Friends are essential to our health and happiness, and even affect how long we live. But how do you keep a relationship alive when you are living in different places and can barely make time for yourself?
Trish and Mick started chatting about music on a staircase in 1970, when Trish and her flatmates (“strange, slightly hippy people,” Mick laughs) were trying to stop a neighbour’s party guests, including Mick, from getting into their flat. Julia and Susan found friendship when they became neighbours at the age of seven. Susan’s parents disapproved of Julia’s single mother’s lifestyle and forbade them to meet: “We developed a system of sound signals, found a place to hide notes to each other and met secretly in the local park,” Susan says. Ian and Roger bicker gently over which was the first Nottingham gig where they shared a bill in 1965, but say that Roger persuaded their bands (Tony D and the Shakeouts for Ian; The Sons of Adam for Roger) to jam together on stage.
Friendships start with these accidents – choosing a locker at school, who’s in the next room in your hall of residence, or attending the same protest – but staying friends over a lifetime can’t be accidental. “Friendships are a voluntary type of relationship,” says Mahzad Hojjat, a professor of psychology and friendship researcher at the University of Massachusetts–Dartmouth. “In some ways they are the weakest tie, because you could just disconnect.” What stops friends from doing this? As new research shows that socialising helps people to live longer, I spoke to friendship lifers who have stayed close over decades of good and bad times and everything in between. Are there any secrets, and do they have advice for the rest of us?
