The Truth About Post Grad Friendships

It's so easy to have friends in college. You can visit them by walking down the dorm hallway, driving five minutes to their apartment, or meeting them for food on campus. On a scale of 1 to 10, the amount of effort necessary to spend time with college friends probably falls around a 2.

Then, you all graduate and you promise to stay in touch and visit and chat everyday, but much like high school graduation, this doesn't always happen. When major life changes occur it seems like true friends rise up to the challenge, while other friendships fade.

Sometimes, I feel like I experienced my friendships in a backwards sense. I actually stayed in touch with most of my close high school friends after graduation and through college, which is pretty uncommon. We all see each other every break we can, and I can honestly say that even after months of not seeing these guys, when we're together it's like nothing has changed. I can see myself maintaining friendships with everyone for years to come.

I thought I would be this way with my college friends as well, except I assumed I would come away with a much larger friend base. With some of my close college friends, it is like this. Some of us talk regularly and plan visits and are genuinely interested in each others lives.

Lately though, I've been feeling myself grow away from college friends that sort of lingered on the perimeter of close friend territory. If I were still in school, I would reach out to them. I would be the one offering to literally drive to their door to pick them up to hang out or try to find a time that we could meet for dinner. I would be the one making the effort.

After visiting my college a few weekends ago I had a revelation: I am so done with that! Done with people who consider themselves to be true "friends", when they feel no guilt about walking all over me and are only vaguely interested in what I have to say-even less so when I'm not around them. With so many things swirling around my post grad brain, I need to focus on people that care about me as much as I care about them.

In the post grad world, friendships require mutual effort. My plan for now is to keep myself open, but stop putting in the effort to revive friendships with those who wouldn't put forth the same effort for me. Like so many other aspects of my life right now, I guess we'll just see how it goes.

2 comments:

  1. Wow, I feel like you are writing about my life right now! I'm the same way with my high school friends -- we're so much closer than my college friends. I've just come to this conclusion in regards to my college friends: If you want to hang out, fine. If not, that's fine too. I've got other things in my life. I'm not going to waste time trying to get together if you're not putting in the same effort.

    Great post :)

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  2. I just had a discussion about this yesterday with my coworkers! You say it so well.

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