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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?
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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