June 15, 2025 • 13 mins
In this episode of IN THE KNOW with Tony Reeves, we dive into the quiet truth of adult friendships—how they evolve, why they thin out, and what makes the few that remain even more powerful. Tony explores the emotional and practical changes in how we bond after 40, offering personal stories, relatable insights, and a reminder that deeper often means fewer. Whether you’re reconnecting with old friends or learning to accept that some ties naturally fade, this episode will hit home.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
And in the good evening, everyone in to Tony Reeves,
Tony Reeve, Tony Reeves by it following the news, that's
the great shape or no sortage of things to talk about.
This is a reality. We simply have to let me read,
(00:24):
let me Reeve, let me go ahead and get started. Hey, hey, hey,
hey everyone, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome back, welcome back, Welcome
back to another edition of in the Know with Tony Reeves.
I am Tony Reeves. So let's just go ahead and
get this thing rocking and rolling. So I want to
talk to you a little bit today about why friendships
(00:47):
tend to shift after you turn forty. And for those
of you who are probably sitting here going, oh my gosh,
what do you mean by that, I said, well, I
want you to follow along with me, because I'm not
trying to trying to tell you that there's a special
category which you kind of fall into. But when you
hit the age of forty, your mindset about friendship takes
(01:09):
on a different term. And let me tell you what
I'm talking about. How many times have you ever heard
somebody say I'm not trying to make new friends and
I mean and they mean it sometimes if you hear that,
it may put you in some kind of framework of saying, oh,
this person is being closed off, they're ignoring people, they
don't want to meet new people, and so forth. No, no,
you have to take other things in consideration, and let
(01:31):
me tell you what those other things kind of are.
So let's kind of start kind of and back this up,
because the reality is is that I'm often enamored when
I hear people say, oh, I've known this person since
movie in third grade and everything like that. Yeah, you
are children, and as you were children, and you're going
through various phases of your life. How your dynamics of
how you interact with people and what's important to you
(01:53):
tend to change. So we're going to start our foundational
portion are basically friendships set start to develop posts high school.
Now they can include those friends of yours from high
school that have managed to transition into post high school
life and still remain your friends. But for the most part,
we're going to focus on eighteen plus and so people
(02:14):
who are your friends from that particular point, college age
and early adult friends really feel like you're anchors now
if you stop and you think about it, now, if
you're in your forties or you're approaching your forties, and
the friends that you have you can trace back to
when you were eighteen, nineteen twenty, in the early years
(02:35):
right after high school, or maybe even those college years.
These are what I would call your foundational friends. These
aren't people, you know, we've heard the phrase before, some
people in your life for a reason, some people in
your life for a season. The people who are still
in your life after forty, that you've known since back
when the eight when you were eighteen and your early eighteen,
(02:56):
your late teens and early twenties. These are the people
who have been in your life life for a reason.
They're not just somebody who you've just met or hung
out with, or you were cool with for a period
of time after you graduated and so forth, and then
you've kind of faded off. These are people who have
been with you for the long haul. And it's important
to understand what the long haul looks like. Think about it.
(03:17):
If you're forty and you're looking backwards, we're talking now
about roughly two decades of experiences that you've had with
your friends. Think about it for a second, and that
time we've talked about marriage. We're talking about kids, We're
talking about jobs, we're talking about crisis, we're talking about healthcare,
(03:38):
We're talking about a myriad of different things that you've
gone through with these friends who are a part of
your life, and it's important to understand that when you're
going through these parts of your life, each one of
these particular milestones changes and reaffirms the dynamic of your friendship.
Think about it when you get married. Yes, it's great
(04:02):
to send out invitations to all these people and so forth,
but think about those core people you definitely want to
be there. Those people are are the people who mean
the most to you. Those are the people who are
gonna probably be in your wedding party. Those are the
people who are gonna be ushers. These are the people
that are going to be planning your bridle showers or
your bachelor parties. These people occupy a particular space in
(04:22):
your life. When you have kids, it's the way you
have the relationship with your friends. These are the people
who you may make as your god parents. These are
the people that you basically will say that's your aunt
and uncle, even though they're not related to you. Because
you are more than just some person who's passing through
the night. These are the people who you've had relationships
with that you think it's important that your children have
(04:44):
relationships with, even things like jobs. When you're going through
your transition of different experiences, whether it be jobs or
further graduate education, whether it be transitioning too new opportunities
and so forth, you're sharing those with a set group
of people people not all the people that used to
hang out with back in the day, but with the
particular people whose opinions you value. And let's not even
(05:08):
forget about the various crisises that you experienced in your life.
I've often told people that if you want to see
who your real friends are, see who is around and
who are there for you, and who you turn to
when you were in the middle of a health scare
or a crisis. And these are people. A lot of
times they show up and they don't necessarily need you
(05:28):
to call them in order to show up. They're there
and they literally rise up even when you don't have to.
Let me give you a good example of that. When
I had a health scare with my wife. It was
a time period where I was running my own business.
I was trying to take care of the household. I
was trying to take care of her, and I literally
was running myself, Ragget. I didn't realize I was running myself, Ragget,
(05:51):
but I really was. And so one of my close
friends mailed me a gift card to PF Chanin's. And
so when I got the card, it took me back.
So I called her. Now we like she knew about
the health crisis. She wasn't bothering me, she wasn't calling me,
she wasn't texting me. She just mailed me this card.
And so I asked her, I said, why am I
getting this card? And she said, to be very honest,
(06:12):
because I know you're not eating, she said. She didn't
say just in case you're not eating, She said just
in case you want to take you WITHY Like, no, no,
she said, I know you're not eating. How does she
know that? But she known me for almost twenty years,
so she knew the kind of person I was. She
knew how I would respond to the crisis that I
was dealing with, And so she didn't need to contact
(06:35):
me to validate that I wasn't eating. She didn't need
to come see me to see I wasn't eating. She
knew based on my personality in that long twenty year relationship,
the kind of person I am that en faced with
that adversity, I wasn't eating, and she was right. I
didn't even realize that I had lost like ten pounds,
not because I was consciously not easy. It's just that
(06:56):
I was prioritizing everything else and eating was not ay.
And that's how your true friends rise up, because the
people who know you, who have invested in your relationship,
the various forms of it, whether it be you see
each other every day or whether you contact each other
every now and then, the people who are going to
(07:17):
be a part of your life, and who are actively
a part of your life, and who are actively a
part of the changing, ever changing dynamics of your life
will still keep engaging you in different ways. And those
things are important. But another thing you also need to
keep in mind, and this is something that a lot
of times people tend to get a little upset with,
is that even though you have a circle of friends,
(07:41):
it tends to get smaller and it tends to get tighter.
But that's okay. You know, if you had a crew
of thirty to forty people that used to run with
and then over time that thirty to forty people don't
engage you as much, but there's like five or six
people that you talk to regularly. And regular can be
defined as in anything. It can be once a month,
(08:02):
once if a couple of months, whatever the case may be.
Even though the time, the geography, or even obligations that
you have may change, the dynamics of your relationship has
been built upon based on the foundation that you've established
from years ago. So what happens is that you don't
(08:22):
freak out. You don't freak out if you haven't heard
from them, you don't freak out if you don't see them,
you don't freak out if they have things going on
and you got things going on. And what happens is
that that is not just on somebody that you've met
and hang out with. Every couple of you know that
you've met over a couple of months and you've established
for less than a year. This is a twenty year
(08:43):
dynamic relationship that you have developed over time. And that,
my friends, is important because what ends up happening is
that you can pick up where you left off and
that there's never a break because you've established that relationship
from a foundational standpoint, and that's the thing that's important.
(09:03):
So then people then ask, well, if that's the case,
can you make friends after your forty But yeah, you can.
But here's the kicker. You have to understand the friendships
that you make after forty take on a different meaning.
You don't waste your time with people you know that. Listen,
the people that you have in your life who have
(09:24):
been a part of your life, that's your people. They
have put in You've put in the trenches, trials and
tribulations in terms of being with them. So you're not
trying to say we're going to start from that standpoint,
we need to go on some road trips, we need
to go party. No, when you establish new relationships with people,
you meet them where you find them. You meet them
(09:45):
where they are. So if you're poll over forty, you
meet them when they've probably been divorced, You meet them
because they have some adult kids. You meet them that
they've changed careers, but you don't base them or compare
them to your foundational thing friends that you've had before.
And don't get me wrong, they may have been actually
become those types of friends over time. Over time, you
spend five, ten years, fifteen years. Here you are, you know,
(10:07):
in your mid fifties, and you're still rolling with the
person you met in your early forties. But what happens
is that you use the same standard that you apply
to your other foundational friends to determine whether the people
you're dealing with are here for a reason or just
for a season, and so you move that way accordingly.
And so it's important to understand that it's really more
(10:29):
about a mindset at that particular point in time, because
when you're in your early formative years, everybody is pretty
much running in the same space as doing the same things.
So we use the phrase friends loosely. But what happens
is that once you get to a particular age, especially
over the age of forty, and you've been through a
few things. You've had a few health scares, you've had
some kids, you've had relationships, you've had all these things,
(10:50):
and you've gone through this with the people in your
life together, you look at things through a very different lens,
and so it's important to recognize that. And so as
you are now heading into this next portion of your
life and you were starting to realize that you're transitioning
(11:13):
to this next portion of your life. What happens is
that where your friends need you and how you engage
becomes more important to you. I'm in my forties now,
so what happens is that a lot of my friends
who I'm really close with have kids. So it's not
uncommon for my friends to say, I need you to
talk to my kids. Like one of my good fraternity brothers,
(11:35):
who I've known since nineteen ninety reached out to me.
His son was in His son is in college. He
wanted to talk to me about going to law school
and being an officer. Not a problem, got on the phone,
gave him a call. Got another friend of mine who
I've known since undergrad as well. We've known each other
for thirty something years. His daughter lives literally an hour
and a half away, and she needed to help moving.
(11:56):
And so guess what, my wife and I and his
wife went over the help to move. Not because you know,
we just were committed to doing that as good people, No,
because I had a relationship with him, we have I
have a relationship with both of them that I've known
for all this time period, and that was I knew
me helping his daughter was important to him. That's the
(12:18):
dynamics of the relationship we have, and that's the dynamics
that you're gonna have as you're going forward. So why
is it important for you to understand this? It's important
because I want you to realize that we often use
phrases about ride or die. Trust me when I say
your foundational friends, the people who've been with you for
twenty years, through thick and stand through all your trials
(12:39):
and tribulations, that's your ride or die. You need to
ask yourself who are those people? Who are they to you?
What does the dynamics of your relationship and how has
that relationship managed to survive and thrive over this period
of time, Because those are the people that you're gonna
view as friends, and that will be the lens that
you look at when you're trying to establish new Recognize
(13:01):
this in the grandest scheme of things. I need you
all to do this for me. If you get a chance,
reach out to those foundational friends, let them know that
you're glad they're there. I'm gonna be the first one
to tell you I don't do that enough, But I
want you not to follow my bad example. Trust me,
you can make new friends after forty, but after forty
you start to realize the foundation for by which you
determine as a friend changes, and that's okay. Just know
(13:25):
that's what it means for you going forward. Thanks a
lot everybody for tuning in. As always, this is Tony
Reeves and my favorite question of the day to you
is are you ready for the Anthony Reeves experience?
And in the good evening, everyone in to Tony Reeves,
Tony Reeve, Tony Reeves by it following the news, that's
the great shape or no sortage of things to talk about.
This is a reality. We simply have to let me read,
(00:24):
let me Reeve, let me go ahead and get started. Hey, hey, hey,
hey everyone, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome back, welcome back, Welcome
back to another edition of in the Know with Tony Reeves.
I am Tony Reeves. So let's just go ahead and
get this thing rocking and rolling. So I want to
talk to you a little bit today about why friendships
(00:47):
tend to shift after you turn forty. And for those
of you who are probably sitting here going, oh my gosh,
what do you mean by that, I said, well, I
want you to follow along with me, because I'm not
trying to trying to tell you that there's a special
category which you kind of fall into. But when you
hit the age of forty, your mindset about friendship takes
(01:09):
on a different term. And let me tell you what
I'm talking about. How many times have you ever heard
somebody say I'm not trying to make new friends and
I mean and they mean it sometimes if you hear that,
it may put you in some kind of framework of saying, oh,
this person is being closed off, they're ignoring people, they
don't want to meet new people, and so forth. No, no,
you have to take other things in consideration, and let
(01:31):
me tell you what those other things kind of are.
So let's kind of start kind of and back this up,
because the reality is is that I'm often enamored when
I hear people say, oh, I've known this person since
movie in third grade and everything like that. Yeah, you
are children, and as you were children, and you're going
through various phases of your life. How your dynamics of
how you interact with people and what's important to you
(01:53):
tend to change. So we're going to start our foundational
portion are basically friendships set start to develop posts high school.
Now they can include those friends of yours from high
school that have managed to transition into post high school
life and still remain your friends. But for the most part,
we're going to focus on eighteen plus and so people
(02:14):
who are your friends from that particular point, college age
and early adult friends really feel like you're anchors now
if you stop and you think about it, now, if
you're in your forties or you're approaching your forties, and
the friends that you have you can trace back to
when you were eighteen, nineteen twenty, in the early years
(02:35):
right after high school, or maybe even those college years.
These are what I would call your foundational friends. These
aren't people, you know, we've heard the phrase before, some
people in your life for a reason, some people in
your life for a season. The people who are still
in your life after forty, that you've known since back
when the eight when you were eighteen and your early eighteen,
(02:56):
your late teens and early twenties. These are the people
who have been in your life life for a reason.
They're not just somebody who you've just met or hung
out with, or you were cool with for a period
of time after you graduated and so forth, and then
you've kind of faded off. These are people who have
been with you for the long haul. And it's important
to understand what the long haul looks like. Think about it.
(03:17):
If you're forty and you're looking backwards, we're talking now
about roughly two decades of experiences that you've had with
your friends. Think about it for a second, and that
time we've talked about marriage. We're talking about kids, We're
talking about jobs, we're talking about crisis, we're talking about healthcare,
(03:38):
We're talking about a myriad of different things that you've
gone through with these friends who are a part of
your life, and it's important to understand that when you're
going through these parts of your life, each one of
these particular milestones changes and reaffirms the dynamic of your friendship.
Think about it when you get married. Yes, it's great
(04:02):
to send out invitations to all these people and so forth,
but think about those core people you definitely want to
be there. Those people are are the people who mean
the most to you. Those are the people who are
gonna probably be in your wedding party. Those are the
people who are gonna be ushers. These are the people
that are going to be planning your bridle showers or
your bachelor parties. These people occupy a particular space in
(04:22):
your life. When you have kids, it's the way you
have the relationship with your friends. These are the people
who you may make as your god parents. These are
the people that you basically will say that's your aunt
and uncle, even though they're not related to you. Because
you are more than just some person who's passing through
the night. These are the people who you've had relationships
with that you think it's important that your children have
(04:44):
relationships with, even things like jobs. When you're going through
your transition of different experiences, whether it be jobs or
further graduate education, whether it be transitioning too new opportunities
and so forth, you're sharing those with a set group
of people people not all the people that used to
hang out with back in the day, but with the
particular people whose opinions you value. And let's not even
(05:08):
forget about the various crisises that you experienced in your life.
I've often told people that if you want to see
who your real friends are, see who is around and
who are there for you, and who you turn to
when you were in the middle of a health scare
or a crisis. And these are people. A lot of
times they show up and they don't necessarily need you
(05:28):
to call them in order to show up. They're there
and they literally rise up even when you don't have to.
Let me give you a good example of that. When
I had a health scare with my wife. It was
a time period where I was running my own business.
I was trying to take care of the household. I
was trying to take care of her, and I literally
was running myself, Ragget. I didn't realize I was running myself, Ragget,
(05:51):
but I really was. And so one of my close
friends mailed me a gift card to PF Chanin's. And
so when I got the card, it took me back.
So I called her. Now we like she knew about
the health crisis. She wasn't bothering me, she wasn't calling me,
she wasn't texting me. She just mailed me this card.
And so I asked her, I said, why am I
getting this card? And she said, to be very honest,
(06:12):
because I know you're not eating, she said. She didn't
say just in case you're not eating, She said just
in case you want to take you WITHY Like, no, no,
she said, I know you're not eating. How does she
know that? But she known me for almost twenty years,
so she knew the kind of person I was. She
knew how I would respond to the crisis that I
was dealing with, And so she didn't need to contact
(06:35):
me to validate that I wasn't eating. She didn't need
to come see me to see I wasn't eating. She
knew based on my personality in that long twenty year relationship,
the kind of person I am that en faced with
that adversity, I wasn't eating, and she was right. I
didn't even realize that I had lost like ten pounds,
not because I was consciously not easy. It's just that
(06:56):
I was prioritizing everything else and eating was not ay.
And that's how your true friends rise up, because the
people who know you, who have invested in your relationship,
the various forms of it, whether it be you see
each other every day or whether you contact each other
every now and then, the people who are going to
(07:17):
be a part of your life, and who are actively
a part of your life, and who are actively a
part of the changing, ever changing dynamics of your life
will still keep engaging you in different ways. And those
things are important. But another thing you also need to
keep in mind, and this is something that a lot
of times people tend to get a little upset with,
is that even though you have a circle of friends,
(07:41):
it tends to get smaller and it tends to get tighter.
But that's okay. You know, if you had a crew
of thirty to forty people that used to run with
and then over time that thirty to forty people don't
engage you as much, but there's like five or six
people that you talk to regularly. And regular can be
defined as in anything. It can be once a month,
(08:02):
once if a couple of months, whatever the case may be.
Even though the time, the geography, or even obligations that
you have may change, the dynamics of your relationship has
been built upon based on the foundation that you've established
from years ago. So what happens is that you don't
(08:22):
freak out. You don't freak out if you haven't heard
from them, you don't freak out if you don't see them,
you don't freak out if they have things going on
and you got things going on. And what happens is
that that is not just on somebody that you've met
and hang out with. Every couple of you know that
you've met over a couple of months and you've established
for less than a year. This is a twenty year
(08:43):
dynamic relationship that you have developed over time. And that,
my friends, is important because what ends up happening is
that you can pick up where you left off and
that there's never a break because you've established that relationship
from a foundational standpoint, and that's the thing that's important.
(09:03):
So then people then ask, well, if that's the case,
can you make friends after your forty But yeah, you can.
But here's the kicker. You have to understand the friendships
that you make after forty take on a different meaning.
You don't waste your time with people you know that. Listen,
the people that you have in your life who have
(09:24):
been a part of your life, that's your people. They
have put in You've put in the trenches, trials and
tribulations in terms of being with them. So you're not
trying to say we're going to start from that standpoint,
we need to go on some road trips, we need
to go party. No, when you establish new relationships with people,
you meet them where you find them. You meet them
(09:45):
where they are. So if you're poll over forty, you
meet them when they've probably been divorced, You meet them
because they have some adult kids. You meet them that
they've changed careers, but you don't base them or compare
them to your foundational thing friends that you've had before.
And don't get me wrong, they may have been actually
become those types of friends over time. Over time, you
spend five, ten years, fifteen years. Here you are, you know,
(10:07):
in your mid fifties, and you're still rolling with the
person you met in your early forties. But what happens
is that you use the same standard that you apply
to your other foundational friends to determine whether the people
you're dealing with are here for a reason or just
for a season, and so you move that way accordingly.
And so it's important to understand that it's really more
(10:29):
about a mindset at that particular point in time, because
when you're in your early formative years, everybody is pretty
much running in the same space as doing the same things.
So we use the phrase friends loosely. But what happens
is that once you get to a particular age, especially
over the age of forty, and you've been through a
few things. You've had a few health scares, you've had
some kids, you've had relationships, you've had all these things,
(10:50):
and you've gone through this with the people in your
life together, you look at things through a very different lens,
and so it's important to recognize that. And so as
you are now heading into this next portion of your
life and you were starting to realize that you're transitioning
(11:13):
to this next portion of your life. What happens is
that where your friends need you and how you engage
becomes more important to you. I'm in my forties now,
so what happens is that a lot of my friends
who I'm really close with have kids. So it's not
uncommon for my friends to say, I need you to
talk to my kids. Like one of my good fraternity brothers,
(11:35):
who I've known since nineteen ninety reached out to me.
His son was in His son is in college. He
wanted to talk to me about going to law school
and being an officer. Not a problem, got on the phone,
gave him a call. Got another friend of mine who
I've known since undergrad as well. We've known each other
for thirty something years. His daughter lives literally an hour
and a half away, and she needed to help moving.
(11:56):
And so guess what, my wife and I and his
wife went over the help to move. Not because you know,
we just were committed to doing that as good people, No,
because I had a relationship with him, we have I
have a relationship with both of them that I've known
for all this time period, and that was I knew
me helping his daughter was important to him. That's the
(12:18):
dynamics of the relationship we have, and that's the dynamics
that you're gonna have as you're going forward. So why
is it important for you to understand this? It's important
because I want you to realize that we often use
phrases about ride or die. Trust me when I say
your foundational friends, the people who've been with you for
twenty years, through thick and stand through all your trials
(12:39):
and tribulations, that's your ride or die. You need to
ask yourself who are those people? Who are they to you?
What does the dynamics of your relationship and how has
that relationship managed to survive and thrive over this period
of time, Because those are the people that you're gonna
view as friends, and that will be the lens that
you look at when you're trying to establish new Recognize
(13:01):
this in the grandest scheme of things. I need you
all to do this for me. If you get a chance,
reach out to those foundational friends, let them know that
you're glad they're there. I'm gonna be the first one
to tell you I don't do that enough, But I
want you not to follow my bad example. Trust me,
you can make new friends after forty, but after forty
you start to realize the foundation for by which you
determine as a friend changes, and that's okay. Just know
(13:25):
that's what it means for you going forward. Thanks a
lot everybody for tuning in. As always, this is Tony
Reeves and my favorite question of the day to you
is are you ready for the Anthony Reeves experience?
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.