I was on the phone with a friend of mine–not a close friend, but a good friend still. We call just a few times a year. He does not do social media; he does not like Skype. So the old fashioned phone it is. He even has a landline. He is an academic, and well-known in his field. He was also extremely fortunate to live in the same area since he was a young child. As a result, he has several close friends, friendships that span decades. They go out to the theatre or the movies. They host dinners at each others' houses. As I was talking to him about this, I noticed how I envied him. Such friendships are clearly still an ideal of human sociality. Friends, the Big Bang Theory, and other shows portray people who are well-embedded in a network of close friendships.
Moving around multiple times, it is hard to maintain close friendships.
Raphael, self-portrait with a friend
When discussing this topic on social media (which, for all its ills, is one of the things that allows me to keep in touch with friends) many of my academic friends mentioned similar experiences, such as "My spouse is my only close friend".
This article was originally published in 2012, but recently republished, because "the topic is timeless." Accordingly, it becomes harder to make friends as one gets older, in ones thirties, forties, and beyond. The reasons for why are complex–being more picky, more busy. But it is sad all the same, and perhaps an under-appreciated negative aspect of the precarity of the job market.
Given how awful the precarity of the academic job market is (see here for a recent piece that describes this in gut-wrenching detail), friendship would not seem to be high on the priority list. Yet, friends mean a support network for practical as well as emotional matters. It is a source of self-worth and dignity, as eloquently described by philosophers such as Aristotle, Confucius and Augustine. Augustine wrote about his personal friends at length, evidently a source of delight, and sometimes frustration to him. Being denied friends is thus being denied a vital, perhaps even philosophical, part of the human experience.
We can go into tips and suggestions on how to mitigate this problem. Perhaps those of us without close friends aren't trying hard enough. But given that many close friendships are forged, without much effort on our part, in our childhood and twenties, it is a result of how the academic labor market is structured. Seeing close friendships unravel is yet another price many of us have to pay.
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