Moving On

[hobbsyoyo]

Have you ever cut friends or family out of your life? Or just naturally drifted apart? Why and when have you moved on from your social circles in life?

Or have you managed to keep a stable group of friends in your life for a long tie?


Share your stories of what caused you to move on from friends and/or family.

Alternatively - has anyone ever cut you out of their life?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

After dropping out of High School, I moved to the Midwest and purposefully cut everyone I knew that wasn't family out of my life. I wanted a clean break and a fresh start and none of those friendships were deep or meaningful and I just wanted out. It helps that I wasn't tied to social media or even a cell phone number at that point so it was trivially easy to ghost everyone. I did tell the few friends I had at the time that I would be cutting contact so it wasn't a surprise to them and I didn't have very many friends to begin with.

 

[Ryika]

Not in real life, although I was never interested in (or good at) keeping in contact with non-family members who I didn't "have" to interact with, so with most of the friends from the past, things just fizzled out.

I did however "reset" my online environment once, after having come to the realization that most of the people I interacted with were not positive influences. That was... astonishingly easy to be honest, after thinking about it for a week or so, I just entered random numbers and letters as passwords to my accounts and then deactivated the eMail account attached to them to make it hard to go back, and.. well, I never tried to.

Although, I do still remember the feeling of shock when I found a cool article that I wanted to share with... well, someone, but nobody who would have understood what it's about was there. Tales of an Emo.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I have been a ghost my entire life. I've moved, a lot, and when I've moved I've focused on making new friends, not keeping old ones. I pretty much ghosted the family I was born in a few times, though never to the point where no one had a phone number so drifted back in with some of them at different times, including having wound up as the responsible sibling that took care of our parents. My own family consists of current gf, first ex wife, and my sons. We're pretty tight.

 

[Synobun]

I used to cut off contact with people in my life fairly regularly.

This thread is somewhat interesting timing as last night I found a Facebook account from when I was still in high school and managed to gain access to it. It was an odd yet insightful journey.

It also highlighted that, of the people in my past, I remember almost none of them. There were a lot of heated conversations that implied intimacy and meaningfulness with scores of people that today I have zero recollection of even after seeing a picture of them. That reflects poorly on me.

I used to go through frequent cullings of my friendships. I was, am, a very unhappy person and every time the pot boiled over I'd clean up shop. I'd delete everything I'd created, I'd make new accounts everywhere, and I'd ghost everyone. Throughout these cycles some people would come back but it was never me going to them.

When I dropped out of high school I intentionally sabotaged the few local friendships I had left so that they wouldn't be suspicious of my sudden disappearance from, well, life. It worked, but it's a regret I carry around with me. They didn't deserve the way I treated them.

I technically do have friends who have stood the "test of time" so to speak. About half or more of the time I've known them I've been strictly out of contact with them, though. I know four people who I met when I was 12 that I am currently in contact with. Nothing from before then.

I've also cut out family. When I 'ran away' from home four years ago it was necessary to remove that element from my life. This would have likely been a permanent fate but unfortunately for me I loved, love, my niece dearly. My mother is giving her a better life than she ever gave me or my siblings but it weighed on me more and more each year that I had ghosted from the life of someone I predominantly raised because nobody else was willing to do it. It tore me apart, and eventually I gave in and reopened limited contact with my mother so that I could talk to my niece again.

From a statistics viewpoint, I'd estimate I've ghosted at least 95% of the people I'd ever become friends with in the past. I don't stick around for very long. The urge to destroy and disappear was often too great. Accounts like this one on CFC and my current friends are a rarity and have taken a concerted effort to maintain, but even here on CFC it's been evident. I used to be friends with a few people here off-site that I ghosted. The account itself I've often abandoned for 6+ months at a time. I think right now is my longest streak of being around without disappearing into the aether for a bit and that's really only been a little under a year and a half.

 

[GoodEnoughForMe]

I cut every single person out of my life in my late teens when I was at my lowest point in life, except one. He was an abusive, violent, dishonest *******, but I had known him for so long I stayed in touch. And he was the only person I knew at the time, so I felt like I had to. Finally, years later, a new and very close friend of mine told me I needed to cut him out. So I did. Just stopped answering texts, calls, emails, Facebook pokes, messages, everything and anything. One of the best decisions I ever made. His existence was hurting my quality of life. He still texts me on my birthday and it's sad but it is what it is. I never told him why I did what I did, which maybe I owed, but I couldn't bring myself to, and with all the physical and mental pain he had caused me over a really, really long time I felt like didn't need a justification or explanation outside of that.

The worst part wasn't him it was just that I had essentially nobody for a long time. I avoided all humans, self-destructed every network I had, spoke to nobody, hid in my room, and did all kinds of stupid stuff to my body. It's been very hard to rebuild over the last few years any social life when I had literally none. Just in January alone, I had 3 friends leave the area, essentially lost a partner (it's weird but yeah), and even an uncle jumped ship to Texas, and it shotgunned everything. One of the 3 friends went to Denver, deleted all her social media, and never responded to my last text. Two went to Seattle. I had someone break up with me once over Snapchat and unfriend me on Facebook and stop talking to me because they fell in love with someone else and I guess that was that.

On November 8th 2016 I lost a friend. He bragged about the results and dropped the n word and I told him he was an idiot and to f off and that was that. I wonder what he's up to often.

Most of my closest friends are ones I have met online, through blogging, art, video games, whatever. And a lot of people still hold that against me. And yeah, I can't teleport my frined in Miami to go see a movie with me in Michigan. Making real ones in a small town is hard. Things like Meetup.com and stuff are pretty sparse here. It requires lots of driving to get somewhere with more events, which is one reason I really, really want to move. And with a small social network it'd be a lot easier I guess to move than it might be for some. I've got a few friends in town at this point I'd consider fairly close, who I've hung out with fairly regularly, but it's a small circle and one of them is moving in September far away, and after January I'm already grasping for people as it is, trying to throw myself at social events and see if something sticks, but these things are often transient and temporary and the people in them come and go. I'm lucky there was a meetup at a bar near here a few weeks ago and I got one good relationship from it who I've seen multiple times, and the other people there were all pretty cool but nothing else has been scheduled or happened with the group since.

Basically nobody I was friends with at any point in my life through college exists in my life in any capacity any more. Most of them have moved. Three of my four last closest friends from late high school are hundreds or even thousands of miles away. I occasionally like their pictures on Facebook and once in a blue moon they ask me how life is.

Without the context of forced classrooms, and with a job where all my coworkers have 3, 4, 5 decades on me, it's been tough. I miss a lot of it. I've worked hard and gotten a lot better but in a setting without a ton of resources it can be hard. I'm going to a writing group that meets every Wednesday at a coffee shop in town. I was going to go last Wednesday, but it got canceled when the 5 regulars all couldn't make it. That's how these things often work.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I have been a ghost my entire life. I've moved, a lot, and when I've moved I've focused on making new friends, not keeping old ones. I pretty much ghosted the family I was born in a few times, though never to the point where no one had a phone number so drifted back in with some of them at different times, including having wound up as the responsible sibling that took care of our parents. My own family consists of current gf, first ex wife, and my sons. We're pretty tight.

Good for you for taking care of your parents. I kind of sense from this that they didn't deserve it.


I was cut out of a close friends life and it hurt. I connected with this guy in college and we hung out a lot, played a lot of games, hiked, fossil hunted and enjoyed each other's company. He officiated my wedding and that's when things went crazy. He inserted jokes into the ceremony that I specifically asked him not to. He drank a red bull before the after party which, coupled with alcohol and his ADHD, turned him into a complete loon. He ran around, swung from monkey bars, picked multiple fights with his girlfriend until she cried and was generally insufferable. The next morning he called me asking for a ride because he was too cheap to Uber (even though we paid for cab for everyone the night before) despite the fact that we had to get on the road to head home - three hours in the opposite direction that he needed to go. A few weeks later he broke up with his girlfriend in a childish way after dragging her on for months. I snapped on him via text message about his actions over the last couple of months and he completely cut me out of his life.

I ran into him a year or so later as he was working at a hotel I was staying at and he immediately started to brag about his life and I was like, Neat. I'm glad you're on the debate club now. I guess.

It sucked to be cut out by someone who was really close to me but I think in the end it was for the best.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Good for you for taking care of your parents. I kind of sense from this that they didn't deserve it.

It was important to do, not because they deserved it, but as an example. My sons seem to be convinced that I've earned it when my time comes, and that taking care of my gf, their mother, and each other is just "part of the deal of being alive."

They also appreciate what it took for me to raise them in a family where the idea of ghosting out seems totally alien to them. My parents had no connection to speak of with the families they were born in. My brother is long since completely ghosted. My sister spent most of her adult life with her associates thinking she might be an only child orphan. My half sister never would have even known any of us if my sister hadn't had a wild moment when one of my wives who was adopted got her excited about this "find your lost birth parents/siblings" thing, because my dad ghosted on her when she was in grade school (much the better for her, as she has a beautiful, close knit family of in-laws and kids and grandkids and the entire ghost thing never occurs to any of them). It is way too easy to grow up and be our parents, and my sons tend to be automatically a lot of things that I am consistently only through iron discipline. Members of a close knit family being one of the obvious ones.

 

[warpus]

I've been moving my whole life. When I was an infant we were for many years waiting for the communists to build us an apartment. it took forever and was only ready by the time I was in kindergarden. I remember some things from those days somehow, mainly just vauge memories, but I do remember some friends and how different things were when we finally moved into the city (from the countryside/farms/etc.) and I went to a big school. It was a start from scratch, for me a brand new life.

I made a lot more friends at that school and at that (tiny) apartment, but we only lasted there about 4 years. The summer before I was supposed to start grade 4, we want on "vacation", and never came back. Turns out it was a grand plan by my parents to leave everything behind and to try to move to some country where English is spoken. Because English rules and communism sucks. That whole experience left on me a much bigger impact than the first move. It was unexpected, I didn't know about it until after we crossed the iron curtain and my parents were able to tell me what was going on. We left everything behind. All my friends and soo many family members, all over Poland. After that I wrote some postcards and letters to my friends in Poland but it was like a cord was cut and.. the keeping in touch didn't last very long, and I found myself in a strange new place where people spoke a weird language, and uhhh every kid in Poland knew that Germany was where the Nazis came from. Turns out German people can be really nice and hospitable and awesome, but nevertheless it took me a long time to learn German. We moved from immigration/refugee camp to camp every couple weeks, for the first year or so. No chance to make friends at all. Then after that we finally got a less temporary place to live, and I had to go to German school and learn German, and.. it took me a while to learn German. It's way different from Polish. I was a shy kid to begin with, so that did not help me make friends at all. I lived in a very sparesely populated rural-ish part of the country, so not many Polish people either. I suspect if we had ended up in a big city, it would have been easier for me to meet Polish kids. Anyway, after a year and a half of that I could understand German more or less, and sort of speak a basic and broken form of it. So I made some German friends. We couldn't communicate great, but my best German friend (grades 5-6) had a crapload of legos, so we got along just fine.

A couple years later, once I got used to all these people and the new setting, it was time to fly to Canada. I started in grade 7 in Canada and could only communicate to the Polish kids. Nobody spoke German, unfortunately, and I only knew English at a "I can say some verbs" level. I was in ESL in grades 7 and 8, and even a part of 9. In grade 7 I had no idea what the hell was going on. When a hot lunch showed up one day, the first hot lunch I ever saw, this Polish kid in class told me that the pizza was free, so me and this Portugese guy dug in and ate a bunch of slices. The Portugese guy showed in Canada at right around the time I did, and we both ended up sitting beside each other in ESL class. We couldn't understand anything anyone was saying in English, and he undrestood 0 Polish and I uderstood 0 Portugese. But we sort of became best friends, and so we just went to town and devoured a whole bunch of that pizza while the teacher was out of class. I half suspected somethign was not quite right, but whatever, I don't speak any English, and the pizza smelled great. The Portugese guy even packed away like a half of pizza, and put it all in his bag to I assume bring back to his family.

So in Canada it was easier to make friends, because there are a lot of Polish kids here, or where I lived at least. Plus if you know German, English is a lot easier to learn. I learned English 3 times faster than what it took me to learn German. I made a bunch of friends, including this guy Mike Howard, who was your typical Canadian kid. Damn, I wonder what he's up too. At that point in life I was already so used to just eventually moving on. You didn't form long bonds with people, because it was all a waste of time anyway. But life goes on, so you meet people anyway, and spend time with them, and so on. For university I moved to a town 100km away, and basically kept in touch with nobody from highschool except 4-5 peopple. Most of the people I was keeping in touch with I had met on BBS', ANSI art groups, the internet, etc. Digital friends were so.. transient and migratory, I guess that's why it might have seemed easier to make friends with people like that, as they seemed to be able to relate to my own lifestyle a bit better maybe.

Since all that I had to at one point kick my best friend from Germany out of my apartment (here in Canada). He's a Polish guy, his family moved to Germany to a village close to the village we were staying in. A year and a half after we escaped through the curtain, his family basically joined us, nearby, and so we would all hang out all the time. My family even knew his family back in Poland, so the bond was that much stronger. Me and him were best friends, we both got our first computers together (atari 800xl), we'd go on biking adventures, etc. It was for the most part a big blast. They moved to Canada too, and we both actually went to the same high school. And then the same university, where we were roommates. Then one day he announced that he was broke, quit school, and moved to vancouver. I was left alone and eventually found another roommate for the next term. Maybe 6 years later he visits town, we go out for drinks, and after we get back to my apartment he is insulting me, my family, my friends, even the programming language I use at work. It was really weird. I had no idea where all that was coming from, but eventually it just got to be too much, so I asked him to leave. He started writing all these cryptical emails to me as soon as he got home, said lots of nasty stuff, started cc'ing my friends and calling them all names too, eventually .. well to make a long story short one of the emails he forwarded was a forward of an email from his girlfriend, which he was using to show off how awesome and amazing he is and how pathetic me and my friend mario are. Mario by the way read the email and was all "WTH is going on". Obvoiusly. This was all just insane. So anyway I cc'd the guy's gf and replied and said all sorts of nasty stuff back. Up until that point I did not respond to the emails and just ignored them, so this came out of nowhere from me, I just blasted all this !@#@$! at the guy, told his girlfriend what I think of the situation, and supposedly that almost broke them up. I didn't hear from the guy again until 5 years ago when I got a cryptic threatening email with just a subject line and one sentence in the email body. That was maybe 8 years ago now, so since then nothing exciting has happened. But yeah, my ex-best friend went crazy. I hope he gets help and gets better and gets his life back on track (he ended up getting arrested, threatened to kill some guy, resisted arrest, etc.) but I haven't heard anything in such a long time, I don't really know what's up. Turns out that his whole family was getting emails from him for a while where he'd insult all of them. So one day they asked me if I heard anything, and at that point I hadn't.. but we got talking a bit.. and yeah, we aren't sure what's up with him, but supposedly he saw a specialist at some point and so.. who knows where he's at, but maybe he's improving. But either way, that's not something I need in my life, and I didn't necessarily cut him out, but I put an end to his BS and that's essentially what the consequence ended up being. My life improved as a result and this was the way to go, but I do still sometimes think back fondly to the bike adventures we had in Germany, when we both started programming on our computers, sharing code, games, first computer experiences, first LEGO experiences.. those days were the best. but ah well, the present is much different, and sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

I find it's important to surround yourself with positive people and cut out the negative. Sometimes you can't do that, but you can minimize how much time you spend with people, and how you divide up your time overall. If you have to cut someone out though, that's fine, as far as we know you only live once, might as well share those precious moments we have with people who are a positive influence on us and not a negative one.

 

[Commodore]

Have you ever cut friends or family out of your life?

Yes. Many times. Both friends and family.

Why and when have you moved on from your social circles in life?

It usually happens whenever there is a shift in my life that naturally takes me away from them. For example: once I graduated high school and wasn't seeing those people everyday, I just stopped talking to them and made new friends at TSA (which is where I worked after high school). Once I moved on from TSA, I never spoke to those people again and made new friends in the Army. Rinse and repeat for every shift in my life. I guess I just always see friends as a replaceable or renewable commodity.

The only exception to this would be the guys I deployed to Iraq with. We still keep in touch. It's kinda hard to abandon or cut ties with people you go to war with since they become closer to you than even your blood relatives.

With family, I cut out most of my extended relatives just because I can't be bothered to keep up with that many people. At this point I've pretty much cut out everyone in my family except my wife, daughters, brother, and parents.

 

[Tahuti]

I have cut ties to people often, though I have also experienced being on the receiving end of that, usually after a mental breakdown. The latter ones often have a distinct mentalphobic attitude which is quite frustrating to deal with.

 

[The_J]

Many interesting stories in here guys, nice (well, not so nice at the end, you know what I mean).


For me...things have changed.
I think I told on multiple occasions that I changed my life from a computer addicted loner to an active and outgoing guy.
During the first period, I didn't keep up with anyone. Not when I changed from high school to my bachelor (only a tiny bit via random emails), not from bachelor to master, and now I'm not keeping up with anyone from my master. I didn't really make any real friends at this time. Main point of interaction was study, never anything in my free time (because I was sitting behind my PC), so this doesn't come as a surprise.
Last year...or 2 years ago, doesn't matter, there was the 10 year anniversary of high school graduation. Everyone was invited, but I didn't go at the end. Besides that's an inconvenience to go back to Germany, I'm also not sure what I'd have done there. I still remember most people from high school, but I don't think I'd have anything to talk to them about, since nobody was a really close friend. I'm a bit curious what happened to them, but not too much. I'm also not using social media, so I basically do no know anything about them (except when I was using a German social network during my B.sc; I had roughly an idea what people studied at that time, but forgot about it now).

Now, after my PhD, when I changed my life, this has changed too. In the meanwhile, I'm living like 2h by public transport away from the city where I did my PhD. I am still keeping up with most of my friends there, visit them often, or go to do something with them elsewhere. Yesterday I was partying with one of them, and the weekend before I was with 4 of them in Luxembourg to visit another friend. So everything changed there. To the better, I have to say.
Side effect of this is that Utrecht Central station is my second home now .
During this time, not everything did go smooth. At the beginning, I was close friends with a few people who are more of the silent type. We played a lot of boardgames together. As life changed, and I got more of a party person, these friendships got more loose. We still regularly chat, the extended friends group is also the same, but the relationship between us changed. I do not spend as much time anymore with them. But that is because life changed, not because of an active decision.
Another one of my friends somewhat cut some ties with the friends group. We were all together often, going out, partying, having fun. That also lead to some...er.... how do you say that... you get to know people too well, and sometimes you get annoyed by that. It seems he got too much of that, and changed his social life, and basically disappeared mostly for the out-of-work activities. I am not sure what happened there, but it's a bit sad.
The last person is the girl I feel in love with when I moved to this country.
At the beginning we lived together in the same dorm. She must have been aware that I was into her. We all had to move out at some point (university regulations, was temporary stay), and she didn't really keep up with me. At some point I confessed to her (already told here somewhere), and didn't get much better afterwards. It hurt, giving that we were living only a few minutes away from each other. In the meantime she has moved to the other side of the country. I sometimes try to chat with her, but she doesn't really reciprocate that well. Whatsapp tells me she didn't read my new years greetings for this year. This really makes me sad, since she still has a spot in my heart.
Many people have faded out of my life during this time. I had many loose friendships and acquaintances, from outside of work. Now I moved away, I do not have their numbers or any other contacts, so this is not a surprise, it's okay with me. I just hope that I will meet these people at some point again, it would be nice to catch up again.

Family wise, our family is not very big. My dad cut ties nearly completely with is sister, over monetary reasons and about how she (+ her family) treated my grandma, if I got that right. I do not know many details, but I accept it. I am not close to my family, it doesn't matter for me.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I have no interest in ever going to a high school reunion. I don't remember anyone, they don't remember me and I just have no interest in seeing any of them again. I'd be slightly more interested in going to a college reunion (is that even a thing?) but not enough to actually pay for it and go through the hassle it would involve. I do keep in touch with a lot of my friends group from college though I will admit that there is a heavy-helping of self-interest involved with that. I do genuinely like them but I also want to maintain an active professional network to help me get jobs should the need arise in the future. And it's 100% reciprocal; I have recommended a lot of people for jobs and go waaaay out of my way (editing resumes, providing interview prep, etc) to help my friends.

It was funny though when I first graduated and got a great job, a lot of people that I barely knew or even had very negative interactions with in college came out of the woodwork asking for help finding a job. Hard pass on that.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Yes. Many times. Both friends and family.



It usually happens whenever there is a shift in my life that naturally takes me away from them. For example: once I graduated high school and wasn't seeing those people everyday, I just stopped talking to them and made new friends at TSA (which is where I worked after high school). Once I moved on from TSA, I never spoke to those people again and made new friends in the Army. Rinse and repeat for every shift in my life. I guess I just always see friends as a replaceable or renewable commodity.

The only exception to this would be the guys I deployed to Iraq with. We still keep in touch. It's kinda hard to abandon or cut ties with people you go to war with since they become closer to you than even your blood relatives.

With family, I cut out most of my extended relatives just because I can't be bothered to keep up with that many people. At this point I've pretty much cut out everyone in my family except my wife, daughters, brother, and parents.

I have been in a few high stress jobs that created a strong bond between me and my coworkers. I'm still very much in touch my last work group through a chat app and irregular meetups. We talk daily and its pretty awesome.

But I can't imagine the strength of the bonds created by combat.

I have cut ties to people often, though I have also experienced being on the receiving end of that, usually after a mental breakdown. The latter ones often have a distinct mentalphobic attitude which is quite frustrating to deal with.

I feel for you. I was dealing with serious mental illness in high school which is a big part of why I formed no real friendships there. I can't blame anyone really, high schoolers aren't equipped to deal with mental illness and I certainly wasn't able to help myself through it at the time.

It did get a lot better through university for me; however, a lot of that was improving of my own coping skills. I do not think, fundamentally, that many of the people I befriended in university would have remained friends if I hadn't been better equipped to deal with my own depressive episodes myself.

 

[Kozmos]

I'm considering cutting out a borderline ex right now after she sent suicide threats at me. She was my best friend, even after we broke up, but after nine years of drama I don't think I can handle her anymore. I met up with her friends to formulate a plan of action, but beyond telling her sisters that she's legit crazy and can't wave it off as a personality quirk anymore, I don't think I'll be in touch with her much more.

 

[Lohrenswald]

Or just naturally drifted apart?

More this than any deliberate off-cutting

There was this one guy in "high school" I sort of got pals with in first grade, but by third grade I desperately wanted to get rid of him, which I wasn't able to pull of untill graduation.
There might have been some stuff in child school I don't fully remember. I was for long periods of time friends with three people there, and two of those have later on shown themself to be not straight in the head (one is currently in prison for pedophilia charges), so I'm glad I got rid of them long ago.

Sort of weird is that middle school friends are the only ones I haven't drifted apart from

as for family: my parents' divorce have been a thouroughly unpleasant experience, and I'd advice people not to get kids with anyone you're not 100 % sure you can spend the rest of your life with

 

[Quintillus]

Some very good stories, even though not all are positive. I've read through all but one, and will read that one after this post.

There's been a decent amount of drifting apart, most of which has been due to moving. I am the type of person that prefers to catch up in person, so while there are some close friends that I've kept in contact with when we are no longer in the same city, those are the minority. Often, moving cities leads to decreasing amounts of contact, and while those I was good friends with I'll still occasionally reach out to, others I haven't interacted with since moving.

As for intentional, there was one friend that I (and all but one of the people in our mutual friend group) eventually cut off after years of repeated poor life decisions, and inability to realize that they were poor life decisions. The last straw was his inability to grow up and take responsibility after those led to having a child out of wedlock. If he'd realized at that point that there were consequences in life, and started taking things seriously, we might have remained friends, but as it was there was nothing I could do to positively impact him, and it was a drain on me and the rest of the friends interacting with him. I ran into him most recently about three years ago at an event organized by the last mutual friend who was still in contact, and found out that by then he had two children out of wedlock with two different mothers, and was not with either one of them anymore. He did express a desire to be more involved with the second child's life, so maybe he finally turned over a new leaf, but I doubt it.

By comparison, someone else I knew growing up had a somewhat similar trajectory, and had always been a bit of a clown, but buckled down after having a kid, stayed in a relationship with the mother (and by now, might be married), and generally took a positive direction after that. We'd never been particularly close, but my respect for him increased after he started taking responsibility for his life.

Without anyone moving, drifting apart hasn't been that common, but has happened. My best friend in elementary school and I drifted apart between roughly 7th and 10th grades, as I made new friends with more similar academic interests, and we had less common ground due to not sharing classes anymore. I think the last time I saw him was my high school graduation party in 2007, where he was the sole representative of pre-7th-grade friends. I wouldn't mind running into him again, but if I'd had a specific desire to, I would have reached out years ago. As for college friends, there were a couple that I knew my senior year I didn't really want to hang out with post-graduation, due to astringent aspects of their personalities. Since I moved after graduation, that was fairly easy. Whereas among the college friends I did want to keep up with post-graduation, I've seen almost all of them at least once in person.

Among family, there was a point of a month or two where I intentionally withdrew due to excessive stressors (and did so with the knowledge of some of my family that I was doing that), but never anything long term. And while my family connection network has always been small, due to geography, the family I do have nearby has long been a source of stability.

There are positive notes on this subject, too. Many of my friends in my local city have been friends for close to (or in some cases, over) half my life now. There will be times when some of us are unavailable for awhile, and some of us moved away for a few years, but the friendships have persisted. And in a reversal of "moving on", a friend from college who I'd fallen out of contact with for several years, and despite some attempts to reconnect, recently moved nearby, and though I wasn't sure what to expect after 5 years, we'd picked back up about where we left off.

 

[Cutlass]

There's a lot I could say here. Almost too much to actually say it. I don't even know where to begin. I'll give it some thought.

 

[civvver]

I’m not naturally close to anyone except my wife and kids. Even my parents although I see them often like almost once a week, I don’t really talk to them anymore. It’s mostly just small talk. It’s mostly cus my wife hates them, I mean maybe hate is too strong of a word but they clash. And I just don’t want to deal with it so I cut them out. I stopped confiding in them and stick to my wife now. I think that’s pretty normal though. I’ll still ask my dad for advice on fixing stuff like the sink or whatever.

Friends I just never had super close ones. It was all based on proximity. So I hang out with my neighbors now and it’s great.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Male friends you can be as open to as your girlfriend (or rather more open) are IMO invaluable. If I find them, I'll do a lot to keep them. And there is one in most social groups. At least the ones I get involved with.

I have cut people off, but more accidentally than on purpose. Not happy with it. That I moved a ton did not help.