What to do when your friends have outgrown YOU?

seriously though, i do this too, its not something i'm terribly proud of, but then when i spend any extended amount of time with them i feel like im descending into madness.

it just happens with age if you aren't signed up for the Traditional Adult Roadmap

i disagree though with this... said friends are all college educated and well established career-wise, they're just a bit immature and uh, insipid.

alternately, get your shit together.

alternately still, do what i am doing and sulk in isolation.

coincidentally (well, not) I deleted my account yesterday with the realization that half the people on there were not people I ever did anything with anymore.

It sounds like you need to make new friends that share your interests. People change, their interests change... That doesn't mean you have ditch these folks, you just need to assemble a new going-out-on-the-town crowd.

xpost

(xpost: Aw.)

Absolutely otm. I've noticed this over the past 12 months, where a lot of the last decade's worth of close see-them-most-days friends no longer seem to share the same interests as me, or just don't think to call if something's going on which I may be interested in. I hope it's the former anyway, but it's probably the latter, which is infinitely sadder...

But these strike me as highly perverse conceptions of maturity and immaturity - and I would shudder to imagine what a person who embraces these would make out a concept like 'manhood'.

xpost

I'm doing my best to embrace certain facets of "mature" adult life - cohabitation, money management, long-term employment, general responsibility etc - without jettisoning my favourite "childlike" bits - passion, enthusiasm, single-mindedness, a wide-eyed fascination with new things etc.

But they're hard to reconcile: I find it easier if there's at least *someone* else on the same ride as you.

It is fair enough to want to talk to your friends about problems and get their advice or support, but you have to have happy conversations with them as well, about things you are both interested in but don't have too much invested in, like a movie you liked or a nice recipe to try or something.

My curiosity is burning - what is it you're saying/discussing/asking of your mates when around them to elicit such responses? I dont think I have ever had "well its your life" responses unless it is my parents telling me off for smoking or something. Are you trying to talk about PS/2 games with someone who doesnt care? Rambling on about taking drugs all weekend to a mother of two? YEah people change but I'm wondering what the differences are in this instance.

The thing to do is to find new friends who also .... well, I find the whole concept of a adult roadplan, traditional or non-traditional, so stupid, that I would rather find friends who just don't think of life that way.

sudden terrifying irrational but not implausible fear that all my best friends are coupling up and being with someone they love infinitely more than me

need to somehow get over this. fortunately, best friend's party is tomorrow, and he's been with the same girl for 5 years, but it's a weird time - I feel like everyone is moving on. not from me, but moving on somewhere else in their own lives. a place i can't even see let alone reach. this isn't a complaint about the lack of romance in my life (am pretty chill w/ this, sorta) but more about the fear of being disposable

i hear that, feel largely the same way, though not even necessarily because my friends have all coupled up, but the friends i have left are probably just hanging around out of a sense of residual loyal obligation rather than that we have fun doing the same stuff together anymore or anything

This is kind of what I've been (badly) trying to articulate for a while now, only instead of "friends" substitute "entirely hypothetical peer group I was too socially maladapted to ever find in the first place." Although all of my relatives of a similar age and acquaintances from school are doing the career/marriage thing as well.