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The couple departed quickly after dessert. The next day at work, the husband made an excuse about his wife being tired. “But it was unspoken that we wouldn’t be seeking their company again, ” Ms. Baskin said.
ADDING children to the mix muddles things further. Suddenly, you are surrounded by a new circle of parent friends — but the emotional ties can be tenuous at best, as the comedian Louis C. K. related in one stand-up routine: “I spend whole days with people, I’m like, I never would have hung out with you, I didn’t choose you. Our children chose each other. Based on no criteria, by the way. They’re the same size.”
Even when parent friends develop a bond, the resulting friendships can be fleeting — and subject to the whims of the children themselves.
Caryl Lyons, an event planner in Danville, Calif., and her husband found a budding friendship with a parent-friend couple hit a roadblock when their young sons, who had been close friends, drifted apart. When the families planned a barbecue together, her son would say, “Can I have my other friends over?” said Ms. Lyons, 44.
External factors are not the only hurdle. After 30, people often experience internal shifts in how they approach friendship. Self-discovery gives way to self-knowledge, so you become pickier about whom you surround yourself with, said Marla Paul, the author of the 2004 book “The Friendship Crisis: Finding, Making, and Keeping Friends When You’re Not a Kid Anymore.” “The bar is higher than when we were younger and were willing to meet almost anyone for a margarita, ” she said.
Manipulators, drama queens, egomaniacs: a lot of them just no longer make the cut.
Thayer Prime, a 32-year-old strategy consultant who lives in London, has even developed a playful 100-point scale (100 being “best friend forever”). In her mind, she starts to dock new friend candidates as they begin to display annoying or disloyal behavior. Nine times out of 10, she said, her new friends end up from 30 to 60, or little more than an acquaintance.
“You meet someone really nice, but if they don’t return a call, drop to 90, if they don’t return two calls, that’s an immediate 50, ” she said. “If they’re late to something in the first month, that’s another 10 off.” (But people can move up the scale with nice behavior, too, she added.)
Having been hardened by experience, many people develop a more fatalistic view of friendship.
“When you’re younger, you define what it really means to be friends in a more serious way, ” said my screenwriter friend, Brian. (His full name is Brian Koppelman, and he wrote and is a co-director of “Solitary Man, ” a 2010 film starring Michael Douglas about a middle-aged man trying to reconnect with friends and family.)
“My ideas of friendship were built by ‘The Godfather’ and ‘Diner, ’ ” he said. “Your friends were your brothers, and anything but total loyalty at all costs meant excommunication. As you get older, that model becomes unrealistic.”
By that point, you have been through your share of wearying or failed relationships. You have come to grips with the responsibilities of juggling work, family and existing friends, so you become more wary about making yourself emotionally available to new people. “You’re more keenly aware of the downside, ” said Mr. Koppelman, 46. “You’re also more keenly aware of your own capacity to disappoint.”
“I haven’t really changed my standards for what it means to actually be friends, ” he concluded. “It’s just that I use the word ‘friends’ more loosely. Making the real kind, the brother kind, is much harder now.”
Some, like Ms. Degliantoni, the fund-raising executive, simply downsize their expectations. “I take an extremely efficient approach and seek out like-minded folks to fill very specific needs, ” she said of her current strategy. “I have a cocktail friend and a book friend and a parenting friend and several basketball friends and a neighbor friend and a workout friend.”
“It’s much easier filling in those gaps in my life, ” she added, “than doing an exhaustive approach for a new friend.”
Or, they hit rock bottom and turn back the clock to their breathlessly social 20s.
After a move to New York in his 30s, Dave Cervini, a radio station executive, was so lonely that he would walk his cat in Central Park, hoping to stoke conversations. Finding only curious stares, he decided to start the New York Social Network, an activities group for people to find friends by hanging out at Yankees games or wine-tasting mixers. The company now counts 2, 000 members, most in their 30s. He considers 200 of them close friends.
“It takes courage for people to take the first step, ” he said. “Hopefully, I make it easier, having been there myself.”
In that spirit, I recently called Brian. We joked about our inability to find time to hang out, and made a dinner date at the next available opening.
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