We Need to Talk About Age Gap Friendships
Have you ever felt lonelier in a crowded room than when sitting alone? Do your friendships from childhood feel like ancient history with no clear path to forming new connections?
Highly sensitive people and trauma survivors face a particular struggle with loneliness and friendship. This isn't exclusive to HSPs or those healing from difficult childhoods. A loneliness epidemic spreads across modern life. Technology connects us more than ever before. Yet feelings of isolation intensify on both societal and individual levels.
Even introverts remain social creatures at their core. Human interaction isn't optional. People who crave depth and meaningful connection feel this loneliness cut deeper. The ache becomes sharper.
Making Friends as Adults: Why Childhood Friendships Felt Easier
Making friends after childhood schooling journeys becomes exponentially harder. Most people don't realize the forced togetherness of school years created friendships that seemed to happen magically. Proximity did the heavy lifting.
As Americans and people worldwide increasingly work from home, physical and emotional separation grows. The loneliness epidemic continues to unfold. This type of suffering doesn't send you to the emergency room for an MRI or medical testing. Loneliness chips away slowly over time.
Highly sensitive people spend enormous amounts of time inside their own heads. Energy goes toward figuring out needs, processing experiences, managing sensitivity, monitoring bandwidth. Sometimes the antidote to feeling raw and depleted is simple. A good deep conversation with another human being who holds space for authentic humanness can restore balance.
The Loneliness Epidemic and Emotional Isolation
Nothing is wrong with experiencing moments or entire seasons of feeling lonely. As seekers evolve, people get shed like snakes shed skin. Growth means moving forward. The friends from youth don't always travel the entire life journey alongside us. People come and go.
Society makes adult friendships harder to form than perhaps any previous point in human history. This requires more intentional focus than ever before.
Age Gap Friendships: Breaking the Taboo
Highly sensitive people commonly express discomfort with age gap friendships in private conversations. An almost universal taboo exists. Something feels inherently wrong or off about befriending people in other age groups.
Current trends among young people show intense upset about age gaps in romantic relationships. Concerns about predatory dynamics dominate the conversation. This shouldn't paint every age gap relationship with the same brush. Platonic, non-romantic, non-sexual age gap friendships and mentorships operate differently.
Why Age Gap Friendships Matter for Highly Sensitive People
Story remains the primary way humans learn. DNA carries this pattern from the beginning of human time. People sat around fires sharing wisdom. End-of-day gatherings meant simply being together. Stories allow relating and reflecting. Hearing what differs about your personality and life experience matters. Recognizing what feels similar in nuanced ways matters more.
When hearing other people's stories, making sense of your own experience becomes possible.
When I was about 20 years old, I worked as a waitress in a small airport restaurant. I was also a full-time student on scholarship after being a runaway in my senior year of high school. Working sometimes 70 hours a week while maintaining full-time student status left little room for self-care.
Sleep meant nearly passing out at my desk during every class while somehow maintaining good grades. School provided an important anchor. My startle response at this time was nuclear. This common symptom of post-traumatic stress meant dropping trays of food or drinks if someone said hello unexpectedly. Involuntary screaming followed by crying from embarrassment happened regularly.
How Age Gap Friendships Provide Safety and Healing
A woman named Margo in her late fifties or early sixties got hired at the restaurant. I liked her immediately. Margo was kind, warm, friendly, helpful, and motherly with a lovely smile. Working alongside her created feelings of support during busy shifts.
Margo and her husband Bob lived on a houseboat in the lakefront harbor. I had never seen or heard of people living on the water like that. I felt enthralled with this as a lifestyle, especially at their age. These weren't 20-somethings traveling the waterways like some Americans globe trot Europe or Asia. These were people who had raised families, both divorced, who found each other and married. After being together a few years, they sold all belongings to buy a boat and live on the water.
Meeting Bob revealed something powerful. The love between Margo and Bob was palpable. Their kindness, listening skills, senses of humor, the way they played off one another and flowed with ease stood out. Respect for one another showed clearly.
This started informing what I was missing. I felt like a starving, penniless kid drooling at a restaurant window hoping for scraps. Food wasn't the scarce resource. Actual care and kindness felt far away. People being able to truly see me and help me recognize what was good about myself remained out of reach.
I felt different with Margo and Bob. This was profound. With most other people, full-on people pleaser mode activated constantly. Existence felt like being whatever anybody else needed. Years of living this way chips away at personhood.
The feeling of safety with Margo and Bob matched what my grandparents provided from ages six to twelve. When they died at 15 and 17, the rug got ripped out from under my fragile teenage years. Having no stabilization tools during tumultuous times created additional trauma.
I was hypervigilant about not wanting to overstay my welcome or do anything that would cause rejection. Fear of saying or doing the wrong thing dominated. Coming from a family system that blew mistakes out of proportion and used them for emotional beatings created this terror.
The fear of losing this safe feeling felt like it might evaporate in the New Orleans heat. This nutrient felt essential. Missing out wasn't an option.
What Age Gap Friendships Teach About Self-Worth
One day, Margo and Bob invited me and my boyfriend boss to their houseboat. Something felt different immediately. His presence dominated the energy. My safe feelings couldn't and wouldn't show up with him there.
I knew something was deeply wrong about that. I didn't have the first clue how to change it or fix it or show up for myself. I just knew it was there and it felt awful. I felt nervous that he would ruin my relationship with them accidentally or intentionally as he had already isolated me from friends I had when we met.
Abusive controlling types follow a textbook pattern. Isolation happens. Ruining and separating all friendships means the victim loses support as abuse escalates. I didn't know what I didn't know back then.
Bob suddenly said something he had never said during my solo visits. "Hey, come here." I rose from my seat to join Bob. My boyfriend boss stood up and walked in front of me as if Bob had asked for him instead. I did what I had been conditioned to do. I slunk back, already accustomed to him taking over.
Age Gap Friendships and Learning to Trust Your Gut
I noticed Bob's energy was different than when I was the only one there. Intuition hit me swiftly like a kind, loving slap in the face. Notice this. It is important and true. Don't miss it.
The feeling in my gut had always screamed to run far away from this man since moment one of meeting him. Growing up in a home where gut instinct also screamed to run from my mother and stepdad meant I was conditioned to ignore intuition. Surviving childhood required overriding internal warning systems.
What hit me in that moment was clear as day. Like knowing my own name. I heard a voice say: Bob doesn't like him.
I had witnessed so many people fall for this man's charm. He played people like a fiddle. He was a puppet master pulling strings constantly. Watching Bob not fall for it changed everything. Bob saw through attempts at charm and wouldn't buy in. Bob refused to let himself be charmed.
Bob didn't like my boyfriend because Bob, a man in his sixties who had always been good to women, good to his ex-wife, and a good dad to daughters who adored him, could see mistreatment. Bob recognized this wasn't the sort of man who ever could or would want to treat women well.
Bob stopped him in his tracks. "No. I asked for her. I don't want you driving my houseboat." A little bit of attitude came through. My boyfriend boss protested and tried to put me down, realizing Bob was offering driving privileges specifically and directly to me, not him.
Bob reiterated. "Yeah, man, I don't want you driving my house. But I do want her to drive it." Bob looked at him steadily. What are you gonna do? Fight me? Have a little hissy fit?
I watched this like I was watching a play at the theater. I thought I might throw up or pass out because I felt exhilarated. I felt seen, even protected by a father figure after being abandoned by one and abused by another. My stomach also dropped in fear that I would pay for this later.
I glanced over at Margo's face. The way Margo looked at me was motherly love. I knew, like I knew the sun comes up in the morning, that Margo and Bob had talked about this situation. They knew my boyfriend was bad for me. They somehow knew I had worth when I didn't know it myself.
My boyfriend boss sat like a punished little boy unused to hearing no or having a stronger man at the helm of both the boat and the situation.
Why Highly Sensitive People Need Age Gap Friendships
Margo and Bob stayed in the lakefront harbor for about six to eight months. Not a long time in the course of a life. Twenty-five years later, the impact of that friendship remains profound.
I couldn't have gotten this type of support from someone my age. Peers at 20 lacked the life experience, wisdom, and stability to offer what Margo and Bob provided. American culture pushes a narrative about making friends at ages eight, nine, ten, twelve, fifteen and keeping those friends forever. Many people feel broken if this doesn't happen.
With Margo and Bob, deep conversations about the abuse I was enduring never happened. They didn't ask. They didn't pry. They didn't probe. They didn't look funny at my startle responses or sudden bursts of tears with no ability to explain why.
They were simply kind to me. Holding space, offering hugs, regulating my nervous system before nervous system regulation became a known concept. They saw worth and positive aspects of me when I couldn't see those things for myself or in myself.
Age Gap Friendships as Emotional Strength Training
The moment when Bob let me take the helm of his houseboat as it moved through water showed something critical. My boyfriend boss could be told no. Giving in didn't have to happen. What might have been a fun moment for Bob became a profound lesson for me.
I was in great need. I needed someone to show me, not tell me. Not kiss my ass or blow smoke. Just subtly show me: You're a good person. You're trustworthy. You are worthwhile. Being with you is easy. We like being with you.
Movies and TV make it seem like survivors need saviors arriving on white horses to provide apartments, cars, and tuition. This might happen occasionally. I believe that no white knights exist. We have to save ourselves even when this feels deeply unfair.
You don't have to do it alone. Eight billion people exist on this planet. People show up for a minute or a moment and give you nuggets of what you need. This helps movement into the next season, the next stage, the next evolution of who you are and who you want to be.
This friendship with Margo and Bob functioned like B12 shots for my soul. Long after they set sail to find their next harbor, I kept and still keep their kindness as part of me. This early age gap friendship has helped me age.
Instead of resisting aging or fearing changing looks, changing places in society, changing opportunities, different seasons, I have looked forward to being able to get older. The gift of aging means paying forward what they gave me to any younger people who cross my path. Who need it or want it or will let me give it.
Being open about what younger people give back to me matters equally. Of the precious few people I consider soul level aligned spiritual gifts of friendship, one is 25 years older than me, another 17, another 29 years older. Sometimes I've been a motherly force for them.
The phrase "age is just a number" exists for a reason. Living this truth means understanding what it actually means. I'm adding younger friends to my life increasingly. Some a decade or more younger. Some still kids. I think in some ways this may be the modern embodiment of "it takes a village."
Why Age Gap Friendships Combat the Loneliness Epidemic
It takes a village to get through this life, not just to raise a child. If you feel lonely for deep connections, for more relationships, consider opening yourself to this world filled with 8 billion people. Being open to connecting with aligned hearts, minds, and souls matters regardless of age.
Ageism gets discussed almost exclusively in terms of workforce laws and discrimination. This makes sense for legal protections. Broadening the concept to friendships deserves attention. Stop judging or blocking or making anything wrong with age gap platonic relationships.
Consider these questions:
Do you harbor ageist ideas about friendship without realizing it?
Is receiving different things from different relationships acceptable?
Can friendships include emotional or family dynamic role models?
What's wrong with having elements of mentorship within friendships?
Can you love, respect, and admire how friends live and love regardless of age?
Age Gap Friendships for Highly Sensitive People: Moving Forward
Why does the age gap conversation focus almost exclusively on abuse, power, and control? Where is the other side of this relational coin in collective and cultural conversation? Where are the positive stories about age gap friendships?
Highly sensitive people can start new conversations. Old souls connecting across generations. Friendships that span ages. Age allies supporting each other. These connections deserve recognition and celebration.
As seekers who practice emotional strength training, highly sensitive people get to build the very boundaries and peace that supports thriving. This one precious life offers possibilities. Opening to not just giving but also receiving friendship can create belonging, wholeness, and worth.
When you take care of your inner child, you reparent. You re-mother. You re-father. You nurture. Sometimes you need to say no. You also get to befriend your inner child.
In healthy family dynamics, when children reach 25, 30, 35, adult children and parents become friends while maintaining parent-child bonds.
Age gap friendships for highly sensitive people offer nutrients your soul desperately needs. These connections combat the loneliness epidemic through lived experience, not just theory. Margo and Bob proved this 25 years ago on a houseboat in New Orleans. Their gift continues giving today.
Episode Tags
- ADD 1
- Abuse 16
- Alcohol 3
- Anger 10
- Archetypes 1
- Bullying 6
- Childhood 37
- Codependency 10
- Covid 4
- Crystal Catalina 4
- Depression 15
- Detachment 2
- Disassociation 4
- Emotions 75
- Existentialism 2
- Faith 1
- Family 28
- Fatigue 4
- Focus 3
- Gratitude 11
- Grief 13
- Guilt 2
- Healers 7
- Healing 52
- High Sensation 4
- Hope 1
- Hypervigilance 7
- Introverts 6
- Lonliness 9
- Love 3
- Manifesting 5
- Manipulation 20
- Masculinity 1
- Men 1
- Mindfulness 38
- Money 10
- Music 3
- Nutrition 2
- Overthinking 8
- PTSD 13
- Parenting 12
- People Pleasing 9
- Perfectionism 6
- Pets 4
- Relationships 20
- Resiliency 14
- Sadness 1
- Self Esteem 19
- Self Love 11
- Self Respect 1
Episode Tags
- ADD 1
- Abuse 16
- Alcohol 3
- Anger 10
- Archetypes 1
- Bullying 6
- Childhood 37
- Codependency 10
- Covid 4
- Crystal Catalina 4
- Depression 15
- Detachment 2
- Disassociation 4
- Emotions 75
- Existentialism 2
- Faith 1
- Family 28
- Fatigue 4
- Focus 3
- Gratitude 11
- Grief 13
- Guilt 2
- Healers 7
- Healing 52
- High Sensation 4
- Hope 1
- Hypervigilance 7
- Introverts 6
- Lonliness 9
- Love 3
- Manifesting 5
- Manipulation 20
- Masculinity 1
- Men 1
- Mindfulness 38
- Money 10
- Music 3
- Nutrition 2
- Overthinking 8
- PTSD 13
- Parenting 12
- People Pleasing 9
- Perfectionism 6
- Pets 4
- Relationships 20
- Resiliency 14
- Sadness 1
- Self Esteem 19
- Self Love 11
- Self Respect 1
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