Lesson Learned: Hanging with friends cut off for years isn't a great experience

When I transitioned from high school to college, I was frustrated with some obstacles in my life and just wanted to move on from everything, so I left my whole friend group and started over in college. I went to a three year trade college, and I just recently graduated and we're all out working now. So I still get together with the guys, but far less often then we used to.

Anyway, since most my friends are college kids on break, I hit up one of my old buddies and it turns out a decent amount of people who I partied with still hang out on breaks, and he invited my to go to the club with them.

The results weren't quite what I expected though, the guy who I hit up and a few other guys had a few brief conversations with me, and then they kind of wandered off. I didn't even get a single hello from any of the girls at all, and most the guys kind of just said hi and that was it. I was pretty much a complete outsider now, it wasn't like falling back into my high school days like I expected. I eventually wound up alone in the club, so I kinda just walked out.

I guess my lesson learned was to keep friends close, or else it's best to move on.

Ouch. Sounds like a miserable night.

Can I ask if you were all close in high school? Why did you cut them out?

good lesson learned. although it doesn't seem like you were really that close with them to begin with. I had a similar experience as you but with the opposite results. Lost contact with my friends after high school(not just party friends, friends i'd hang out with daily at school and outside of it) but when we reconnected about 10 years later they still became my friends again. We obviously dont hang out like we use to in high school since we some have wives and kids and busy work schedules but we still make time when we can to go to baseball games, get lunch, celebrate birthdays etc. So your situation lead me to believe maybe it wasn't a real friendship to begin with, and you're best to just move on and make real friendships from here on out with new people. Although i've noticed its alot harder to do it as adults rather than if you had started out as kids.

They weren't really my "best friends", I did have two best friends and three other close friends that I spent almost every single weekend with in high school. The 6 people I mentioned that I met up with were still pretty close, they sat at our lunch table, were in a group chat, and hung out a couple times a month outside of school, plus they were the primary party group.

As far as my two best friends, we had a brutal ending. During the last half of high school we had constant feuds, and afterwords my one best friend eventually moved on, and the other one developed major addiction problems. That was part of the reason why I just went away, but that didn't effect my relationship with the 6 people I mentioned.

It's true though, I guess although they were good friends, I guess they just weren't close enough to be happy to see me three years later.

It's hard to stay friends with people you went to high school with and then you all moved onto college or uni or got a job. It's part of the growing up process, we move on to other things in our lives. I think most of us are lucky to keep a friend or two from high school as we get older.

Yes, when you go your own way and the people you know stay behind, life goes on. I had sort of a similar experience. The thing is, your differences are less apparent when you're still in high school because you're in sort of a holding pattern and nobody can really do what they want yet. But in the years after high school ends, people branch out. If you imagine it like geometry, high school is like the center of a circle. Each of you has a certain degree of difference. But at the center, you can't really see it. Only when you branch out over time (like a radius) does that single degree of difference become obvious.

I wonder if that made sense.

It came to mind because my former boss mismeasured a building once, and in the plan, a two degree angle at a wall intersection ended up being a 22 foot difference at the other end of the building.

I had a different experience, actually. My friend group from high school drifted apart as most of us went to college, but the three who were best friends all either stayed home to work or commuted, so they still saw each other frequently. I was not a commuter, so I was only really around on breaks. Sometimes I saw them, sometimes I didn't, but it was often awkward because they'd gone through so much together and I'd gone through so much without them. Once I was out with a different group of high school friends and saw them, and we barely spoke.

Once I graduated and moved back home permanently, I eased my way back into their group. We had all been pretty tight once, but it took a few dinners before they started inviting me to their non-dinner get-togethers like gaming nights, movies, etc. It took a little longer before they were treating me like one of the group as opposed to an "extra". They literally held an induction for me as their Fourth Musketeer, maybe six months after I started hanging out with them full-time, and now it's like there was never a pause in our friendship. Our stories and experiences have all blended

If these friends mean something to you, maybe try a couple more times to hang out with them if the desire strikes you. If it doesn't get better, just leave it. But they may have not been expecting to see you and not known how to react, especially if your cutting them out was very sudden back in the day.

The club at midnight might have not been the best place to reunite with old friends either, because everyone's there to have a good time, not catch up with their old buddy. The reason I left so soon is because I felt like a loser standing all by myself. It might have been nice too to bring one of my new friends, so if all else failed I at least had someone with me. Maybe I'll try it again, but somethings gotta go differently

The first time I was really able to catch up with my old friends beyond a slightly-awkward dinner was in fact at a less-awkward dinner. I had just been in England for a semester and that made me hot stuff, as it were. I had stories to tell and was able to bring something new and interesting to the group while still keeping it in their realm; instead of going on about my favorite parts, I talked about the stuff I thought would interest them. That somehow got me invited to a baptism, and from there I was back.

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