You described a lot of effort on your end to keep that relationship going. That’s what I mean. Relationships require maintenance.

once you’ve made friends for life, they stick

People drift apart. Actually making the effort to communicate and meet up occasionally is important for maintaining those relationships. If you’re not in the place where you’re can stay aware of major life changes (marriage, divorce, kids, major career changes, moves between cities, major illness or injury, deaths in family, etc.), were you really “friends for life”?

Even making brunch plans in my 40s requires consulting a calendar. That naturally shrinks the number of close friends in the mix. I’m closer with my friends who live close than the ones who live far, simply out of inertia, that maintaining those relationships takes less effort.

Low maintenance friendships are the best ships 🛳️

I’m no psychoanalyst but it sounds like someone is insecure in their ability to love and be loved and would prefer to guarantee a balanced reciprocity of low effort on both sides.

You can afford the moldy stuff?!?

No, if you look closer I actually managed to avoid the 2008 stuff by kinda being immature and “behind” by not being super set in my career path in my late 20’s. My smart friends from high school and college were decimated by the 2008 recession. When I went back to school in the early 2010’s, I basically got my law degree with a bunch of people who were younger than me, and got myself on the middle millennial track (despite being an old millennial).

My delayed career progression, as a slacker in my 20’s, saved my financial situation.

And if I were even older, 2001 might have permanently set me back, too. Lots of late Gen X never really recovered from that.

Some of us millennials have been extraordinarily lucky.

I’m an old millennial but I avoided any personal impact from the 2001 recession by being in college, on financial aid.

Then the 2008 recession didn’t hit me very hard because I wasn’t a homeowner was a single childless dude who was flexible enough to just up and move wherever there was a job, across the country if necessary. I had a different job in a different state each year from 2008 through 2011, taking big raises with each move, then eventually back to school.

Then the 2020 recession didn’t hit me very hard because my wife and I both had counter-cyclical jobs (I tend to be busier when businesses are failing) and already owned a home, allowing us to bypass much of the inflation of the post-2020 period with a fixed rate mortgage we had refinanced to below 3% in 2021.

Now, the 2025 recession is probably gonna hit us hard. But I’ve basically escaped the last 3, so maybe I’m due.