A Game of Cat And Mouse, Also Known As Adult Friendship

Adulthood is hard.

Adult friendships are even harder.

There are those ride-or-die friends who feel effortless, the ones you automatically include in the head count for your barbecue or birthday party because duh, they’ll be there by default.

There are the old friends, the ones whose couch (or, if they’re living that fancy life, guest bedroom) you know you can crash on without question when you’re in their city or hit up to go do weird hometown stuff when you’re back in town for the holidays.

Then there are the… “adult” friends.

The main problem with adult friends is that they’re so diverse. It could be the cool chick who works in accounting or the 40-something woman you kind of know from yoga class or your significant other’s coworker.

But what are they into? Will it be weird if you invite them to drink beers and watch football and they show up with a nice bottle of wine and their baby?

What kind of people are they? Can you talk about the Rob Kardashian-Blac Chyna feud or how big of an idiot Trump is without offending them?

And most importantly, are they okay with your out-of-control-bulldozer of a dog trying to sumo wrestle them to the ground each time he sees them?

These are the questions of adult friendship.

Also, why is it so hard to commit?

In what world does it take 24 hours to respond to a text suggesting a lunch date? And who am I to question it being that 50% of the time (okay, more) I’m the one taking 24 hours to respond?

It’s like a game of cat-and-mouse in which you’re both the cat and the mouse and neither of you is putting all that much effort into it.

I recently met up with an old friend who was in New York for work (shoutout to Kaitie, who obviously suffers from none of the aforementioned commitment problems). We got to talking about this very subject, and she had a great piece of advice for navigating the often-confusing world of adult friendships.

She told me, you don’t have to be best friends with a person just because you enjoy their company, and you don’t have to see a person all the time to maintain a friendship. It’s easier if you put adult friends into categories, she suggested.

You have your work friends that you chat with in the office and grab the occasional happy hour.

You have your brunch friends who are great afternoon companions but rarely make it out after the sun goes down.

You have your party friends for the nights (dwindling in number as they may be) when you feel like staying out past 10 p.m.

You have your hobby friends with whom you share mutual interests, like pilates or The Bachelor or drinking wine while petting your cats, and you get together to do those things.

And so on. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that. It feels like it should be, and I think that’s where I get tripped up, but it doesn’t have to be.

So I’m taking her advice and taking applications for work friends, brunch friends, party friends and get-trampled-by-each-other’s-dog friends in New York City.

Do you fit any of the criteria? Get at me. I might text you back. At the very least, you’ll eventually get a “sorry for the delayed response.”