In early adulthood, we tend to make friends with people who are closer. One of the most important factors in making friends in early adulthood is intimacy. People often make friends with college roommates and colleagues who live together. Because of this intimate relationship, people usually benefit from each other's friendship (by helping each other), and the cost of establishing and maintaining relationships is very low.
But when they go to college, graduate, find a job, jump ship or move, the dating network will be greatly affected. This may be the epitome of today's highly mobile information society. Increasing social mobility destroys people's accessibility and makes it easier for them to lose the best friend we once had.
After shaping ourselves, we want to find people who are really like us. Similarity plays a very important role in establishing friendship. As we get older, we tend to be attracted to people with similar attitudes and values. You may not want to tell your friends what you think when you grow up. They are fully aware of their interests, needs, ambitions, etc. They no longer need to communicate with friends to understand themselves and their future path as they did when they were young.
As a result, we are not as easy to make friends as when we were young. On the contrary, we determine the criteria for choosing friends according to cultural values, social norms and boundaries, socio-economic factors and education level, and strive to find people who are really similar to us in personality, interests and life goals.
Longing for a stronger relationship. Although we all think that our friends are getting fewer and fewer, research shows that our long-term friendship is actually stronger. In adolescence, the reason why friends turn against each other is usually specific and divorced from the love relationship itself. As we grow older and mature, we will become more rational and cherish the few friends we have. Therefore, on the one hand, because our expectations have changed, we have become more flexible about friendship and more tolerant of differences. On the other hand, our friendship may become dull, but more stable.