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Adults tend to have stronger cognitive. social and emotional skills, which allow them to better identify with, offer advice to, and otherwise support friends. Many young adults enjoy this emotional depth along with an abundance of free time. before family and career responsibilities pick up in midlife. It’s no wonder that this age is a high-water mark for friendship. Those who so to college get a few extra years of living near their peers. Later in adulthood, though, people have more demands on their time: work, romantic partnership, and caregiving all compete for their attention.

Plus, when adults enter the workforce full-time, potential new friends don’t constantly surround them the way they did in school or while living in dormitories. Though some continue to carve out time for their social lives. Bagwell said, friendship tends to become “a luxury rather than priority.”

Under these new circumstances, many people see friends less frequently — and they tend to spend the time they do have together differently. For efficiency’s sake, they might pair socializing with other activities, like sharing a meal. Though grabbing dinner with a friend can be engaging, it’s a far cry from well-planned forest ceremonies. Friends could choose to tell each other secrets at a meal, but the activity doesn’t bring about the type of natural openness that play can.

This pursuit of efficiency and the safety of following routine can come at the cost of pleasure. An efficiency mindset risks having friendships feel like making a trade, as if each meeting should be “worth it.” But squeezing time for short and rare meetings is unlikely to feel fulfilling. If you haven’t seen each other in a while, focusing on chatting about old days is natural. However, looking back on important events in life can feel like exchanging notes while joint adventures create memories—the foundation of close friendship. As the sociologist Eric Klinenberg put it, “You tend to enrich your social life when you stop, stay longer and waste time.”