19
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.
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.
I was one of those kids that had a hard time in high school, and I found the framing of your post a bit off-putting in a way that I have a hard time putting a finger on.
I'm sorry that you sometimes feel judged by folks who had a rough time in high school, but I also hope that you at the very least have the grace and compassion to understand where their attitudes are coming from.
I can empathize with people that had harder childhoods than I did in tons of different ways, including being bullied and ostracized, so if my tone came off as off-putting, I'm sorry, that wasn't my intention.
Generally I don't feel judged by people that didn't enjoy school as much as I did. I wish everyone had the experience I had in high school and got to hang out out with cool, interesting nice people who have a basis of mutual respect, as I did.
However, I have been directly insulted for having lifelong friends, and when it's from someone that I knew back in school, it was generally from those people who had a harder time than I did. It's just an observation I've made, and I always tried not to take it personally because I just sort of figured it was more about them than it was about me.
I wanted to save this reply until the conversation had died down a bit, but I wanted to thank you for having such understanding and grace. I really hope my message wasn't interpreted poorly, as I wanted to assume good faith and couldn't really articulate why I felt uncomfortable without also making assumptions.
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.
I still talk to middle/high school friends/acquaintances occasionally, but at the same time there are some that seem a bit off in how much they reminisce about random shit from forever ago. It definitely seems odd to me because I have had way more experiences, and more interesting ones at that, since the end of HS.
It 100% seems to me like when a person does this they haven't moved on much from their HS days, which from my own experience seems very strange.
At the same time, I am probably the weird one based on how often and far I have moved. From undergrad on I have probably moved at least apartments, if not countries almost every year up until COVID.
I would note that it's a well known sociologically that nostalgia is one of the conversation topics that people who know each other respond the best to. As a result, consciously or not, it's would not be surprising that, if you gather 3 people who knew each other, but mainly in one period of time (say, high school), many of them would default to reminiscing about that shared time, even if they have more experiences of note since then.
Sharing new experiences that you've had is often a much more mixed bag - it can easily gather apathy, as some people don't care, or even jealousy and anger. So, especially if you're not close, nostalgic reminiscence is an easy and safe choice.
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.
I've come across it. I think it can be seen to reflect one's ability to maintain and foster relationships. Or even an indicator of effort someone puts into a relationship? I don't really agree and think it comes from a pretty privileged perspective. As others have pointed out if you grow up in a small community you may not have had access to people who resonate with your ethos or interests today. I've been lucky to have grown up with some folks who share my perspective and interests, but of all my childhood friends (probably 15-20) I'm only in touch with about 8 and only see with any sense of 2 regularly. But I grew up in a pretty large town (~80k people), in a pretty progressive area, and I didn't move throughout that period; so I think the odds were in my favor.
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.
This very much describes my experience as well. Heck, it describes me even up to age 16.
It took me far longer to start questioning things, late 20s or later. Please be proud you started thinking for yourself so young!
No childhood friends? I think it's normal for most if not all to fade away if you're very mobile.
No very long-term friends? Hmm, that'd be a red flag.
May I ask, a red flag in terms of what?
I don't think I agree, to be clear, but perhaps I misunderstand your meaning.
Early friendships are typically circumstantial (being in the same school or sports team, etc.) so when the shared circumstances disappear, so do those friendships.
But as people mature, friendships become more about shared interests and values and can be more easily maintained over distance even as shared circumstances disappear.
Maintaining a long-term adult friendship requires a broad set of social skills, like compromise, empathy, listening, tact, turn-taking, giving and taking, and so on. If an adult doesn't have a single long-term friendship, I'd wonder if that person lacks the social skills so that they and I can have a positive working relationship, whether friendly or professional — or if that person has some massively toxic trait that prevents any relationship from continuing for long.
I'd be really suspicious if they said that they haven't met a single person in their adult life worth cultivating a long-term friendship with. It reminds me of the saying that "if someone says everyone else is an asshole, then they're probably the asshole".
It reminds me when I moved to Berkeley and met a guy in the queer community who had been in Berkeley and the East Bay for 6+ years but mentioned he had no friends there. Naive me was like, I'm new here and want to make friends, so I'll be this guy's friend! And so we started a queer friend group.
Turns out he had major issues: couldn't control his own emotions and temper, had strong narcissistic tendencies that a clinical psychologist in the friend group picked up on. He had former queer friend groups in the area that didn't want to associate with him any more, and I found out about this as I ran more in the community here. He's made statements about how he just doesn't like people. The truth was that people just don't like him, but in his mind he inverted that reality into "other people suck; I'm great" and I didn't recognize that as a bright red flag soon enough.
Thank you for the reply! I understand your position better and your personal experience is enlightening and valuable too. I'm sorry you had to deal with that situation.
I asked because I feel like a lot of people slip through society's cracks while not necessarily being anti-social or unwilling to learn the guidelines for being a true friend. And on the other hand, someone being part of a friend group doesn't mean they aren't a toxic person -- see the missing stair or the geek social fallacies, for instance.
However, I did forget something, and it's that a red flag doesn't mean you necessarily completely discount that person right away. It does mean you are understandably cautious, you keep your distance and don't go all in, and put it together with other observations about that person to get to your eventual conclusion. If that's the way you meant it, then er, I guess I do agree! Your reply helped me to clarify my own thoughts on the matter, so I do appreciate it.
I don't think it's a red flag. I think the author sounds like she's looking at her childhood with nostalgia.
I definitely was not my true self at 12. Even then, you can be a different person at a different age with experiences that have shaped you and still be your true self.
I think whether people have childhood friends or not is completely dependent on circumstance. Some people are late bloomers and only find their people later in life.
I also don't think mainly having childhood friends is a red flag too. One of my close new (by new I mean we've known each other for 3 years now maybe) friends mainly only has her childhood friends and she's great to be around.
She just didn't get out much (but has met many types of people through work. They just didn't become non-work friends. ) and is now branching out and trying to make more adult friends.
I think childhood friends are not a good gauge in general.
My grandmother maintained a few lifelong friendships even as she relocated across the country with my grandfather.
I am jealous of that. She had a stable childhood in one town. I changed schools frequently based on my parents choices and lost touch with other kids every time.
My experience echoes yours. I'd moved between three different countries, two different states, and dozens of towns by the time I began throwing down roots in my mid twenties.
I lost touch with every friend from my twenties when I turned thirty (bad incident). I've made new friends since, but still - I only have one friend I've had longer than a decade, my old college roommate, who I've managed to stay in touch with all this time despite being a thousand+ miles apart.
I feel like I'm the opposite of most people, I wanna say most of my friends nowadays are friends that I've had for at least 10+ years. A lot of my close friends have hit 2 decades at this point honestly. Granted, I'm only 28 but I think my most recent "friend group" are friends that I made in college. Not to say I haven't made new friends since, but I think it's just different for everyone.
Sometimes I get bummed out that I'm not close to a few of my childhood friends but then I remember why I'm not: It was a realization that if I had met them as adults I probably wouldn't be friends with them. There is also a huge shift in general worldview and/or substance issues that I saw in them that I have a hard time being around.