Close friendships tend to fade as we age, often with an unexpected amount of heartache.
They both forgot my birthday. Maybe that sounds ridiculous; I even questioned at the time if it was childish of me to mind quite so much. Did I expect the whole world to stop simply because it was the day I was born?
No, I did not. But I would have at least liked a text message—not too much to ask from two supposedly close friends, you would think. Especially since no one has to memorize anything anymore; once you put a date in your phone you’ll be reminded of it every year for the rest of your time on this earth. But neither of them had done that, so the day slipped by like any other—while I felt unvalued and hurt, and a bit like a dick for making such a big deal about a birthday, in the manner of a foot-stomping five-year-old.
Maybe if these were isolated incidents they would have been easier to let go, but instead they were two final straws. I knew in my gut it was—needed to be—the end of one friendship; the other was in the ICU, in critical condition. In my people-pleasing 20s, and probably most of my 30s too, I would have just put up and shut up.
But in my 40s, the cliche “life is too short” feels almost comically real. I’m a plate-spinning working wife and mother, my free time is precious, and I need to spend it with friends where the relationship is equal and uncomplicated. I haven’t got the space, energy, or emotional bandwidth for anything else.
And it’s not just me. It’s been said that the number of friends we have peaks at the age of 25, steadily declining as we enter our 30s “when work and the nuclear family take over,” and then into midlife. Even more telling, Vox reports on research that found, “starting at age 25, we lose more friends than we make each year.”
“As we get older, our lives continue to grow and change and our friendships are part of that,” says psychologist Catherine Hallissey.
Anne Helen Peterson, who writes the Substack Culture Study thinks that this period of a woman’s life just isn’t conducive to forging or sustaining friends. “In many cases, I’d say it’s actually hostile to it,” she says. And, as perfectly put in The Atlantic, “By midlife, you’ve invested enough in your relationships that every loss stings.”
But on the flipside, with so much on our plates, and how well we know ourselves by this point, the ride-or-die friendships we can truly count on become more essential than ever. And perhaps that makes it easier to identify those that are simply no longer serving us. A recent Pew Research Center study about friendships in America states that while we will suffer more friendship breakups as we age, with many acquaintances just slowly fading away, the older we get, many of us, will have a more solid, albeit smaller, group of close friends.
A clearly-emitting death rattle, which I’d tried to tune out, had been coming from Friendship A for a while before Birthdaygate. Introduced by a mutual acquaintance, we’d known each other for two decades, but lived some distance apart. We didn’t get together that often, sometimes maybe only twice a year, but it was always warm, fun, and nourishing. No matter how much time had passed, we’d effortlessly and immediately slip back into step.
We communicated sporadically, kept up to date with important events, but neither of us were the other’s first port of call for support when big life stuff went down. Maybe that’s what broke us in the end, the rules changed overnight without warning, smashing the equilibrium to smithereens.
We met for lunch one day, and she was glowing, busting with excitement to talk. Married since her 20s, she gleefully confessed that she was sleeping with a male colleague half her age. I was the only person she had told, she said, because she knew she could trust me. Admittedly, I was flattered by this; now I wonder if it was even true.
I tried to listen, as non-judgmentally as possible, and not provide unsolicited advice. She was more energized and alive than I’d seen her in years. She now had something all of her own; a dangerous secret sparkle added to the monotony of midlife. She said the affair was making her a better mother and a less resentful wife. I should try it myself, she suggested, laughing.
She was certainly a great advert for it—and then, not. The honeymoon period quickly evaporated, and a new pattern emerged between us. The young guy blew hot and cold, love-bombing one minute, ghosting her the next. She began to rely on him entirely for her state of mind and happiness. Since I was the only person she could talk to about it, and she was so anxious and miserable, I regularly dropped everything to meet her or to spend hours on the phone counselling and consoling.
When things were going well between them I wouldn’t hear from her at all, check-in messages would go unanswered, calls unreturned. Then they’d hit another rocky patch, and she’d suddenly be desperate to speak to me, begging for us to get together. So we would, meeting up at the high-end restaurants she chose, half-way between our homes.
She’d perfunctorily ask how I was before we moved on to the main conversational event for the evening. She’d joke about how self-absorbed she’d become. I’d listen to the same stories with slightly different details, and make the same suggestions about couples therapy with her husband, or perhaps a trial separation from both men so she could work out what she wanted. She would nod and tell me she was going to do exactly that.
I promise I’m not exaggerating when I say we had at least five identical evenings like this. After the first few, I began to feel frustrated and a bit irritated, but I took the honor of being her only confidante seriously. I told myself it was easy to see what she should do from the outside, but clearly impossible when you were in as deep as she was.
She turned 49 right in the middle of this drama. I sent her a jar of Swedish honey facemask, described “like a warm fluffy blanket on a cold evening,” and a card with a message that could be read by her husband without raising suspicion but was also reassuring about her current situation.
When she forgot my birthday, I felt like a complete fool. How could it be any clearer that she mattered to me far more than I mattered to her? It was a slap in the face, but maybe one I needed to come to my senses—like a hysterical female in a black and white film.
In hindsight, I saw the red flags strewn across the highway of our friendship. I’ve now forced myself to acknowledge that she’d actually forgotten my birthday countless times, while guiltlessly accepting gifts and celebration from me on hers.
In our last text exchange she asks how I am; without waiting for an answer, she tells me she’s feeling wretched and doesn’t know what to do. Am I free for dinner? I write back that I have a lot on, work is crazy, and I’m pretty overwhelmed. She doesn’t reply. Ever.
The first time I didn’t jump to instantly provide her what she needed she moved on, to presumably the next “only person she had told about the affair.” Sometimes I’m sad about losing a friend, but then I ask myself, What have I actually lost? I haven’t come up with an answer yet.
Relationship therapist Dipti Tait says that while many friendships naturally ebb and flow, it can be very upsetting to end one. “We can compare it with bone damage; a small fracture that is not properly repaired, which splinters and finally a break occurs. If we have lost the willingness to repair, strengthen and rebuild—the friendship won’t heal.”
In a Women’s Health article featuring people who’ve broken up with a best friend, one woman, who ended a friendship of over 20 years, said, “It’s sad to break off a friendship with someone you’ve known for a long time, but it can also be positive. Some bad friendships are like being with the wrong partner in that you’re sticking it out because you’ve known each other for so long. I concluded that if I met that friend now, rather than 20 years ago, we wouldn’t be friends.”
Another woman, whose experience echoed what I have gone through, said, “I’ve had to cut off friends before, and each time, I felt a sense of relief. I needed to stop doing things for people who expected my help and didn’t appreciate it. I learned that real friendship is a two-way street.”
Before my friend’s affair and all the drama that surrounded it, I seemed to have subconsciously accepted that the people around me were here ‘til death do us part. I’m 49 after all. I’ve been so conditioned that one of the many roles women must simultaneously excel at is “good friend,” that I never realized that I could choose them. Or not.
Claire Cohen, author of BFF? The Truth About Female Friendship, writes about how little most of us challenge our friendships. “Think about it: when was the last time you called out a friend, telling them that they have hurt or annoyed you?” she asks. “Since my book came out, I have spoken to dozens of women of all ages at talks, book festivals, and on social media, and every single one had a knotty friendship problem that they either didn’t know how to unravel, or whether it was even worth it.”
When it came to Birthday Forgetting Friend B, I knew I had to do something different—so we met, for crisis talks.
I realized I could just seethe with resentment about her selective amnesia, or be a big girl and tackle it head on; figure out what is really going on. I’ve had summit meetings with a few romantic partners before, but never with a platonic one.
“We create false friendship narratives in our own heads, over the slightest misstep, imagining that we know how our friend feels because we ‘know’ them so well, without ever actually asking,” says Cohen, “It’s as if we believe that our friendships—often the longest lasting and, according to science, the most emotionally valuable connections in women’s lives—aren’t worth the same care and attention as our romances.”
I would usually do anything to avoid confrontation or a difficult conversation; just suggesting my friend and I talk was tricky—and obviously done by text. I had a grand plan of meeting in a neutral territory, but it went out of the window when Friend B invited me to her house for coffee. After an awkward (maybe even excruciating) start, and once she could work out what I was talking about, through all my uncomfortable waffling and nervous laughter, it was clear she was devastated she’d upset me.
And as we continued to talk through our second cup, something almost magical happened. It was as though we both got drunk on the novelty of this outpouring of raw honesty—we spoke for hours, more truthfully and openly than ever before. She was able to tell me something thoughtless I’d done years before that hurt her; something I had never realized. Shocking news just in: I’m not perfect, either. It felt like the spring cleaning our relationship needed, and we vowed never to let it get so dusty and cluttered again.
Since our talk, I genuinely don’t think we’ve ever been closer. It’s like we’re operating on a new plane, of radical truth, with the luxury of being able to relax in the absolute security of knowing our friendship is precious to both of us.
The jury is out on how many friends a woman actually needs—anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar revealed in 1993 that the core intimate group is five; a 2022 survey by social network Peanut found it’s three. But however many you have, choose well. Look after them, and yourself. And for goodness sake, remember their birthdays.
Want more stories like this? Follow us on Instagram, Threads, and Facebook for regular updates and a lot of other silliness.
