“Your friendships shrink as you get older—unless you have a...

“Your friendships shrink as you get older—unless you have a loose definition of friendship. I used to work with one of the richest guys in Philadelphia. He was seventy years old. He could have dinner with anybody in the city. But those aren’t the types of friends I’m talking about. I mean the people who really know you. I think it’s amplified for me because I’m still single. My friends have gotten married and had kids. They have less and less time to give. More and more people have come into their lives. But the amount of people in my life has stayed the same. I’ll text them to see if they want to go to a Phillies game. And I always get an immediate ‘yes.’ But something always comes up right before the game. They have to reschedule because ‘Ethan’s friend is having a birthday party,’ or ‘Sarah has a soccer game.’ It’s hard to not feel left out. I used to see these guys several times a week. Now it’s five or six times per year.”