The greatest obstacle to friendship in middle age isn't that nobody wants friends. It's that everyone is waiting for someone else to go first. But here's the good news: Christ has already gone first for you. And because He has, you are free to go first for someone else.
There is a strange sadness that comes with watching the Netflix series The Four Seasons. It's not because the show itself is particularly sad. In fact, much of it is funny, familiar, and comforting. The characters are flawed, often ridiculous, sometimes selfish, and occasionally profound. They have marital problems. They disappoint one another. They carry resentments from the past and old affections too. They have inside jokes. They know each other's stories, strengths, and weaknesses. And despite everything: divorce, conflict, changing seasons of life, and the ordinary disappointments that accumulate over decades, they continue to show up for one another. Perhaps that's what makes the show so beautiful but also so difficult to watch.
I am blessed to have some amazing friends as a 50-year-old man living in twenty-first century America. But I have come to realize that my experience is increasingly uncommon. For many, especially for many in my age group, having friends past 40 seems like something that could only be depicted in a television series because it could never actually happen in real life. Maybe you have heard the joke that one of Jesus’ most amazing miracles is having 12 friends after the age of 30.
As I watched this show, I found myself experiencing an emotion I couldn't quite name at first. It wasn't exactly envy because I have wonderful friends. It wasn't nostalgia either because I have been betrayed by those I thought were my closest friends. It was something closer to realizing that what the show portrays is a picture of friendship that, unfortunately, very few people actually get to experience. The years of shared history, the comfort of being known, and the quiet confidence that there are people in your life who have seen you at your best and your worst and somehow decided to stay.
There is a reason so many of us past forty view friendship as a nice idea but far from reality. By middle age, most of us have accumulated careers, responsibilities, children, grandchildren, mortgages, accomplishments, and obligations. We have spouses, coworkers, neighbors, and acquaintances. We may even be surrounded by people. And yet, if we're honest, many of us have fewer actual friends than we did when we were younger.
The easy explanation is that we're busy. Isn’t that the typical answer to the ubiquitous question, “how are you doing?” “Busy!” We respond. Nobody ever says, “bored out of my mind.” Or , "Lonely." We say "busy" because it sounds productive. It sounds successful. And perhaps because admitting loneliness feels too vulnerable. It’s always “busy" because this is our way of keeping people at arms length. A subconscious protection of a heart that has already been shattered in a million pieces by the people we once thought were friends.
Middle age often feels like a season of constant responsibility. But I don't think busyness is the whole story. After all, many people discover that loneliness doesn't disappear when life becomes less busy. In fact, for some, it becomes more obvious. Retirement doesn't automatically produce friendship. Empty nests don't necessarily create community. More free time doesn't always lead to deeper relationships.
Perhaps friendship becomes difficult in middle age not because we become busier. More likely it becomes increasingly difficult because we become fearful. Not afraid of friendship itself, but fearful of what friendship requires. Because friendship requires something many of us have spent decades learning to avoid: the risk of being known. The deeper issue, I think, is not that we don't know how to make friends. The question is why we become increasingly reluctant to do it. Friendship becomes difficult in middle age because we've spent decades learning how to protect ourselves.
When we're young, friendship feels almost accidental. Friendship most often happens due to proximity — neighbors, your parents friend’s kids, classmates. But then we get older, we accumulate wounds and making friends begins to feel very difficult. A lifetime of hurts lie just beneath a thin veil in our hearts and minds. It often takes very little to bring them rushing back to the surface—a poorly phrased critique, an unanswered text, not being invited to a gathering. Little things grow into major acts of betrayal in a heart and mind that’s been trampled on in the past.
Vulnerability begins to feel like too great a risk to take. And so, often without even realizing it, we begin to protect ourselves. We become more careful. More guarded. We allow people to know the person we want them to know; the version of ourselves we have carefully curated to protect us from hurt, disappointment, and betrayal. We learn how to be pleasant without being vulnerable, how to be available without being known.
The irony, of course, is that many of us still desperately want friendship. We simply want friendship on terms that don't require risk. We want others to see the version of ourselves we've spent years constructing. Because being respected from afar feels safe. Being known does not. To be known means exposing weakness. It means admitting fear and weakness. It means acknowledging that despite our accomplishments; we are often far less put together than we would like others to believe. And so we settle for acquaintances, but when was the last time we had a real conversation with another person face to face? When was the last time we admitted fear, failure, loneliness, or disappointment to another human? When was the last time we allowed someone to know us beyond our occupation, our shared life-stage, our political opinions, favorite sports team, or latest project? Because beneath our busyness, beneath our independence, and beneath our carefully constructed competence often lies something much simpler: Fear. Fear of being known and discovering that if someone really knew us, they might not stay. But the root problem might even be deeper than this.
Perhaps it isn't that we've become busy, guarded, or even afraid. Maybe the deepest obstacle is that we've asked friendship to do something it was never designed to do. We have asked it to justify us. At first, that may sound strange. Most of us don't consciously think of friendship in those terms. We don't sit around wondering whether our friends can provide us with existential meaning or validate our worth. But if we're honest, many of the fears that keep us from friendship reveal that we're asking questions far deeper than whether someone would simply enjoy spending time with us. But human friendship cannot possibly carry that kind of weight. Here friendship becomes an idol that cannot possibly hold up under the weight of our own expectations. Which means we remain trapped. Desperately wanting to be known, while simultaneously terrified that if someone actually knew us, they would reject us.
This is precisely where the gospel speaks. Not with advice. Not with techniques for making friends. Not with a list of practical steps to overcome loneliness. The gospel speaks a better word. While the deepest fear underneath our resistance to friendship is that if someone really knew us, they wouldn't stay—the gospel declares that someone already has.
Jesus has promised that he will never leave us, nor forsake us (Heb. 13:5).
The God who created you knows everything about you. He knows every embarrassing memory you've spent decades trying to hide. He knows every betrayal you've suffered and every betrayal you've committed. Your life is naked and laid bare before your Creator (Heb. 4:13). However, despite his intimate knowledge of you, Jesus stays. More than that, He comes all the way to you. This is the scandal of the Christianity. Christ did not wait for us to become worthy of His friendship. He did not stand at a distance waiting for us to get our lives together, "While we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8). He already knows everything about you and surprisingly he not only forgives it all — he chooses to be your friend and your God.
He is the friend the Proverbs speaks of, “that sticks closer than a brother” (Prov. 18:24).
This changes everything for us because once your worth no longer depends on what another person thinks of you, you are finally free to love them. When you aren’t looking for them to validate or justify you, you are free to be their friend without needing them to fulfill your greatest needs. You no longer need friendship to prove that you matter. You no longer need another person's approval to tell you who you are. You are known. You are loved. You belong. And that means you are free. Free to initiate the text message or make the phone call. Free to invite someone to dinner and have them say no. Free to be awkward. Free to admit loneliness and to reveal weakness. Free to confess sin and free to forgive old wounds. Free to be disappointed. And perhaps most importantly, free to try again.
Because friendship, like every other human relationship, involves sin. On this side of the resurrection friendship will include: selfishness, misunderstanding, disappointment, conflict, and loss. But the Christian no longer needs to enter friendship seeking justification. He enters friendship already justified. And that may be the greatest freedom of all.
We live in a culture that encourages us to think of friendship as another form of self-actualization. We are told to find "our tribe," discover "our people," build our social network, and surround ourselves with those who will help us become the best version of ourselves. Friendship becomes another project to manage, another achievement to unlock, another reflection of our own success. But Christ offers a much simpler, and perhaps more difficult, vision. Friendship is not ultimately about finding the perfect people. It is about loving the people God has already placed in our lives.
This is the language of vocation. Vocation is simply the recognition that God loves and serves us through people, and that He loves and serves other people through us. Which means that friendship is not first about finding someone who meets our needs. It is about becoming a neighbor to those God has already placed in front of us. The person from church you've been meaning to call. The neighbor whose name you know but whose story you don't. The old friend you've neglected because life became busy. The coworker who seems just as lonely as you are. The man standing alone after church sipping bad coffee and pretending he’s perfectly content. The irony is that many of us are waiting for friendship to happen to us. We are waiting for someone to call. Hoping for someone to invite us. Longing for that person to initiate. Wishing they would take the risk that we ourselves are unwilling to take. The reality is however that the very person we are waiting for is also waiting. Waiting for you to send a text or make that call. And because Christ has already gone first for us, we are free to go first for one another. Not because friendship will save us. It won’t. In fact it will kill us, but the gospel promises us that death is already behind us and that these small daily deaths are the very thing that bring us life.
That's what makes The Four Seasons so beautiful. The friendships portrayed in the show aren't beautiful because they're effortless. They're beautiful because these deeply flawed friends keep showing up for one another. The greatest obstacle to friendship in middle age isn't that nobody wants friends. It's that everyone is waiting for someone else to go first. But here's the good news: Christ has already gone first for you. And because He has, you are free to go first for someone else.
Maybe that's where friendship begins. Even friendship after forty.
