Make friends with people of all ages

One of the sorrows in moving to a new country is that you leave your friends behind.

Although children and teens are often grief-stricken when this happens, they seem to find new friends relatively easily, thanks to the structures of school. It is not as easy to make new friends when you are over 35;  fellow adults seem to have their social lives worked out. They are usually busy with work and family responsibilities, and if they do have time for friends, these are usually workmates or those with whom they share memories of youth.

I am fortunate in that I am not an economic migrant to Edinburgh but a foreign bride. Thus, when my husband brought me home, I moved into his social circle with an ease other newcomers might envy. Of course, it is not really what I’m used to. Back in Toronto, most of my friends are women, single women and fellow recently married women.

In Edinburgh, most of my friends, whom I inherited from my husband, are bachelors. I spent this past Sunday lunch wreathed in pipe smoke, surrounded by port-gobbling men in tweed.

The interesting thing about that, however, is that these men friends ranged in age from 23 to 50. I think one of the most self-defeating social restrictions people place on themselves is a reluctance to be friends with people much older or much younger than themselves. This might not be so harmful for teens, who are spoiled for choice, but it is foolish for adults. What matters much more in adult life are shared values, interests and experiences.

There is, for example, the problem of what to do when you are the last of a set of friends to marry and have children. I sometimes receive e-mails from heartbroken single women who rarely see their newly married friends or who feel awkward at parties where all the other guests have spouses.

My advice is invariably to make friends with other single people, of whatever age, or to concentrate on what it is that they have in common with their married friends.

When I was 35, I was single and in theology school; the friends I made there were 10 or more years younger than myself. Despite the age discrepancy, we had the same dreams, problems and freedoms. We went to dance clubs and parties. Our biggest difference was that they could dance until dawn and I couldn’t. The spirit was willing but the flesh was middle-aged.

“Did you find these friendships fulfilling?” asked a reader. “I want to know because  one of my greatest worries is that I will end up with no single friends my age when I am, say, 38.

“I assume that the married ones with children will not have as much time or energy for me, their emotional needs taken care of. I guess I’m pretty horrified at the idea of a lifetime of loneliness.”

The short answer to that is “wonderfully fulfilling.” Of course, not all  young people are open to being friends with middle-aged people, just as not all middle-aged people can relate to young people without feeling resentful of their youth. I’ve met older women who can’t seem to get beyond an idea that young women are their rivals, and I’ve met young  women who treat older women like subsitute mothers to fight with.

But any decent, friendly person deserves a chance at friendship, whatever their age. Age should not be an insurmountable barrier.

Neither should marriage and family life be. Single people often feel abandoned by married friends; they do not always understand that their married friends miss them.

Married people with children envy the freedoms of childless, single people; they do not always understand that the childless, single people would trade their freedoms for spouse and children in a heartbeat. The impatient assertion, “You don’t understand because you don’t have children” may be true, but sometimes the single person who hears it feels as if she’s been stabbed. Very rarely is she going to say, “I’d like to understand. Please explain it to me.” A wall has gone up, and the parent and childless person find themselves on opposite sides, alone.

The solution is to look beyond one’s own life circumstances to be more open to people with other life circumstances.

Friendship assumes not only shared interests but cherished differences. My life is much richer for having men friends as well as women friends, for having friends in their 60s and in their 20s, for having non-Catholic friends, for having friends with children and for having friends who are single. Indeed, I think my social life would be very dull indeed if all my friends were childless married Catholic women aged 40, which is to say, just like me.