Thoughts On Friendship

Over drinks and dinner with old friends last night I was reminded that a very wise man - my father - once told me many years ago that as you grow older you begin to realize that you can count your closest friends on one hand. Who are your closest friends? Not counting your own family, they will most likely be the friends you made in your teens and twenties. And they will be the ones who have stuck with you through thick and thin for all these years. I would also say they are people you can call in the middle of the night and they will come no matter what. You celebrate with your friends and you mourn with your friends. These long term relationships are therefore exceedingly rare and exceedingly valuable. But what happens when friends fall out? How is it that people can throw away decades of friendship? Here are more thoughts from Dorothy Rowe in a recent article in The Guardian.