How did your school friendships change once you left school?

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KellyMelany@reddit

It's perfectly normal. School is basically a 5-year social experiment where you're forced to be friends with whoever's in your zip code. Once you leave, the 'convenience factor' disappears, and you realize you have nothing in common besides a shared trauma of GCSE Maths. Keeping one or two close friends is a win; the rest just become people you occasionally 'like' on Instagram while wonderig—I mean wondering—how they've aged so much faster than you.

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hunsnet457@reddit

I’m not friends with anyone I went to school with anymore.

We were a huge group that all split off to different colleges, I kept in touch with different “mini groups” at different times but by 20 I didn’t speak to any of them and moved away.

Quite a few of them moved to my city later on and we actually run in the same circles, socially and professionally, but I haven’t seen any of them in person.

I don’t actually have any friends that knew me before the age of about 22.

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Particular-Attorney9@reddit

It depends on your school experience I suppose. I had a really bad time at school and I didn’t have a lot of friends once we all went to uni etc. I then made other friends but by my late twenties I chucked a fair few or them simply because I must not have liked myself the way these friends turned out. So now I’m way happier with a select, quality group of friends.

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Kapika96@reddit

They ended. Haven't spoken to anybody from school since I left school.

Keep in touch with some of my uni mates. No real change there, we still hang out and it's basically the same, just not going to class before/after. But yeah, the secondary school friendships just ended.

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KrungThepMahaNK@reddit

Didn't keep contact with any. The real friends were the ones I met at my first job at a fast food restaurant. I worked there until I graduated from uni. The social aspect was great.

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ToastedCrumpet@reddit

Basically saw less and less of them almost immediately from 16 onwards. Get the odd text from one or two of them every few years now. Sometimes I ignore them lol

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Chance-Bread-315@reddit

I'm 29. I have no friends from primary or secondary school, but I'm still super close with my group of 8 best mates from college despite us living scattered around the UK.

Think it's perfectly normal either way!

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Excali20@reddit

No and thank fuck I can’t stand any of them

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Civil-Rent-7100@reddit (OP)

How come? Pretty unfortunate tbh, they're a major part of most people's lives

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Excali20@reddit

Well the majority of them were pricks and bully’s so I’d rather not interact with them I have my own friends I made when I was in college who I see every now and again but talk daily

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Microchi@reddit

Got two best pals who I went all the way through primary and secondary. Got to say of them really put the effort in to keep pals after school always inviting me out and stuff when I was spending more time with my new college pals.

Really appreciate that as he is my absolute best friend and our kids and wives are pals now as well.

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-Intrepid-Path-@reddit

Didn't have any close friends at school and haven't talked to anyone of them since I left school other than the odd message on Facebook (and even those haven't happened in at least a decade). Don't really have any friends now either though.

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Psychological_Bee_93@reddit

I’m still friends with roughly 20 people I went to high school with. I don’t really have any “best friends” that I’m incredibly close with, but I stay in touch with them all regularly. There’s 3-4 of them that I attend international rugby games with 6 or 7 times a year, there’s a girls group where we try to do a trip away at least once a year, there’s about 15 of us who live in the same city and we try to grab dinner every 3/4 months and then about 8 of us who usually see each other most weeks (or at least did before I had my baby, more like once a month at the moment) for lunch/dinner/pub quiz.

Over the years, we’ve all come and gone and come back again from the group, I lived abroad for a few years as have several others. A lot of us moved elsewhere in the UK after uni, some of us for uni, but a large amount of us migrated back home around 2015/2016, some started getting married and having babies so we were going to lots of weddings/christenings and our first group chat was created for those which brought us all a lot closer.

Don’t get me wrong, after 25 years + of friendship they often annoy the hell out of me and I do sometimes question if I met them today would I actually want to be friends with them 😂 but we know each other so well, and not just who we are now but who we’ve been at every stage of life. I’m sure we’ll all drift in and out over the years to come too, but they’re all people I know I could depend on if I called them, even if we hadn’t spoken for ages. I’m aware it’s incredibly rare though!

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Hopper-1986@reddit

I had one friend from school for years then we fell out. Another friend came back into my life about 5 years ago from school and I am gutted I lost the years that we went desperate directions as he is a great friend

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FreeBogwoppits@reddit

They disappeared immediately.

I left school at 16 to go to a college, they all stayed at school for sixth form.

I was frozen out the moment the last day of high school 5th year/year 11 was over. No phone calls. No messages. They blanked me when I passed them in the street. When I forced a conversation with any of them, they looked at their feet and just muttered something vague.

I've bumped into one of them in my adult life. We had a brief chat, realised we had nothing to say, and left it there.

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ThatsNotVeryBacon@reddit

I might be an outlier here, but I moved away from the town I grew up in after I finished my GCSEs to mobe in with my Grandparents across the country and I haven’t spoken to a single person I went to secondary school with in over 8 years. As for those I went to college with, I occasionally speak to about 4/5 of them maybe every few months or so?

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AttentionOtherwise80@reddit

I have b/g twins, now 37. They were in a group of 6 at school who practically lived at our house at weekends. The two girls went to uni, and both have professional jobs, have been on holiday together, and friend was MOH at my daughter's wedding 5 years ago. One guy moved north for university and only came back to visit his mum, now sadly deceased, so we haven't seen him for years. One went to college at 23 and disappeared from our lives. The other guy and my son live locally, as does the girl and the often go out together.

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redandbluebadness@reddit

I'm 45 and my school friends are still my best and only real friends, maybe with a few uni guys mixed in

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Bounty_drillah@reddit

I still run into lads I wasn't close with but got on pretty well with. Sometimes we have time for a pint and a chat. Some of them very are useful to know.

My actual close friendship group dissipated slowly as time went on. Once I started branching out a bit, meeting new people through work/college/uni I realised many of them were actually shitty, fair-weather friends.

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lavayuki@reddit

I don't have any friends from school or uni. All my friends are from adult life and friends made outside school.

I never fit in in school, had just one friend but out friendship broke down when I went to private school. From there I never really had friends in school. In uni I had a few friends but upon graduation we all parted ways never to hear or see each other ever again

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Ryndomaru@reddit

Don't talk to anyone from my school days now. Quite happy with that, to be honest.

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RokosBallsack@reddit

My little brother died in my first year of college and I kinda became a shut in, isolated myself and felt like my friends didn’t “need my shit” in their life.

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NortonBurns@reddit

Pretty much never saw any of them ever again.
My circle of friends was outside school. I'm going back home next week to meet some of them, at a youth club reunion. Some I see once a year, some not in 30 years.

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Kickkickkarl@reddit

I am still friends with someone from when I was at primary school in 1989 but that's the only school friend I still have.

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CelebrationSimilar11@reddit

I’m 29 and haven’t spoken to anyone I went to school with since I was 17. I don’t even have anyone from school on social media apart from one person (but we weren’t friends at school). I never really shared the same interests or anything with the people I was friends with at school, it was more of a “eh we all get along so let’s hang out at break” kind of thing. I don’t think any of us even hung out outside of school apart from one party and one sleepover that I can think of.

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Asaxii@reddit

I out grew my friends. When they finally caught up, one tried the steal the other’s ex Gf/FWB. Oh boy. I just say on the side and tried to support one of them as the other is a self absorbed narcissist who clearly doesn’t want to talk to me.

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frankie_0924@reddit

I’m in my early 40’s. I had a good friend in Y7-9. We both ended up having babies earlier than everyone else (& within 2 weeks of each other), so we both now have 20 year olds! That brought us closer to each other. Others I keep in vague touch with over insta, but that’s it. I think of it like colleagues, I’ve been really close to a few people, one of you gets a new job and you don’t really have a lot in common anymore.

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kryptonick901@reddit

I have 2 friends from high school (technically both from primary school, 1 predates that) and 1 from uni.

All my other friends were made as an adult.

It’s perfectly normal.

Friends at school/uni or even work are friends of convenience. You see them everyday whether you want to or not. When you leave those establishments you have to work to maintain the relationships. You’ll only put in the time and effort for the ones that really matter.

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LadyAristocat@reddit

I found that you do tend to drift apart as the years go on. Just life takes you to different places at different speeds and you may find you don’t have as much in common anymore or you’ve outgrown each other. It’s sad but it’s a part of life I guess and you will always have memories of the good times you had! That’s just my personal experience but I know some people have school friendships that last decades!

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No_Effective_4481@reddit

They all ended pretty much as soon as I left school, except for my two closest friends who I haven't seen since I was 19.

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CrossCityLine@reddit

Had a large group of friends at secondary school.

I’m in my mid 30s now, one of them I keep in contact with (have known him since I was 2), and the other one is my best mate but I don’t see him as often as I should as he splits his time between here and his boyfriend’s in the US.

The rest have just drifted off into the world without a word.

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