Is it normal to give up on 99% of your friendships at a certain age?

I've basically gotten to a point in my life where I have decided to deactivate my facebook account with several hundred friends because I've felt like most of my friends have moved on with their lives, live in different locations, don't really care to stay in touch, etc. etc.

I have for the longest time felt like I've been the guy to try my best with the vast majority of them to stay in touch or ask them how their lives are, and so on.. but it has felt like for every 10-20 times I reached out to this or that friend I am lucky if they do the same with me once.

As of now, out of 700+ friends on facebook I created a new account and invited three of them over to it and deactivated the other as I felt like these were realistically the only two that really reciprocated the element of friendship and showed they cared about my friendship. So it is those three, a friend in Asia, a friend in Brazil, and one in Africa that I keep in touch with and the rest of my friends that I used to be close with have all abated into obscurity.

My last best friend might shed some light onto the reason that I am so jaded when it comes to friends.. overall I feel like he is just an existential-reflection of the majority of the rest of my friends -- This 'friend' would always call me when he needed someone to talk to about his problems, or needed a friend to take his side and make him feel better about his lot in life.. But typically, whenever the roles were reversed he would always be busy and say, "I'll call you back I just gotta X/Y/Z excuse". The friendship was always in favor of his convenience and in the end I realized that he was truly a fair-weather friend.

This has been the case with most of my friendships.. I usually felt like I was the one to make all of the efforts to be a good friend, to ask to hang out, make plans, give gifts, give advice, etc.. and reciprocity has been extremely scarce. Not only that but I have been betrayed or let down more times than I care to remember by really good friends which has only solidified my distrust of potential 'friends'.

The sad thing is I had just recently went to one of my fiance's friends' wedding and they had dozens of friends between the bride and the groom.. And it hit me that when our wedding happens I might not even have enough groomsmen let alone friends of mine that would even be interested in attending and or that I would even want to see there in attendance..

At this point in life I am just hoping that I will make some long-lasting friendships of people around the same age that have the same drive and interests as me.. but so far it has been looking quite bleak tbh.

Apologies for the long-winded rant, I just didn't think I would be able to make this topic terse / brief without being severely misinterpreted one way or another. Hopefully you can understand my situation.. but I'm sure there are a great many that can't relate as it seems like most people don't have this problem.

TL/DR: After a series of failed friendships due to feeling like the person who is consistently making most of the efforts / being let down or betrayed time and again I have become very jaded and cut ties / communication with 99.9% of my friends who have become 'fair-weather-facebook-friends'.

Voting Results
90% Normal
Based on 10 votes (9 yes)
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Comments ( 4 )
  • RadioActiveSeaMan333

    Online friends don't really count as friends desu 😦

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    • social_dissonance

      And yet one of my only friends that I made playing an O/L game is one of the only people that I regularly keep in touch with and call to talk to... I'd have to agree to disagree with you on that one.

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  • Oster

    No! Friends are important!

    However, did you even meet these 700+ people IRL?

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    • social_dissonance

      Travelling around the world and at university mostly. But yea, I agree.. friends are definitely important.. I just haven't met many good friends I suppose.

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