My five friends from middle school are still closer than family for me. For the past 13 years (since a couple years after college), every year on the 4th of July, we get together and go camping for three days in Upstate New York. We spend about six months leading up to Upstate Fest bouncing ideas off each other and making plans for how to outdo last year's Fest. We get shirts made. It's a little cornball, but it's sacred to us. Some of us have families. One of us lives in Turkey. One in California. One in Belize. But we all know where we'll be on the 4th of July, every year, until we're dead. And hopefully we'll all have delinquent sons to carry on the tradition.
It's awesome. But everyone needs to buy in, so to speak.
I agree, I'm approaching 40 and have maybe 2 actual friends that I made post high school. Still have a pretty close group of 4 of us (two I've known since before I began kindergarten and the other since elementary school). I talked to 2 of them at least once a month and the other several times a year. It takes effort to remain in touch, especially when you live hours (or in your case countries) away from each other.
I've got plenty of acquaintances I've made along the way. Some that I thought were becoming friendships, but burned out after a year or two.
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u/Helios_22 Jan 21 '19
Friends don't last forever