12
votes
Is it a red flag that I don’t have any childhood friends?
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- Authors
- Daisy Jones, Laia Garcia-Furtado, Christian Allaire, Lindsay Lambert Day, Elise Taylor, Iman Balagam, Lisa Brennan-Jobs
- Published
- Sep 11 2024
- Word count
- 476 words
Wait what? I have never heard anything of that sort. The whole premise of this piece seems very odd to me. But maybe it is normal somewhere? On the contrary, I see it more as the rare exception that people have friends from childhood that last into adulthood.
In the circles I float around in, the vibe (not spoken, but definitely a mist that clings) is the opposite. If you're still pretty close and tight with your childhood friends, it kind of gives off the juju that you haven't ventured out of your bubble and Become Your Own Person™. This is just marginally related to the universal dudebro stereotype who peaked in high school, constantly reminiscing about the glory days, the epic ragers, the sportball drama, and the endless hallway rumours that abounded like a case of chlamydia being shared around, person-to-person, which y'know
"stacy totally had".But, by the time someone is cruising into their mid-forties, having childhood friends magically transforms, socially, into this rad badge of honour, something others might even aspire to have. Rekindling those old bonds becomes a goal, admired by people of all ages. But, if you haven't quite hit that age yet, it’s often seen as a bit of a cultural faux pas, a total social neg.
I don't think it's bad to have childhood friends. However, I was once close to a group of people that were together since before high school. They were out of high school for at least 7 years at that point. And almost every conversation they had included some reference to that time, the things they did and were proud of. That made me pause. Although I certainly value good things I did in high school, I fully understood that they didn't really count as an adult. I mean, they do count, but it felt like they were relying too much on the past. So yeah, it was odd to me.
I sort of had the same experience. A couple years ago I reconnected with a close friend I grew up with 10 years prior. I found it odd and, honestly, somewhat off putting, that he was still hanging out with all the same people, who were all playing the same games, watching the same movies, and making the same old references.
Sure, there was some newer stuff here and there, but it felt like they were stuck 10-15 years in the past and just trying to relive their teenage years. It felt like the only difference between then and now was that there was one or two new people in the group that were sometimes there, people had to go to work, one of them had a kid, and one of them got really racist. I'll still hang out with them, except for the racist one, but I need to do it in shorter bursts now, because while I enjoy reminiscing and nostalgia, I don't want my life to revolve around it.
To me, this stereotype comes from people that had a bad time in highschool.
I've heard that attitude from people I knew from back then exclusively from people who were bullied, isolated, awkward, and alone back in those days, and who have had their "glow up" and see life as an adult as far better than life as a kid.
Personally, I still have a lot of childhood friends, and despite always being pretty nerdy, I had a lot of fun in school, had a lot of friends, and was friendly with and had no issues with "the popular kids", even if I wasn't one myself.
I like my adult life as well and have a bunch of friends I've made as an adult, but I also still live the same city that I was in a suburb of growing up, and fondly look back at highschool as a carefree, fun time. I know that many people don't view it that way, but the "ew you haven't matured, you still hang out with the same people" generally comes with the presupposition that highschool was bad, everyone there was backwards, mean and ostracized me, and there are far better people out in the real world, which, at least in my case, is not even close to reality at all.
When I hear people judge me or others for hanging out with the same people I've hung out with for 30+ years, have a lifelong bond with, and are generally good, happy, intelligent people, to me, it says far more about them and their childhoods specifically than it does about my own personal development.
Yeah, I suspect this is one of those times someone should have just talked to a therapist about their anxiety instead of written an article.
Yeah, I've never encountered this belief myself either. It strikes me as really fucking weird, and I say that as someone who does have at least one childhood friend whom I'm still super close to (emotionally, at least -- I moved to another hemisphere and they didn't, so we don't get to see each other in person very often). Heck, depending on how young you count as "childhood", I have several more whom I'm in less close contact with but still good terms with. Maybe it's because I'm queer and ex-evangelical, but I can immediately think of plenty of non-red flag reasons why someone would not have any childhood friends who persisted into adulthood, even if they hadn't moved away from home like I did. And ofc my experiences make the idea that you're your "truest self" at age 12 seem extremely ridiculous.
It's common where I grew up, in a town of 1,200 people where everyone knows everyone. Not at all common in the cities I've lived in since.
People seem to find it odd that I knew everyone in the entire school. I find it odd that most people didn't know everyone in their class/year.
This is really strange to me. This seems like an unusually high number of friends to have from childhood, not unusually low.
Granted, my idea of friendship is different from how I believe most people consider it. But my impression has always been that it's more unusual to have even one friend from pre-teen years than to have zero. I'm less sure about teenage friendships; those seem more likely to persist into adulthood, but at the same time not uncommon for them all to have faded away either.
I also have never heard of this "red flag" about people who have no lifelong childhood friends. I, like @sparksbet, definitely don't think you're "your truest self" at 12 years old, not in the slightest. I feel I have only grown more into the person I want to be as I get older. When I was 12, I was still blindly believing in things that I was told, shaping my entire world view around ideas that I vehemently disagree with now. I was still very much an odd duck -- well, I am now too, but I've learned so much about how to interact with the world around me and about my neurological disorders that were very much undiagnosed then, and how those things play off and interfere with each other. As you grow older, you learn more and more about the world (and, also important, how much you still don't know about the world) and this informs your own growth into the person you're always becoming. I don't believe anyone should stop growing at any point in their life.