How does your friendship change as you approach thirty?

Coincidentally, a topic I recently discussed with a number of my closest friends. Two of them had already hit thirty and the rest were all eight or nine and twenty, and one by one we agreed: the friends we have right now in our lives, those are the keepers.

Do you know what I personally think it is, or at least, how I experienced it that makes me believe in this so strongly? My twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh years were the hardest so far. I dealt with a father who was sick, who passed away after a much too short period and you would think that this is the moment when all your friends are there for you. Sure, there are friends who are there for you, but surprisingly enough: many are not. So before you know it, this also becomes a period in which you can immediately distinguish between the genuinely good friends in your life and your temporary friends (just to give them a name).
Now I know that maintaining contact must come from both parties, so I don't want to say that I was a hero in that, but during my hardest mourning period so far, I was quite unreachable. I didn't always respond to messages or calls; I was just temporarily off the radar. Something that a number of people in my life held against me, but yes, everyone deals with their grief differently, and the nice people in my life were patient.
It turns out that this is also completely normal around your thirties. You also find out that you actually don't have much in common with the people you used to hang out with until the early hours, you have (hopefully) been able to discover more about yourself as a person, which has allowed you to discover which qualities you find important in the people around you – a bit of the same story as with finding love.

When you're young, you still have the patience to spend time with the so-called ‘bad friends’ and ‘frenemies’ in your life, but by your late twenties, you're pretty much done with that. Your friends go through a kind of sieve and only the strong survive (nice cliché, I know). I wrote earlier about the three types of friends you have in your life; those for utility, pleasure, and the good. And it is precisely the last one that sticks around after your dirty thirties.

The most special thing ever done for me is something from my very best friend. Inseparable for ten years (we are complete opposites too); this is definitely the friend with whom I will grow old and senile. Last Christmas was exactly a year after my father's passing, a year of firsts I always say, and what did Nikki (that's her name, for everyone interested) do? She sent wish balloons to my mother's house that we could light as a family in the evening. Extremely special for me and my family and especially beautiful when we all lit the wish balloons together.
Do you want to test your friendships? Then definitely check out the big girlfriends checklist from May. How many can you cross off?