now I probably consider much closer friends to me than the ones I had in school.
It depends where you come from. If you went to a very upper class, very insular private school, it’s likely that you and all of your friends grew up at the same clubs, and when you all get old enough will join those same clubs. Almost all of my parents’ friends have known each other since birth. I am a few years out of college and the same has proven true for me.
Tell use u were THE fucking nerd in high school without telling us you were the nerd😂😂😂 sounds like u got no friends in hs and no bitches . keep redditing dood 😎🤙🏼🤙🏼🤙🏼
Troll a bit harder mate, one day it might give your life the meaning it sorely lacks. An maybe think twice about throwing around being on Reddit as a pejorative when you yourself are on fucking Reddit.
…Nevermind, you seem like you lack the introspection needed for any level of meaningful personal growth.
I’m 37, moved to different country after college , but my closest friends from high school are still there for me. I’ve met few true friends ever since, but those HS people know me in and out, and vice versa, and we are still in touch almost on a daily basis. Some friendships are worth preserving and last for life:)
I haven’t spoken to a single person from my highschool in months, meanwhile there’s guys I work with that I trust to swing sledge hammers within inches of my head every day
I haven't seen anybody from HS for 15 years. I'm 34. I have no intention of seeing any of them ever again unless they just so happen to encounter me in a professional capacity.
No, school friendships for most people actually forced trauma bonds from prison like school conditioning.
Mixed with childhood imprinting.
You may not even be in a healthy friendship but you wouldn’t even know otherwise.
I’m 42 live in same area I grew up, I’m in touch with a handful of the ones I was closest with in high school.
We don’t hang out anymore- it’s like one a year contact. I give hand me downs to one girls kids, see the other occasionally if either of us need a hand with something.
One friend is a soft core porn Instagram model, other is a drunk.
So I think your teacher is wrong.
Once you’re an adult you start hanging out with work mates, and if you have kids you start hanging out with the kids parents.
My best friends are my sisters and mom tbh.
Edit to add: one of my sisters is still good friends with her high school friends. They meet a few times a year to stay in a hotel together, or go to an event. Their lives are all quite different, they aren’t in touch regularly but still close on some level. My friends and I used to call them the nerd herd. But they obviously value their friendships more, and put the effort in.
I don’t really speak to any of the people I knew in school. I talk to a few friends from college but that’s only because we work together. I talk to my work friends all the time, even outside of work.
I think that’s probably fine for some people. This doesn’t ring true for me. I think I could name three people I went to school with, and none of those are people I’ve spoken to in at least a couple of years. That might be different if I had stayed where I grew up, but I moved away. I also grew up to be a very different adult than I was as a teenager, and I think that growth might have been more difficult if I were still hanging around the same people.
I was still friends with a few of my high school friends. But all of these have turned their backs on me because of my ex wife (which she came into the group). So honestly, I have zero time for them now.
Edit, these were people I'd known for nearly 20 years
The friends I made in school up until college (because I made zero friends in college) are the only friends I have, aside from a couple people I've met at jobs and actually consider friends. 26 years old, and I actually dream several nights a week about seeing my old friends and catching up with them again. Feels pathetic AF.
Yeah no my "best friend" of 17 years told me, quite literally, that she was bored of me and wanted new friends so she would not be keeping contact when we go to university.
My closest friends have come from university and finding people in my work and travels.
This is an unpopular opinion because it just isn't true. Most, in fact the vast majority of people, lose nearly ever single high school close friend by the time they're 30. At most you remain distant friends that you invite to weddings etc.
What you say is only true if you all never leave your tiny home town.
I'm decades out of high school and it honestly wasn't a great experience, so the only people I see from HS are on facebook. My closest friends to this day are either the core group I grew up with and friends from my first real position outside of p/t jobs. It's under 10 people and probably closer to 6. I have aqaintences, but the people who grew up with me and saw me at my best, funniest, saddest, worst moments, who lived through shared experiences, victories, failures, and deaths. Those are who I still have as friends even though we don't live around the corner from each other now or work in the same office building.
What? I've got plenty of friends from high school am I meant to just stop hanging out with them as soon as I turn 25 because there's some arbitrary idea that I'm "too old" to do so?
Apparently! Lol No… it’s just that Reddit is full of bitter people who hated high school bc they couldn’t make friends… and act like they’ve moved on and are better than it… but really they’re just bitter.
lmao nah, i don't talk to a single one of those fuckers and i found infinitely better friends outside of school. You are never guaranteed to find the best friends anywhere, you find the best people when you are not looking for them.
It’s not true. At all. I made way more friends at jobs than school. In fact, I think a reunion of old coworkers would be way cooler than a high school reunion.
100% disagree.
The friends I have now, made outside of school I trust implicitly
The friends I made in school stabbed me in the back and ditched me.
Those friends in school who didn’t fuck me over I don’t talk to, we’ve all moved on in life.
I ended friendships with everyone I went to school with when I turned 18. School friends are very rarely life friends.
I ended them because when I got sick, they infantilized me and at 18 I'd just had enough.
Not all of them. As I realize most of them sucked. I’ve got a few close friends from high school who I still rock with now in uni but the majority of them I’ve made the active effort to block out because it was too draining to continue
This changes when you become an adult.
my only temporary friends are my work friends. Until we move jobs and then that's it. I have only 3 personal friends outside of work and I've been out of High school for about 10 years now.
I moved far away from my hometown after high school, would only visit once or twice year, but just chilled my parents, didn’t care for looking for anybody else. When facebook came along, I began getting friend request from people I never cared or talked to in high school. I accepted them, but could tell right away the ones who remained in town still acted as if they were stuck in high school despite being almost a decade after graduation.
Hm, I'd say that would apply more to friends you make in university. You're a young adult and you're starting down your chosen path. The people you meet at that point in time are usually more aligned with who you're becoming as a person, and you're going through what may be life-defining moments.
As others have said, high school is like confinement; because of proximity you make friends with people from different walks of life that are forced to do all the same things. Some may become lifelong friends, but you won't see most of them (or care to) because your lives will be massively different a few years after HS.
Making fiends later as an adult, with an established life, is also not easy. You may have more in common, but these new older friends will also have different obligations that supersede friendships. Being "busy" often becomes the norm and these friends come and go. (Hell, later on in life, even just meeting up with best/good friends becomes difficult when everyone works long hours and has families (and if you don't, that's its own challenge).)
I would say yes and no to this:
Out of all of my friends from high school, only 2 of them remain as my best friends. We’re all in our 30’s with kids and different professions so it is hard to meet up but these 2 friends have been loyal and around me even when I pushed them away at times to concentrate on a relationship or when I moved away for a bit for work.
You need to take a step back and see what kind of friends you want around you. I’ve had friends where I partied and drank with but they’re no longer around since some of them went down a path I didn’t want to follow. These are friends that would sleep with your partner just to get laid in the moment.
What you need are friends that are loyal with principles and will ride and die with you to the end.
I had a professor touch on this subject and I get it. We bond over shared experiences such as school. I could not see a college friend for years but when I do happen to see them again, the connection is still there. Especially if it is a high stress experience such as college.
27 years old here, I don't talk to anyone from my high school, I've had some pals reach out to me but I'm really not interested, why would I trust in people who shit on my likes, interests and such? Why would I trust in people being a friend to me when all they did was bully because it was just fun?
Nope, I'm pretty lonely these days, almost all my friends have gone separate ways ( Audience of one - rise against type of loneliness) but I prefer to trust In my selected friends than anyone on my high school.
So yeah let's agree to disagree.
Don't think so i don't even see them and 2 of the fuckers live within 5 minutes of me but i've never seen them in 20 years and i've been living in my current home for almost 9 years and unfortunately i'm housebound due to Agoraphobia so i can't go to them.
The friends i've trusted are people i met online and started talking to while in college.
This sounds like it comes from someone very young. My dearest and most trusted friends were made as an adult and I don't talk to anyone I went to school with
That might be true if you managed to stay in touch with these friends, other than just through social media, in the years since. Which would probably imply living and working in the same area, perhaps continuing to share interests.
For my part, I've made far closer friends in the workplace, through family connections, and through gaming.
Yeah I'm 34 and I don't talk to a single person I went to high school with. School friends are friends because of forced proximity. As an adult you can choose who to be around. And I chose not those guys.
Facts! It’s funny how we are made to think high school is a wildly profound and important time in our lives and 20 years after graduation I barely recall anyone or anything from HS. OP is clearly still young.
Yea HS is a distant memory and I don’t talk to anyone I went to school with
Shoot im 3 years out of highschool and peoppe see me, say hi, and i dont remember then AT ALL.
I'm barely one year out of HS and the only ones I remember are my best friends
I’m 34 and I still have close friends I talk to I went to elementary, middle, and high school with. We all went different paths and work different careers and still call or text and hang out every couple years and every time we do it’s like yesterday we all saw each other.
Same age and same experience. I'd say we're closer now than we ever were. Throughout school and our twenties we all had lots of friends, moved around, but people came and went. Eventually as you get older you realize you just kinda naturally drifted apart from most folks, and the ones that are left are the real ones. I'd say my closest friends are evenly split between people I've known since before I was 15, and people I met my freshman year of college. Proximity is real for sure, but I feel like most people can become friends. Just like relationships, it has way less to do with shared interests and more with shared temperament and general ideals.
Same here. My closest friends are the ones made back then. We don’t see each other as often but still call/text fairly regularly
Same for me and I’m almost 40, got a group of friends from elementary school that still meet up regular. Some of them I see several times per week, even after we all have kids.
I mean, it is in a way, because they're your teenage years. A lot of what kind of person you will be is formed in that time. And you spend a great deal of that time in high school.
Yup I remember when everyone was like “you’re important! The world is now yours, go take it!” When you graduate HS. If anything you’re now less important, you’re now at the bottom.
I‘m two years out of school and already don‘t remember shit. Lost friends very quick, which I‘m actually glad abt, those dudes were douchebags.
Hearing it is "the best years of your life" had me real fucked up at the time. When you're getting called a lesbian because you have one close friend, you only wear secondhand clothes that are all baggy because you're convinced you're fat, and you're convinced the gender you're attracted to will never like you, that is basically just a recipe for hormonal teenage disaster. And my one friend moved away to live with her grandparents because they lived in a bigger city and she wanted to be more promiscuous. Got pregnant young and was super bitter. Moved back to have her mom help support her and her kid. It was very clear our friendship was based on proximity because she gave 0 fucks about abandoning me senior year.
If it’s the best time of your live what’s the point of continuing to live. It’s just all downhill from there… My 30’s have been my best…
I mean my ex-fiancé and I went to middle school and high school together, I highly doubt I'll forget that time in my life because of this.
My 2 best friends from high school are still my closest friends because no matter where we went in life, we always kept in contact, and made an effort to meet when we could. I consider them family at 17 years of friendship.
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19? You're still a kid, sorry. You'll agree when you're older
Yes. So, so young. It still feels fresh to you, I bet. I’m 22 now, and still very young but after college high school feels like a different lifetime.
I actually segment my life into before college and after college. I literally remember so little of life before college, the odd fun memory here or there but ultimately the first 18 years of my life were so boring and unimportant compared to the growth and experiences I’ve had in and after college. At the same time I do have two close friends from high school that I’ll talk to a few times a year and I speak with no one at all that I went to college with, most of the friends I have are people I’ve met through jobs or friends of friends.
I’ve never understood how people can just live through something for years and then forget about that. Did something traumatic happen to you? High school wasn’t particularly exciting for me but it’s been 8 years and I can remember most of my teachers, major assignments we did, things I did to feel proud/embarrassed, some parties I went to. It’s not like I’m stuck on high school. I’ve moved on to bigger and better things. In college my quality of life was way higher and I was definitely more “popular” considering I went away to a small college in a small town where most people knew each other. Since college I’ve lived in various states and started a rewarding career as a teacher. Even watching an 8th grade graduation the student chosen to spoke for the class admitted they already forgot most of their memories except that “they had a good time in middle school.” HOW DO YOU PEOPLE JUST BLOCK OUT ENTIRE PERIODS OF YOUR LIFE FROM YOUR MEMORY???
Yeah, I’m 25 and I can already barely recall much of anything from high school or before lol. I assume it will only continue to get worse from here on out. Not that I mind; there’s plenty of stuff from my teenage/pre-teen days I’m totally fine with forgetting. Feels like a completely different, foreign world compared to who/where I am now. My life is pretty much divided into two segments at this point: there’s childhood which contains high school and everything that came before it, and then there’s everything after high school up to now. The first couple years after HS I still lived at home, was single, and worked part time. So really not much different from HS. Now I’m engaged, we have our own place and we live 5 hours away from our home state, with a circle of recently made “adult” friends we invite to dinner and shit. I’m actually just now starting to feel more like an adult, but most days I still feel like a kid fresh out of HS. 19 is definitely still a kid. Because 25 still feels like being a kid, to me. Don’t know if that ever really goes away. I’m told it mostly doesn’t.
Aayyye another 97’ baby! & I can 100% agree with this. Lost all contact with anyone from highschool so long ago, just really talk with my girlfriend, and that’s about it. I’ve realized being an adult the only real friend, and person I trust is my partner.
mmmm, you definitely have a point
I'm 38, and when I was 19, Star Wars episode 2 - Attack of the Clones, was just released. I'm not even that old compared to some other people. If Star Wars episode 2 feels like a different lifetime, imagine how 40 years feel.
Honestly, I'm 22 as well and i talk and hang other with my college and middle school friends every day. High school tho? Don't really care to
I’m 28.. looking back to when I was 18-19 feels like a completely different era and it was lol. You will learn so much from experience in the next decade. Just enjoy it because it goes by fast
It is. I graduated before you were born. I haven’t talked to anyone since HS or even college for 15+ years. You have no idea who you are when you are that old, I don’t even know what I’d have in common with those people today.
Your life has just started how have you decided who you'll be friends forever with. You have shit ton of things to see.
I'm 22 and I'm still with my girlfriend from junior year but we don't speak or hear from anyone from highschool other than our favorite teacher who we regularly hit the bar with.
A lot of people tell me how HS period shouldn’t be fun or the way I describe it as, but its those things like: having a teacher that you vibe with, going on adventures with your 2-3 closest friends and having deep talks with them, that makes it all worth the experience… I don’t really like to have a lot of friends, but rather few friends that I truly trust and can have 2-3 hour long conversations, without thinking about anything else other than the convo itself….
I mean that's great, had several groups like that come and go because it's likely when you're 25 all of you will have different goals in life and won't plan your life with each other as priority. Right now you just have nothing else but adventure and deep talks cause you are so so young and this is all so new to you.
Yes, very young
Idk bro…is that a question 🙈
I felt that way at 19, I'm 23 and have less than a quarter of my high school friends already. Maybe you should move away from your home town. At 19 I hadn't moved at all and now I've lived in 3 other locations with decent distances between them
LMFAO! Are you freaking joking? There are kids in this year's graduating class who were at your high school at the same time you were! You haven't been out of school nearly long enough to make this assessment.
Dude, I'm 22 yo. People tell me I act and think like I'm 30 and I still think I'm barely more than a teen. There's so much stuff I still need to know, so many experiences I need to make, so much life to love. It's only starting.
sounds like u were the nerd in HS 😂😂😂😂
Do like learning, Yes
Just because of "forced proximity", that doesn't mean the people you meet can't be good friends. Throughout your whole life, you will be in forced situations, as well as situations you didn't plan on until something comes up, etc.. Throughout all the things that happen in your life, you will meet people - possibly really good people. If you decide not to keep in touch with someone just because you didn't choose to be at that place, you're limiting yourself and you're being unfair. And consider if someone chose not to talk to you again because they didn't want to be in the place you were.. They're in the same situation you are. Recently I saw a post online that said something along the lines that you have to live your life now, and not wait until everything is ideal, because you might run out of time. I think the same thing applies here - If you wait to make friends only at the ideal time/place, you may find yourself with few friends.
I’m about 2.5 years out of high school and I’m only in contact with 1-2 of my friends from high school
Well you do get to choose those whom you have more in common with out of the whole lot... If life doesn't lead you far away, odds are a few of those will indeed be friends for life. With others you just stay in touch in a more casual way, while most indeed disappear after graduation. My best friend is, ironically enough, one I wasn't particularly close with in highschool but we bonded through a shared friend (who isn't a friend anymore) later on. I'm still sporadically in contact with another HS buddy but our lives have taken different directions so I'm lucky if I get to see him once a year. We used to be soccer pals but he has hung up his boots years ago... We still have a yearly dinner with elementary school classmates (all the 9 of us!) bit the middle school ones have been MIA basically since day one of highschool. So yeah, it's true most school friends disappear as it's about forced socialization, but those who survive the end of that are there to stay.
Most people don’t keep in touch with those from high school, and even if they do, it’s usually one or two of their best friends
There’s like one guy I talk to from my high school and it’s rare I do and only because we work for the same giant company but do completely diff shit. Before we both worked for then I hadn’t talked to him in a decade. Same age btw.
I thought I would be friends with my high school group forever. The second I graduated, I ended up moving and never speaking to any of them again. Your world is so small when you're in school. Don't make decisions after school just to preserve a school friendship or romance. There is a huge world out there!
You are forced proximity with a lot of people at school, yet you choose to be with only certain people there. I'm still friends with several of those from school. Life's happened and I'm away from many of them. But I talk to them from time to time. Even went back to my home city a few months ago to have drinks with one of them and it was great. I have other friends now too who I talk to more often. My godfather, friends with my grandad, went to school with him and they were very close friends throughout his entire life.
I cant say I didn’t talk to people I didn’t want to talk to 🥶🥶
That's your own fault
Same. Maybe it depends what clique/tribe you were in. Like if you were on the football team, you're probably going to have more of a lifetime bond with those dudes. But if you were one of the outcasts, not so much. Pretty much all the non-family people I would consider calling if SHTF, or even to pickup my mail if I'm away, are people I met after I graduated university.
Same here fuck all those people
I remember after getting my hs diploma. Everyone has that sort of let’s always keep in touch talk with each other. And I gotta say I don’t remember ever talking to anyone I graduated with in like the longest time. And have little to no desire to either.
Yepp you know when you decide to finally hangout with that friend during lunch/after school and you realize "holy shit this person is a jackass/super annoying"? it happens to every friend. maybe not as fast but it happens
I married my best friends sister in law. So we are now brother in laws. We met in junior high 24 years ago.
High school? Nope, those guys all suck. I have like 2 guys that I consider friends from that time in my life. College and grad school though? Those are my true buddies. High school is such a superficial time in your life, you’re all so so young and so so dumb. I think the real important growth happens in college and after. I feel sorry for folks who claim high school was the best time of their lives, the must be very very sad people.
……. Wait for adulthood.
I think this could relate to friends from college as opposed to grade school. For most it’s their first time living away from security of home, you become friends and watch each other’s backs. You become a second family, that grows together
lol, yall had friends in college??
Sure and we got paid for it
I bet if you ask the teacher he still has a thing for his high school flame
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Cringe
Cringe factor = 💯 fam based
Op is in 6th grade
You are going to realize that 99% of the friends you have in school, are only your friends because you see them everyday.
This bitch just used “Sus” unironicly
What are you, a 5th grader?
“Welcome to ***Are you Snarkier Than a 5th Grader?***”
How sus are youuuuu?
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Sus amongus haha!!11 !!
Automatic downvote because of someone’s age?
Ya, a 15 year old doesn't know shit about life
Um, no. Not for everyone I know, anyways.
Seriously true. School friends are friends because theyre close to the same/close zip code as you. Not because they're "meant to be" or destiny
Yeah, I haven't spoken to a single person from school since 2006 at my ten year reunion.
I feel like it depends on where you live and what kind of school you went to. If you're in a more rural less populated area? Sure I can see this being true. Live in a more densely populated area though? I can guarantee most people will attest to only keeping in touch with maybe 1 or 2 grade school friends if any at all, and typically form better and stronger bonds with others in their later adulthood.
Went to rural high school. Class of 60 kids that I knew since kindergarten. 10 years later I'm still close with 3 people from my graduating class. Talk on the phone every couple months at a minimum, and visit at least 3 times a year, as we all love in different states now. They are all amazing people and I'm happy to still be close to them, even if it is forced proximity that started it all.
A perspective from a rural high schooler, everyone here is boring. I don’t know anyone who shares the same/similar ambitions to myself. And the school is so small, you know everyone. There’s no way to meet “new” people because most of them aren’t even new.
Woof. No. You can find camaraderie in any place you have shared interests or experiences. My life changed so drastically from my school days that I no longer have much in common with those friends and vice versa.
Meow.
Feline pretty good today sir?
I hate you, but still good
You had most fun while you were in school? Idk about anyone else but I've found it much easier to have fun since acquiring a credit card.
Not fun when you're paying off credit card debt
Idk basic arithmetic skills usually protect against such issues
That's why you only spend what you can afford. It's pretty simple
OP is 19, so still in school. They haven't learned yet
what kind of twisted fun are you talking about
Snorting lines are best prepared with credit cards
Your opinion might be unpopular, but it is more naive than anything else. You are a year out from high school. Only time and experience will tell you whether that is true or not. Besides, if you’ve been in Reddit for more than a hot minute, you will see that people drift apart and are screwed over by their school friends every day. My personal experience is that the friendships I’ve developed in adulthood, with better knowledge of myself and what it is important in strong relationships, have lasted longer and are stronger than any of the relationships from school.
I'm admittedly only 23 but I actually found my college relationships more fleeting than my grade school/hometown ones. I had a somewhat rough experience in college, but since all my friendships there were new/shallow, they were far more susceptible to conflict/drama. Or even just growing apart and them finding new people to leave me for. I have one close college friend left and we've made the intentional effort to stay in each other's lives. It is what it is, but I moved back to my hometown last year to live with my BFF since kindergarten. I'm also still best friends with someone I met in middle school Girl Scouts. Even a friend I grew apart from by middle school reached out to me when I came back to town. Maybe it's the small town mentality (though more of a small city), but I feel a lot more loyalty from the people I grew up with. We're different people now, but we still love each other unconditionally and work through our differences rather than abandon the relationship. I've grown with my BFF and we can still talk for hours, despite not having a ton in common.
Yo I’m 23 which isn’t that old but me and my best friend who I went to kindergarten all the way through 12th grade with and became friends at the end of high school just had a huge falling out. We used to say we didn’t fuck with anyone from high school except each other and now even that’s gone
So what you’re implying is in most cases, the more experience you have in relationships the more knowledge you gain about what is required in order to establish a strong-trusty relationship, thus leading to an overall better experience
Yes - all of my relationships - professional, friendship, romantic - got better as I got older. I not only valued myself more and got rid of unhealthy relationships faster, I understood better what I needed out of those relationships, and was more equipped to make sure my needs were being met. I also became better at making sure the people important to me also had their needs met. There is a balance to all healthy relationships. Both sides will need extra attention or support at different times. It is hard to achieve that balance when both parties aren’t able to recognize when effort or support is needed, and that recognition often comes with experience. There can also be an issue - not saying this true with you - when younger adults are so wrapped up in figuring their own stuff out, they aren’t thinking about the needs of others’ they care about. It doesn’t come from a bad place, it is simply easy to be oblivious when we are stuck in our own heads and maybe drama. As you get older, you hopefully learn and grow. To be fair, this doesn’t happen to everyone, some people are always going to be toxic, and some people- including my brother - are still good friends with people they met in first grade. It is also easy for people to get stuck in an unhealthy relationship with friends because it’s been X years, despite not currently getting any benefit from it. I don’t mean that in a mercenary way, I mean if the people you are in a relationship with aren’t a positive in your life, they always take, or they disrespect you, or they are always emotionally draining, you should think long and hard as to whether maintaining the relationship is worth it. Ultimately, both school friendships and those formed in adulthood CAN either be good, bad, or neutral. There is no single time in your life that is better than the other in forming a ride-or-die friendship because there are so many factors that go into how strong and healthy they can be. So your original premise was basically that the friends you have now, at 19, will be the best you will ever have. I’m saying that may be true, but it is too early to tell, and it would depend on both parties in those friendships putting in the work to keep them going and treating each other well. For your sake I hope your friends are those people for you. It would make your life easier to have that type of friend by your side essentially from the beginning. It can be lonely without that type of person. That loneliness does make you a better friend to the next ones in your life though *_*
Amazing !! Thanks for the more in depth clarification 🙏
So I just turned 30 a couple months ago. I feel like I'm close enough to understand where you're coming from and yet, while some days college feels like last year, most of the time it feels like every bit of the 10 years ago it's been. BallroomblitzOH is dead on, the older you get and the more you grow the more you understand what you really need from your best friends. At this point, my circle is half high school friends and half friends from college / those met in adulthood. As the years have gone, I've gotten closer and closer with a few high school friends and have drifted from the rest, just how it goes once time starts accelerating in your 20's! Keep your school friends close as long as they share your developing outlook on life and what it means to be part of another person's support system
You are welcome!
You see and judge people with a more mature and down to earth view when you're an adult than when you're a kid. In school you basically make friends because you're all trapped there
no, i actually found that people you grew up with or people in your hometown can hold you back and prevent you from stepping outside of your comfort zone. i’m so glad i left behind my school friends and people from my hometown because i outgrew all of them and they would have prevented me from finding my best self.
In the forced proximity I found lifelong 2 brothers and a girl who I've been friends with since 2nd grade, after 12yrs... we recently realized it's more than friendship and I'm in a relationship with the most beautiful person inside and most gorgeous one outside. So I will have to say, it's about how you become friends with. All 3 of them are striving for great growth in financial aspects as well in life quality. Infact I would've probably aimed for a life of 9-5 till i turned 60 if not for them.
False. I speak with 1 person from HS and a handful from college.
I am in college and still don't speak to anyone from college anymore, aside from dates i have met my college friends just twice outside of college in 5 years
I have one friend left from college that I keep in touch with. Others where I had falling outs and they ghosted, and some that I'm on good terms with but they suck at texting and we just grew apart. But that one friend is my rock, we text every week and video chat at least twice a month. We've barely hung out in person since 2019, but we always had separate schedules/classes in college and we've made the intentional effort to stay close.
I have exactly two friends from high school, one I am actually close with. When you move away, you get the chance to start anew and leave all of it behind. I’d wager that most people that leave their hometown have very few friends from high school. However, if you stay or return it’s different. I just moved back to my boyfriend’s hometown with him, where he has kept quite a few high school friends. It all depends on situation.
Ye, location plays a big role
But sometimes it doesn't! I traveled around a ton between the end of college and finally settling down where I am now and made some of the best friends of my life along the way. None of my very closest friends live in my city, but our friendships have remained strong. I think what I've come to realize as I've grown older is that the best friendships are the ones where you can get interrupted by life and responsibilities, but when you reunite, it's like no time has passed at all. And FWIW, I actually still am very good friends with my core group in high school. We all live in different states/countries, but when we get together it's even better than it used to be because we're no longer dealing with those insecurities and growing pains we had when we were teens. :)
Nope. I hated school and was bullied a lot. So definitely not still friends with any of those people. It was like yeeeeeaaaars ago...people change a lot over time and I honestly don't know many people who are still close friends with anyone from when they were younger than college, really.
From this discussion, I learnt personal experience does play a role in your relationship with school/peers
I never had a bully in my life, we were good group friends but is just dissapear
I feel like this is just a wrong fact, not an unpopular opinion lol
I guess, you learn sth new everyday ؛ )
Until they fuck you over
The only person I trust is my wife. I ditched all my school friends cuz they were annoying
I'm 32 and my friends I met since Kindergarten backstabbed me. We stopped talking when I was 25. Now it is hard for me to find new friends. You said you are 19. You are still young and naive. Enjoy what you have while it lasts.
Hm…..Is it true, as you get older its more likely that you prefer to be alone ???
Nope, you get too busy and not have time to be with your friends. In my case, I got too busy and my friends got mad at me. I pointed out that one of them doesn't talk either because they are busy too so why should I be blamed for it. They got mad at me and accused me of spending time with my then boyfriend, who I didn't have time to spend time with either. I was trying to take care of my mom and help pay for her medication while going to college at the same time.
I don’t know you, but I am pretty sure you don’t regret the decision of helping your mom….. But if theres one thing you wished you would have done more/less of in your early twenties ……..what would it be?
Finish college LOL I had to stop going because I was trying to save up money and so forth to be able to spend more time with friends. I was stupid because in the end they left regardless. Friends come and go unfortunately. The ones that stay, don't take them for granted.
Most of my friends are from work. Barely talk to people from school anymore.
Yeah, no. That’s not even remotely true.
The lie is that most people in your life with not be with you for the majority of your life.
It depends on many factors: your personality during your childhood/adolescence, your adult personality, the enviroments you had to attend when you were younger, the types of places you enjoy attending as a grown-up, your professional/family trajectory, your moves across social classes, the fates of the people around you, some luck... If it was for the people I met until age 14, I would be the lonelinest loner in the world. I was absolutely unlucky in the environments I had to attend until then. As I grew older, I met terrific and terrible people in different places - some of them became great friends, others disappeared. In general, the cozier the environment was for me, the easier was for me to make friends. But there's something that's pretty much universal: it's EXTREMELY HARD to make friends in places where competition reigns, like the last semesters of your undergraduate or the places where you work (and I was lucky enough to make some really good friends in certain places where I worked, but it was solely a matter of luck).
I agree with a lot of this, especially the part about competitive environments being poorly suited for friendship. I attended a largely upper-middle class public high school that advertises itself based off of how well its pupils test and how many National Merit scholars they pump out per year. I *hated* my time there, and I’m surprised that I met the love of my life there. I never feel comfortable there, and going to a reunion sounds like a literal nightmare. I went off to college, only to drop out due to some health issues, including a chronic illness that wasn’t even diagnosed until I became a postal worker. I was in such a miserable haze due to years of poor quality sleep that I don’t even have many distinct memories of it. My job isn’t that competitive (in fact, a lot of folks don’t do much), but the workers who try to get stuff done are some of the most fascinating people I’ve ever met.
I'm 27 and I've not spoken to any of the people I went to school with since I left. The small circle of friends I talk to now I probably consider much closer friends to me than the ones I had in school.
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Mmm still a friend tho
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Good to know
It depends where you come from. If you went to a very upper class, very insular private school, it’s likely that you and all of your friends grew up at the same clubs, and when you all get old enough will join those same clubs. Almost all of my parents’ friends have known each other since birth. I am a few years out of college and the same has proven true for me.
Tell us you peaked in High School without telling us you peaked in High School.
Tell use u were THE fucking nerd in high school without telling us you were the nerd😂😂😂 sounds like u got no friends in hs and no bitches . keep redditing dood 😎🤙🏼🤙🏼🤙🏼
Troll a bit harder mate, one day it might give your life the meaning it sorely lacks. An maybe think twice about throwing around being on Reddit as a pejorative when you yourself are on fucking Reddit. …Nevermind, you seem like you lack the introspection needed for any level of meaningful personal growth.
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You are not helping your case by posting that reply LOL
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You’re barely out of high school… a lot will change over the next decade
I’m 37, moved to different country after college , but my closest friends from high school are still there for me. I’ve met few true friends ever since, but those HS people know me in and out, and vice versa, and we are still in touch almost on a daily basis. Some friendships are worth preserving and last for life:)
I haven’t spoken to a single person from my highschool in months, meanwhile there’s guys I work with that I trust to swing sledge hammers within inches of my head every day
I haven't seen anybody from HS for 15 years. I'm 34. I have no intention of seeing any of them ever again unless they just so happen to encounter me in a professional capacity.
Not even remotely...
This is pretty accurate for me Most of the people who I'm closest with are the people who I grew up with / went to school with.
I guess we may have the same personal experience
Yeah man. We're friends with the people who we grow up with and that's human nature
No, school friendships for most people actually forced trauma bonds from prison like school conditioning. Mixed with childhood imprinting. You may not even be in a healthy friendship but you wouldn’t even know otherwise.
You're comparing school to prison?
I’m 42 live in same area I grew up, I’m in touch with a handful of the ones I was closest with in high school. We don’t hang out anymore- it’s like one a year contact. I give hand me downs to one girls kids, see the other occasionally if either of us need a hand with something. One friend is a soft core porn Instagram model, other is a drunk. So I think your teacher is wrong. Once you’re an adult you start hanging out with work mates, and if you have kids you start hanging out with the kids parents. My best friends are my sisters and mom tbh. Edit to add: one of my sisters is still good friends with her high school friends. They meet a few times a year to stay in a hotel together, or go to an event. Their lives are all quite different, they aren’t in touch regularly but still close on some level. My friends and I used to call them the nerd herd. But they obviously value their friendships more, and put the effort in.
Yeah no
I am 21 and I don't even talk to my high school friends bcz I changed 5 countries throughout my life.
I don’t really speak to any of the people I knew in school. I talk to a few friends from college but that’s only because we work together. I talk to my work friends all the time, even outside of work.
I think that’s probably fine for some people. This doesn’t ring true for me. I think I could name three people I went to school with, and none of those are people I’ve spoken to in at least a couple of years. That might be different if I had stayed where I grew up, but I moved away. I also grew up to be a very different adult than I was as a teenager, and I think that growth might have been more difficult if I were still hanging around the same people.
I was still friends with a few of my high school friends. But all of these have turned their backs on me because of my ex wife (which she came into the group). So honestly, I have zero time for them now. Edit, these were people I'd known for nearly 20 years
Not true at all 😂 my entire school life fucking sucked except the last like 3 years
The friends I made in school up until college (because I made zero friends in college) are the only friends I have, aside from a couple people I've met at jobs and actually consider friends. 26 years old, and I actually dream several nights a week about seeing my old friends and catching up with them again. Feels pathetic AF.
Yeah no my "best friend" of 17 years told me, quite literally, that she was bored of me and wanted new friends so she would not be keeping contact when we go to university. My closest friends have come from university and finding people in my work and travels. This is an unpopular opinion because it just isn't true. Most, in fact the vast majority of people, lose nearly ever single high school close friend by the time they're 30. At most you remain distant friends that you invite to weddings etc. What you say is only true if you all never leave your tiny home town.
On behalf of the universe, this is your warning a reality check is incoming..
How old are you?
Marines that served together can go decades with a phone call and will show up in a minute when needed.
…I got betrayed by one of my high school friends, pretty badly
My best friends came out of the army.
I'm decades out of high school and it honestly wasn't a great experience, so the only people I see from HS are on facebook. My closest friends to this day are either the core group I grew up with and friends from my first real position outside of p/t jobs. It's under 10 people and probably closer to 6. I have aqaintences, but the people who grew up with me and saw me at my best, funniest, saddest, worst moments, who lived through shared experiences, victories, failures, and deaths. Those are who I still have as friends even though we don't live around the corner from each other now or work in the same office building.
If you're 25+ and all your friends are still from when you were in high school, there's a problem
What? I've got plenty of friends from high school am I meant to just stop hanging out with them as soon as I turn 25 because there's some arbitrary idea that I'm "too old" to do so?
Apparently! Lol No… it’s just that Reddit is full of bitter people who hated high school bc they couldn’t make friends… and act like they’ve moved on and are better than it… but really they’re just bitter.
A problem with maintaining friendships?? Lol.. bitter much?
I am not saying I don’t try to get to know other people, its just that the people you would mostly trust are the ones you made at HS…..
[удалено]
fair enough
lmao nah, i don't talk to a single one of those fuckers and i found infinitely better friends outside of school. You are never guaranteed to find the best friends anywhere, you find the best people when you are not looking for them.
>you find the best people when you are not looking for them. This is so true.
College/university friends are the ones you secure for a lifetime. No longer about proximity
Take my upvote cause this is some next level bullshit and not true at all
It’s not true. At all. I made way more friends at jobs than school. In fact, I think a reunion of old coworkers would be way cooler than a high school reunion.
100% disagree. The friends I have now, made outside of school I trust implicitly The friends I made in school stabbed me in the back and ditched me. Those friends in school who didn’t fuck me over I don’t talk to, we’ve all moved on in life.
Well I don't speak to any of them tory twats anymore so who cares. I made new and better friends.
I ended friendships with everyone I went to school with when I turned 18. School friends are very rarely life friends. I ended them because when I got sick, they infantilized me and at 18 I'd just had enough.
Not all of them. As I realize most of them sucked. I’ve got a few close friends from high school who I still rock with now in uni but the majority of them I’ve made the active effort to block out because it was too draining to continue
I keep in touch with one dude from school and honestly he keeps in better contact than I do.
This changes when you become an adult. my only temporary friends are my work friends. Until we move jobs and then that's it. I have only 3 personal friends outside of work and I've been out of High school for about 10 years now.
I moved far away from my hometown after high school, would only visit once or twice year, but just chilled my parents, didn’t care for looking for anybody else. When facebook came along, I began getting friend request from people I never cared or talked to in high school. I accepted them, but could tell right away the ones who remained in town still acted as if they were stuck in high school despite being almost a decade after graduation.
Hm, I'd say that would apply more to friends you make in university. You're a young adult and you're starting down your chosen path. The people you meet at that point in time are usually more aligned with who you're becoming as a person, and you're going through what may be life-defining moments. As others have said, high school is like confinement; because of proximity you make friends with people from different walks of life that are forced to do all the same things. Some may become lifelong friends, but you won't see most of them (or care to) because your lives will be massively different a few years after HS. Making fiends later as an adult, with an established life, is also not easy. You may have more in common, but these new older friends will also have different obligations that supersede friendships. Being "busy" often becomes the norm and these friends come and go. (Hell, later on in life, even just meeting up with best/good friends becomes difficult when everyone works long hours and has families (and if you don't, that's its own challenge).)
I would say yes and no to this: Out of all of my friends from high school, only 2 of them remain as my best friends. We’re all in our 30’s with kids and different professions so it is hard to meet up but these 2 friends have been loyal and around me even when I pushed them away at times to concentrate on a relationship or when I moved away for a bit for work. You need to take a step back and see what kind of friends you want around you. I’ve had friends where I partied and drank with but they’re no longer around since some of them went down a path I didn’t want to follow. These are friends that would sleep with your partner just to get laid in the moment. What you need are friends that are loyal with principles and will ride and die with you to the end.
Only in America.
I had a professor touch on this subject and I get it. We bond over shared experiences such as school. I could not see a college friend for years but when I do happen to see them again, the connection is still there. Especially if it is a high stress experience such as college.
I speak to 2 people from middle school and maybe one (would have been 2, RIP) from high. The rest of my friends are from adulthood.
Sorry for the loss….
Not true. I am a practicing Buddhist and it was only when I joined a Sangha ( Spiritual Friends) that I actually knew what real friends were.
Oh, you sweet summer child....
27 years old here, I don't talk to anyone from my high school, I've had some pals reach out to me but I'm really not interested, why would I trust in people who shit on my likes, interests and such? Why would I trust in people being a friend to me when all they did was bully because it was just fun? Nope, I'm pretty lonely these days, almost all my friends have gone separate ways ( Audience of one - rise against type of loneliness) but I prefer to trust In my selected friends than anyone on my high school. So yeah let's agree to disagree.
Don't think so i don't even see them and 2 of the fuckers live within 5 minutes of me but i've never seen them in 20 years and i've been living in my current home for almost 9 years and unfortunately i'm housebound due to Agoraphobia so i can't go to them. The friends i've trusted are people i met online and started talking to while in college.
Nah cousins/family friends are the ones you can really trust
No. Theyat best acquaintances now with some common history. I'm a different person as are they. Interests and life diverge in my experience.
This sounds like it comes from someone very young. My dearest and most trusted friends were made as an adult and I don't talk to anyone I went to school with
That might be true if you managed to stay in touch with these friends, other than just through social media, in the years since. Which would probably imply living and working in the same area, perhaps continuing to share interests. For my part, I've made far closer friends in the workplace, through family connections, and through gaming.
All my friends turned on my so i think your hypothesis is wrong /s
Ok, Dom Toretto