Friendship Crossroads

It’s a known fact that, throughout the universe, there's a simple phrase that can be employed to gauge the distance between any group of friends’ realities: “Let’s just split the bill evenly.” Drop that sentence at the dinner table in any group of female friends around the age of 30 and you’re likely to get a whole rainbow of reactions.

Jill, who has worked her way up at the law firm she joined after graduating, is first to dive into her wallet. Rachel, a primary schoolteacher, who’s just taken on a mortgage, is a little slower to fish out a $20 note. Karen, who is currently “clean eating” with her husband and only ordered a miso, frowns. And Claire, a part-time copywriter with a one-year-old child, had only really intended to spend $15 and isn’t sure how to bring it up.

Australian Women "Too Busy" For Their Friends

Of course, it isn’t solely money that sets us apart from our friends, but what happens when you look around the table and wonder, if we had to stop talking about the “good old days”, or what happened on True Blood that week, would we still actually have anything in common? When long-held friendships begin to drift apart it can be painful. Realising that friends you once shared everything with are having distinctly different experiences to you is a shock. We start to give ourselves the third degree: how did they make it happen? Am I doing something wrong? Can we still be friends if our lives might as well be happening in different universes?

“When I approached 30, I felt very strongly that I was moving into a different stage of my life,” says Elizabeth, 31, who moved from Brisbane to Sydney last year for love, and to pursue career opportunities. “I started noticing that my younger friends were caught up in ticking off boxes on their to-do lists that I had either been there and done, or had no interest in doing.”

Or put a baby in the mix and the differences between friends’ worlds can become starkly apparent. “Many of my friends aren’t anywhere near having kids yet,” says Tina, 32, whose daughter is nearly one. “Becoming a parent doesn’t mean you completely lose touch with your previous life. I need to live vicariously through my single friends and hear about their fabulous social lives!” she laughs.

When we form friendship groups in our teenage years or 20s, it tends to be because we’re all on the same page; whether at school or university, we bond over shared dreams and circumstances. Maybe we’re all going to grow up and start businesses, or win Oscars, or write books, sticking together as one of those “power” groups of old friends that reporters write glowing, awed feature articles about. Consequently, it can be difficult to accept when members of the friendship group start to move away from those seemingly shared goals.

“I really value my career,” says Sarah, 31, who has carved herself a niche in the marketing world. “When I get together with my old friends, I feel like they see me as this workaholic maniac. They’ve chosen to focus more on things like family and relationships, and see their jobs as a means to an end. Sometimes, I wish they’d see I’m passionate about my job and let me share that enthusiasm with them.”

Hence, it’s not unusual to find yourself drifting away from friendships formed years previously, and towards newer friends with whom you have more in common. “I noticed quite a few of my friends were heading in the direction of having babies, and I think I’ve become a lot closer to them since becoming a mum,” says Tina. “We are going through this huge new life stage at the same time, so we can better understand what we’re all going through. It helps that we have similar schedules, too; not a lot of opportunity to go out at night, but plenty of time to catch up during weekdays.”

As we’ve navigated our 20s and beyond, my oldest friends and I have subtly ended up in different places; there have been marriages, babies, career successes and home ownerships. Some of us have managed to tick off all of those milestones, while some have taken much more of a pick’n’mix approach – I know I have.

When I was 24, I went to see a fortune teller, Tara. She had a stall at a local market – think saris and mystical-looking scarves pinned up inside a rent-a-tent – and for $25, offered to tell my fortune. I crossed her palm with plastic and she set about reading my palm and then my tarot spread.

What began as a bit of fun led quickly to my sitting transfixed as Tara, who apparently knew everything about me, from my two abandoned university courses to my brother’s love of the drums, gave it to me straight: things are a bit all over the shop right now, but just wait until you’re 30. That’s when everything – work, life, relationship and babies – is going to happen.

Given the uncanny accuracy of the rest of the reading, I had no reason to doubt the veracity of her soothsaying, and so swanned out of the rent-a-tent safe in the knowledge that everything was all going to work out.

I’m now six months away from the big 3-0, and my fortune was told nearly six years ago. But in that time I’ve realised – through beating a crippling addiction to bridal magazines and a broken engagement – that the thing I thought I should prioritise (a relationship) has ended up running a distant second to my own professional and creative fulfilment. That has occasionally put my goals at odds with some of my close friends’ goals, who are still busy looking for “the one”.

It’s easy for people to assume, since they share so many other things, that their friends will have the same life goals as they do, “particularly if they have been friends for a long time and come from similar backgrounds”, says life coach Lisa Phillips. “People often feel hurt when someone they care about ‘moves on’ without them, leaving them feeling left out.”

And adjusting to friends’ new situations can be a whole other reckoning. “Many of my oldest friends now have kids,” says Charlotte, 31, who works in the fashion industry. “It’s not as though it's not part of my future; it’s something to look forward to. But the friends who have children don’t seem to understand that. Although I love them and their children, it’s not the stage I am at in my life right now, and every catch-up shouldn’t be at their homes just because they have kids. I guess you kind of give up and just accept that it’s the way it’s going to be with them for the next few years.”

Resentments can fester in these situations. Signing the deed on a stylish, inner-city terrace with your partner may send your share-house-dwelling friend, who is still paying off travel debts, into a green-eyed trance. A well-meaning bulk email with an adorable photo of your baby could be poison for your mate whose eight-year relationship has just gone down the drain a week before her 35th birthday.

This tendency to subconsciously play yourself off against your friends’ achievements is something Phillips sees in a lot of women. “When situations like this come up, it can leave people questioning their own progress in life,” she says. “They often give themselves a hard time, believing they should be doing something different.”

It’s certainly something I’ve felt as I’ve grown up; youthful enthusiasm can make you feel invincible, as though you’ve got the whole world at your feet. When I began my career as a writer, I was just shy of 20. I’d seen Almost Famous and was convinced my destiny was laid out in front of me like tomorrow’s clothes. And while I’ve shifted my career focus from music to film and television, writing is still the biggest part of my life.

And yet, as the years passed, I would look at friends with “proper jobs” and wonder if I’d taken a wrong turn somewhere. I loved freelancing, but sometimes I’d find myself wondering if I wouldn’t love a bit more job security and stability in my life just as much.

But growing up and heading in different directions doesn’t have to be the death knell of a friendship – the bonds we form in the throes of youth can often weather all manner of difference. “I feel that when things go wrong, my old schoolfriends are the best to be around,” says Mia. “They’ve known me forever and, in that way, watched it all from my side. It’s a security that you don’t find in many places.”

The more I thought about my friends and my divergent paths through life, the more I started to see it as something beautiful. After all, surely it would be boring if, Seven Brides For Seven Brothers-style, we all locked down great jobs, great husbands and nice houses all at the same time?

Phillips agrees, encouraging me to see difference as a positive thing. “We are all different and our lives will take different directions. Accept where you are at the moment – that’s OK,” she explains. “Your path may be completely different from other people. But remember, just because other people are doing it, it doesn’t mean you have to.”

Comparison Syndrome

That’s something Mahalia, 28, realised when she moved from her country town to Melbourne. “I’ve realised that putting time frames on things is ridiculous,” she says. “You don’t have that much control of the universe. I think that’s a part of growing: not putting the pressure on yourself to have everything done in life by the time you’re 30.”

Indeed, if you have friends who you see as having reached certain life goals before you, and that’s a direction you want to travel in, see it as a chance for mentorship, rather than a competition. “If a friend is in a situation where you aspire to be, talk to them and find out how they did it,” suggests Phillips. “Learn from their mistakes. Try not to feel jealous or resentful towards them but celebrate their successes and learn from them. Also, think of all the exciting new situations you may find yourself in with friends in different circumstances.”

The thing is, it’s easy to idealise your friends’ circumstances from a distance – which means you choose to ignore the fact that those marriages, babies, career successes and home ownerships might have also come part and parcel with nightmare in-laws, pregnancy troubles, working long hours or stressful mortgage repayment schedules.

Because of that, it’s possible that they might look upon your life with a wistful envy, too. For example, maybe you’re still single, something you see as a fault, but your attached friends might see it as offering a precious freedom to travel and explore new career options.

“I never really feel like I’m not fitting in because I find the beauty in difference,” says Mia, 29. “And if others don’t, they’re probably not worth being around. Often when you’re feeling insecure, it means looking within. I’ve done a bit of that this year. Look within, talk it out: something will come of it.”

So from here on in, I’m going to relax. Just because some of my friends have reached certain life goals before I have, and vice versa, it doesn’t mean I’m doing it wrong: I’m just doing it differently to them.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, I’m not going to chase down Tara the fortune teller for a refund – after all, a lot can happen in six months, right?