Why Your 30s Are The Time To Leave Your Temporary Friends Behind

I'm sure many of you ladies out there who have had your heart broken (or have broken someone else's heart) can agree with me that as we get older, we take every relationship as a lesson learned. This enables us to ensure that the next guy we choose is better in every way, or at least we try to.

Every online article I've read lately has been about relationships between men and women and this particular sense of learning or growth, especially if you're a Millennial. We discuss relationships all over the Internet, but they always seem to be about romantic ones. My question today is, how come nobody talks about the relationships between friends?

Friends are an extremely important factor of our lives. They're the people who contribute the most to the person you become over the years, aside from your family and maybe one or two significant lovers.

They're the people who never waver (or who shouldn't waver, if they're really your friends) in your life, no matter what. Sayings like "bros before hoes" and "chicks over dicks" tell us that our friends are the most important relationships to nurture, but what happens when you lose that?

Recently, I was reading an article here on Elite Daily called, "5 Ways You Think About Relationships, As Told By What Age You Are." It spoke about the stages of how we see relationships as we grow up, with particular emphasis on our 20s. The author describes the process perfectly, at least in terms of my own experience.

The older you get, the wiser you become, and the easier it is for you to pick out the f*ckboys from the group before you settle on an actual good guys (or ladies). I mulled this over for a few hours (as I like to do after I read something), and I realized that this same idea applied to friends.

Before we can realize who our real friends are, we have to spend a lot of time letting them do sh*tty things to us. This process can take years.

If you're someone who has a tougher personality like I do, someone you're in a relationship with can f*ck up once and you would #byefelicia that person immediately. However, with a friend, it's definitely harder to do.

We've all seen the greeting cards, Tumblr posts and Instagram pictures featuring a blonde and a brunette sitting on a bridge in front of a sunset, telling us that friends are supposed to be forever. When it's a friend who does us wrong or starts acting like a fool, it's much more difficult to cut that person out of our lives. Yes, this is a crappy realization for most of us.

Speaking for myself, as a 25-year-old woman who has seen the best and the worst of friends, I can tell you that by the time 30 rolls around, you'll probably be surrounded by five real friends instead of the 20 fake ones you had in high school or college. Although, fake is a harsh term; let's call them “temporary.”

When you're young, everything is easy. You go out a lot, maybe get a little drunk, eat some bad food and swap clothes with your squad in preparation for a night you won't remember the next day.

If you're a guy, maybe you play sports or video games with your crew, and on the weekends, everyone goes out and tries to pick up women. As the years pass, everyone starts to go different directions, getting real jobs and shopping at IKEA in hopes of feeling like a real adult.

Maybe these people also get into serious relationships that aren't based on drunk texts. Trust me when I say that this will separate the “temps” from the “forever” friends.

The point I'm trying to make here is that you, whoever you are and whatever your situation may be, should never be upset or feel like you lost something when any of the things mentioned above occur. When the people who were your BFFs in high school or college stops calling, don't waste time being upset.

Don't bash them to mutual friends, don't post passive-aggressive quotes on your Instagram about them and don't sit at home wondering what you did to deserve getting friend-ghosted. Let those people go. Whoever is meant to stay in your life will stay for good, and you won't have to ask.