10 Things To Thank Your Grown Up Best Friends For

Grown up best friends function at an entirely different level of companionship. Between jobs and relationships and Tinder dates and your bi-yearly existential crises, there is a lot to balance and only a little free time to devote to others. Long gone are the old days of friendships blossoming simply because you have the same miserable professor or play on the same street every day. Those days were fun — but friendships as a grown up are much more intense.

You have to take part in the big stuff. The Big Stuff. The weddings and kids and job losses and degrees and all the failures in between. There's a lot to handle, and it's something we're often forget to really be grateful for — sometimes we're so distracted by our own milestones and ups and downs that we take for granted that are friends are letting us be every bit a part of theirs, too. Grown-up friendships take a lot more maintenance, but they also reap the greatest rewards. Here are all the things to thank your grown up BFFs for.

For Agreeing (However Masochistically) To The Ins And Outs Of Your Wedding Shenanigans, No Matter How Much You Swore You "Weren't Into That Stuff"

When the day comes and you realize you need matching taffeta and Pinterest-designed name cards and four dozen little glass jars for a candy table at the reception, your grown up best friends are the ones who are going to sacrifice their lives and help you.

For Making Time, Even Though Everyone's Busy

Even if "time" is just a phone call, or a "thinking of you" text here and there. Even if it's plans to visit in two months, or the knowledge that you'll always have their "like" and comment on whatever you post — it's all these little things that build your relationship, even if it can't be an everyday ordeal.

For Seeing You Through The Big Things

They're the ones who are there at parents' funerals and children's births and all the after-work wine gush sessions in between.

For Listening To The Same Problems For Years On Years On Years

If any of your friends have carried over from high school or college into your true grown up friends, they've probably had to listen to you complain, seek advice and be indecisive about the exact same two things, and yet, after all these years, they haven't seemed to grow tired of listening (bless them).

For Surviving The Early Adulthood Ritualistic Friend Purge

You know it. I know it. It's the time after which we stop being bound to people by proximity and convenience and start de-friending the people who annoy us and reaching out to the people who we had to keep a game face on for to keep the peace. In early adulthood, the friendships that never really were start to dissolve for good (and it's a wonder that they made it through that — kudos).

For Understanding That You Can't Always Talk Every Day, And That's OK

Grown up best friends have this magic superpower, and it's just understanding that despite not being able to be together incessantly, you don't love each other any less. In fact, it's more about the people who are there for the things that matter and can prioritize them over the things that don't that get you through it all.

For Seeing You Through THe Uncertainty

That's the one word that defines your young adulthood, though of course, nobody says it as much as we all feel it: uncertain. Of whether or not we're doing the right things, living in the right cities, dating the right people, and so on. The people who stand by you through six moves and four career changes and a dozen and four terrible first dates until you finally figured it out — one of the only things more unsettling than your own uncertainty is other people's, and you should thank the people you stood by you through yours.

For Showing Up On Moving Day

... All seven of them.

For Dealing With All The Mister And Miss Wrongs You Dated ( ... And Possibly Still Are)

Because they're dating them, too. They're having dinner with them, hearing endlessly about their personal lives, are donating their best friend to them part-time. It takes a village to raise a child, and it takes an entire friend group of twentysomethings to determine whether or not a romantic interest is worthy of being in the tribe.

For Proving That Family Is Something You Choose

Especially for people who don't have functional or present relationships with their biological families, the family you choose is everything. It's the ultimate expression of love. It's being there, though you aren't technically obligated, no matter what.

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