Friends, the family that we get to choose.
The fond memories you have with your childhood friends will stay with you forever.
However, as we get older, inevitably those childhood friends will begin to fade out off our lives.
Whether its moving away for work, family commitments or just the fact you’ve begun to grow apart, losing old friends is just a part of life.
Making new friends as an adult can be difficult, however it can be rewarding.
While you won't share the experience of growing up together like you do with your childhood friends, you will form a different kind of bond that's just as strong.
Here are the five stages of an adult friendship:
Stage one: Interest
This is the beginning. The seed that will one day blossom into the beautiful flower of your friendship.
There’ll be something that attracts you about this person, something that sets them apart from the countless people you’ll meet in your day-to-day life.
It may be something they mentioned on the fly, a piece of clothing they were wearing or the music they were listening too.
The interest stage is just something that tells you you have a reason to explore this person more.
Stage Two: The exploration
Simply put, you can’t be considered friends if you don’t spend any time together.
Whether you’ve met your desired friend in work, at a fitness class, at a play or on a sports team... you need to set time aside to see each other outside of the activity.
It won’t be as nerve racking as a first date, but this is when you’ll take the initial interest from stage one and see if there’s a friendship there to work with.
Stage Three: Feeling comfortable
The stage you both probably want to skip to straight away... but unfortunately it takes time to build up that familiarity a friendship requires.
You can’t just skip straight to calling each other for a daily debrief.
Everyone has different schedules and availability for their free time.
You have to learn each others habits, otherwise you could bombard each other causing burnout before the real friendship has even begun.
Stage Four: Be real
An important stage. This is where you stop coming across as this cool, chilled together person and you reveal a little more about yourself and what has shaped you into the person you are.
This stage is fraught with danger however, because there is a ditch on either side: rushing to it too quickly OR avoiding it all together.
Some people rush to this stage early-on because they feel closer once they have shared their pain.
But healthy friendships need the commitment to grow in conjunction with the intimacy.
You can’t go and emotionally vomit on someone in order to feel closer.
But at the same time, you can’t come across as an emotionless robot without a backstory.
5. Frientimacy
This is the last stage.
You’re comfortable around each other, you know a little about what makes each other tick.
This stage takes time. Lots of it.
But in the end, it’s worth it, because you’ll have made a friend for life.
