My Friends

I have a feeling this assignment  about "Middle Adulthood Relationships" was designed with the “traditional” college student (recent high school graduate) in mind. It has been many moons since my high school graduation and I am closer to the “middle age” category than I would like to admit. While for most students completing this assignment, parents would fall into the category of the middle adulthood range, my parents have already passed this mark, so yippee for me, I get to answer this assignment about my friends instead of my parents!


What characterizes my relationships with individuals in middle adulthood (40-60 yrs old)?

Friendship is what characterizes my relationships with those in middle adulthood.  Most of my friends at this point in my life fall slightly below or right inside the lower limit of the middle adulthood age range.

What is the nature of your interactions?

The answer to this question can be pulled directly from our textbook. The nature of my interactions with this group is to help each other in our endeavors towards, “Expanding personal and social involvement and responsibility; reaching and maintaining satisfaction in a career, and assisting the next generation in becoming competent, mature individuals.” 

The vast majority of my social set is comprised of parents with children in similar stages as mine. We all try to help each other in any way we can, and have fun through this journey of life together. It is a hard job to be a parent, and I am glad I have friends to encourage me, laugh with me, cry with me, and advise me. I have a few very close friends who I depend on a lot for advice and I don’t know what I’d do without them!

On what things do you see eye-to-eye? Where do you disagree?

I see eye to eye with my friends on what I consider my core values, or what I view as most important to have in myself and find in others with whom I choose to spend time. These values are honesty, kindness, dependability, a strong work ethic, determination, curiosity, a sense of humor, playfulness, adventure, and a positive outlook on life. Where we may disagree falls along the dividing line of politics, but I love them anyway.


How effective is your communication with one another?

Since I am by nature a direct, in your face kind of person, communicating doesn’t seem to be an issue for me. With my set of close friends particularly, I am able to talk about personal, intimate parts of my life. This ability is fostered by the knowledge that there is an understanding of trust and care in the way we treat each other. I am so glad to be past the stage of life where friends more often than not turned out to be “frenemies”. Relational drama is SO overrated.


What things do you wish they could or would try to understand?
I really can’t think of anything besides politics for the answer to this question. But I am not going to hold my breath that anyone will change their views to match mine. Every single one of my friends is very smart, and thus they have their reasoning for their political beliefs, so I respect that and generally don’t even bring the topic up.

What would make your relationships better and closer?

The quality of all relationships is determined by the time and effort put into maintaining them.  So, it stands to reason that more time together would enhance our friendships, but we are all very busy, so making more time for each other isn’t easy.  Besides, I am very satisfied with all of my friendships as they currently stand. I am very fortunate to have the friends I have, I appreciate them all immensely.