As I turned 41 last weekend, I realised that nothing is going to top last year’s celebrations in Paris. Paris itself is magical, but what made it even more memorable was having my girlfriends and their partners there to celebrate with me while we danced the night away at Synthony.
What should have been a simple 20-minute walk back from the venue ended up as a two-hour journey, as one side quest led to another after leaving a club we had no idea how we got into.
The passport might be saying 40, but that night I felt like I was in my 20s again. And in the middle of it, I realised something slightly embarrassing: I couldn’t remember the last time I’d made a fun memory with my friends.
Which got me thinking: have adult friendships just become another admin task?
It seems like we are constantly catching up. Over dinner, coffee, WhatsApp or Instagram. Catching up often means finding a weekend that works for everyone, sometimes a month in advance. We have normalised this so much that I wonder if we’ve confused knowing what’s happening in someone’s life with actually being a part of it. You can know exactly what is happening in someone’s life and still not actually be living any of it with them.
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We used to build friendships through shared life experiences
Being friends in your 20s happens quite naturally because you’re sharing so much of your life together. University, first jobs, terrible housemates, nights out, first heartbreaks, even being broke and trying to figure it all out. You don’t need to schedule “friendship time” because you’re living alongside your friends, and memories happen almost accidentally.
But as your 20s turn into your 30s and beyond, adulthood fragments everyone into different life paths. The conditions that naturally created those shared memories are replaced by high-pressure careers, caring for children, romantic relationships and, in some cases, completely new geographic locations.
We have become very good at staying in touch
Whether it’s double tapping on holiday pics on Instagram or sending a 4-minute voice note on WhatsApp, you can go days, even weeks without needing to physically see someone, and yet you know exactly what’s happening in their life. You’ve gone from being a character in your friend’s life to becoming an observer of it, watching from the sidelines through whatever they choose to share online.
In my case, this has been genuinely life changing, allowing my friendships to survive not only the busyness of our lives but also the distance. Yet the sobering realisation is that I’ve become very good at maintaining friendships without actually creating much new life inside them.
When did catching up become the default?
There’s nothing wrong with catching up over dinner, drinks or even a coffee. But when every interaction starts to feel like an update meeting with your line manager, friendships can start to feel like admin again. You exchange updates, discuss what’s happened since you last caught up and promise to do it again soon.
A friendship can survive on contact. I’m not convinced it can thrive on it.
Paris showed me what I was missing all along
My 40th birthday celebrations spilled over three months, and yet that night in Paris will be the memory I hold closest to my heart. Because somewhere between the dancing, the side quests and the two-hour walk home, I realised how long it had been since I’d done something with my friends that wasn’t just catching up. That night, I was actually living something with them.
Shared experiences don’t have to mean expensive trips
In my case, shared experiences do often mean hopping on a flight, as the friends I made when I lived in Barcelona have spread across Europe. But for you, that might not be the case. You don’t need everyone to fly to Paris or plan an elaborate girls’ weekend in the South of France. Your next ‘catch up’ could be something small and slightly different from the default.
A themed dinner for a film you’ve been looking forward to or even doing a progressive dinner à la Desperate Housewives, where you go to a different location for each course. Anything that creates the possibility of a future ‘remember when we...’ conversation. Because maybe we don’t need more time with our friends. Maybe we need more life with them.
Maybe next time we say, ‘we really need to catch up’, we can ask, ‘what should we do together?’
When was the last time you made a genuinely new memory with your friends?
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Yes, friendship has to stand the test of adulthood, of opposed schedules and lowering energy levels. It is a challenge. Shared experiences become less frequent. It is unfortunate. To a certain extent that is inevitable. However there is something else that holds adults back from suggesting an adventurous day out as we used to do in our 20s. Somehow we got to think that going for a coffee is the adult thing to do. Inviting friends to a day out might seem like an intrusion into their busy schedule. And most of the time the answer is "sorry I can't". After getting that answer 10s of times, we give up. The key lies probably in not giving up. And if we get to share new memories only once in a while, that is still something to cherish for good.