"I regret investing so much into these friends."

And part of me wants a clean break.

Photo by Miguel Tejerina on Unsplash

Previous anonymous questions and answers can be found here.

Podcast episodes of Dear Nina: Conversations About Friendship are listed here with links to all listening apps.

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Dear Nina,

I’m in my late 30s, and technically speaking, I have a solid group of local friends. There are five of us. We’re generally there for each other in good and bad times. We’ve been doing stuff together for the last ten years or so—sometimes with spouses, sometimes without. When the kids were really young we did stuff as families, and we’ve mostly transitioned back to adult-time as the kids are in different grades and some attend different schools/districts.

The main issue is: I’m not sure this is the right group for me, and I wish I had not invested so much time in the same five people for so long. Sometimes I fantasize about a clean break, but that’s not realistic and would be hurtful to my friends.

The fact that we’ve managed to plan occasional trips and lots of in-town time after all these years is the thing I know people are looking for when they say they’re missing out by not having the crew they’re always seeing on TV or on social media. I’ve read previous questions from readers looking for friends, especially for a group, so I feel guilty complaining. Still, something feels . . . off, I guess.

There’s a mismatch on enough little things that it’s starting to add up. I’m sure you’re wondering why I let so much time go by. Between work and raising kids, I let the years fly by with this “if it’s not broken don’t fix it” attitude about my friendships (and probably other things too). It’s still not broken, it’s just feels too surface sometimes. After all these years and some major milestones together, it feels like we should be emotionally closer.

I wish we talked about more serious things. There’s a lot of time spent on what the kids are up to, and I foresee that topic going on forever. Four out of the five of us work outside the home, but we never talk about our jobs. I’m not sure why.

I don’t even know exactly what I’m looking for. I seem to have the thing everyone wants—a group of fun friends. But the truth is, I often find myself thinking, this cannot be all there is. 

Thanks for any advice on what to do about this “blah” feeling,

“Holly”

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Dear Holly,