Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
What are your friendships like these days?
Do you have a "best friend?" What is he or she like?
Do you spend much time with your friends? Are you trying to make more?
I am still in touch with my best friend from around age 8. Also in touch with HS and undergrad friends. Currently I have at least two very close friends in Japan, as well as a few drinking buddies from my doctoral program. A few female friends, one from childhood with whom I'll occasionally exchange emails though she sucks at staying in touch. One woman from college whose own kids are the age we were when we met. An artist. Used to quite fancy her until I didn't. I value old friends very highly and I consider myself loyal. I've been betrayed many times. Price of the ticket.
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I have not had any "real" friends other than my wife (who I met 6 years ago) since I finished undergrad 10 years ago. I'm really bad at making new friends, or keeping in touch with old ones. I have some friends from highschool and undergrad who I would like to hang out with, but they live super far away and I'm too lazy to travel.
I spend tons of time with my wife. We talk, play games, live life. She has some casual friends who we sometimes play board games with, who I guess I would consider casual friends of mine...? We also live in the same town as most of her family and do like family gatherings and stuff semi-regularly, but they're kind of normies who do stupid things for fun that I don't want to do (but begrudgingly do anyway).
On a theoretical level it'd be nice to have another friend or two outside my wife, but I've never made a friend on purpose, it always just kind of happened. And I'm not sure I care enough to jump through whatever hoops that would have to take and sacrifice a bunch of free time on not being home. I like being home.
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I have a best friend, and 7 great men total who are set to be my groomsmen. I have a lot of acquaintances at church and local dance stuff, also from the EA group I ran for a couple of years.
I spend probably 2-3 nights with friends each week, talk to my best friend most days on the phone for at least a half hour, though this is relatively new. It's pretty wonderful. I prioritize friendship extremely highly.
At this point I'm not trying to make more, just deepen and maintain existing friendships.
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I have plenty of friends, some closer than other but it's rare that I go more than a few days without seeing or talking to at least one of them. As much as my bank account protests I'll usually wind up going to the bar at least a night or two a week due to getting bored with not talking to anyone.
If I have a problem with said friendships it's that seemingly half my friend group (early/mid 30s millennials) moved out of the city I live in over the last 18 months. I did pick up a new friend though, at a reddit meetup of all places. The date that ensued from that meetup was a failure, but the friend is entertaining (a touch crazy but actually smart and entertaining to talk to) and we'll be meeting up for drinks some time in the next week.
I had a best friend and have had a few others who are close. He was a total fuckup and disabled in his later years but a great conversationalist and drinking buddy and had a huge friend group, a real larger than life personality. We'd talk or exchange texts daily. He took his own life a few months ago. I'm glad he isn't suffering anymore or burdening his friends but I miss him. There's always something that I would've called him to talk about and well, I can't anymore.
Yeah, everyone moving all the time is extremely annoying. I think it's a really horrid part of our culture.
Yeah, I understand why my friends left (The college town I live in has heavily gentrified over the last decade and become irritatingly expensive to live in relative to its fairly crappy job market. Hell, I was close to leaving myself before I landed my current gig.), but it doesn't make it suck any less that much of my social circle just vanished in the last five years.
Relatedly, my father has moved states every five years for work on average and has moved further and further away each time such that he now resides in some rural hellhole in northern Nevada a 30 hour drive away. I'm lucky to see him once a year (and to his credit he does help out with the plane tickets). My little sister moved to the other side of the country, the northeast, and I'm also lucky to see her once a year.
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I tried keeping some friends between approximately 2012 and 2016, but found it not worth the effort.
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For myself - I've been thinking about this question fairly often lately. I moved away from my home state in 2016, at age 27, and have never really achieved the same levels of friendship as what I had there. Moreover, this has increased the older I've gotten. I do have some close friends here in Ohio, but the total number of hangouts I've engaged in 2025 is probably around 5.
Certainly getting married is a major factor; I got married in January and so I hang out with my wife every day. Accordingly I have plenty of human contact. I also find that I have little desire to take steps to make more friends. I actually would say I've given up on meeting kindred spirits of that kind. I don't mean that in a depressing way, but rather - I'm close to halfway through my life, and I've met so few people that I share interests and worldview with that it doesn't feel worth expending energy on.
I had a "best friend" that I met in childhood. He was my best man in my wedding and we still talk quite often, but we live thousands of miles apart now.
This fellow, C, is a math-and-science nerd. Huge reader. Very interested in machines and physical systems; currently works for a municipality maintaining light rail vehicles. He came from a very broken, impoverished home; neither parent was a high school graduate. We went to uni together, and neither of us knew what to do there, as neither of us had parents or knew anyone else that had. He majored in history, for no real reason, and then upon graduating joined the Army. While stationed in Alaska, he met his now-wife, and they now have three kids and a nice stable life. We hung out constantly between 2005 and 2012 when he joined up; together we discovered the joys of alcohol and exploring abandoned buildings. We also spent that period of our lives together where you could just amble around WalMart together at 11:00 PM and call that "hanging out." Since he joined the Army in 2012, I've seen him about once every two years.
We diverged politically in the 2010s: from generic John Kerry-supporting centrists, we lurched in different directions. He became one of the people who celebrated Charlie Kirk's killing on social media; I bought Steve Sailer's book and talk to him on Substack every now and then. Our friendship has persisted because we never confront each other about these things, but this is also only possible because of the time and distance. It feels more like an artifact of history than anything else. I am genuinely repulsed by some of the things he believes, but as long as we have the detente in place where we simply don't discuss any of it, we can continue talking about the things we have in common.
Other people succeeded C as my "active" best friend - someone I actually saw regularly and hung out with often - but since I turned 30 this role is vacant. Now most social activities feel like interruptions of time I could be spending in my Strandmon chair reading.
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