How old were you when you met your best friend?

I met my best friend in 2nd grade. She lived a few houses down the street from me for 10 years. We are both 41 now. We continue to be there for each other, even though she lives in Nevada and I live in Illinois. She’s family to me.

My other best friend is my husband. We met 21 years ago when we were 20. We had an instant connection the moment we met. These are the only two people I consider besties.

I met my best friend when I was 15. We had classes together freshman year of high school, but never spoke. Sophomore year, we both joined the school newspaper and were the only newbies in the group, so we stuck together.

Our relationship in high school was pretty turbulent. We ended up in the school newspaper once voted as “the most likely to love each other…then hate each other…then love each other…then hate each other”. We weren’t speaking by the time high school ended, but reconnected a few months later. We’ve been great friends ever since.

Not really sure, but it was very early. I want to say I was around 3 or 4 years old when I met her.

I don’t have one single best friend. I would have said ten years ago that my sister is my best friend, I met her when I was 21/2, when she was born, but our relationship took an odd turn.

I am extremely close to three friends from college, I consider them my best friends, two of them I talk to more often than the other one, but all three I can tell anything to and they are amazing. Their support is like no other in my life, with the exception of my husband, but still it is different. Girl power and all that.

I met my husband when I was 23, we have been together over 22 years, married almost 20 of them. I love being with him, I admire him, respect him, have fun with him, laugh with him, cry with him, he is an amazing friend.

I knew a girl since the 5th grade and we were always friendly with each other but actually became friends in the 9th grade. we were friends for many years and even were roommates when we were 23 years old. We had a fight and she moved out. About 2 years ago she ran into my brother and told him to tell me to call her and I did. We have reconnected and are better friends than ever. We just went on a bus trip to Chicago a couple weeks ago.

I was 13. But we weren’t best friends until I was 15.

Which one? I have had several “best friends” at various times in my life.

My very best friend for years I met when I was in my 20s. We worked together and we were very close for nearly 30 years.

Sadly, the friendship has ended.

I don’t have one :(

I have a few friends that could qualify as best friend.
The first, and longest friend I have, and I met the first day of Kindergarten, so I was 5 years old. He was the first kid I met in the class. I lived in the house on the hill above his house. We grew up together, and shared like views for much of our lives. He was far more competitive than I, but in the ways we were different, we complimented each other well. He is a life long friend.
My second best friend and I knew each other casually in Elementary school, but became close after graduation. She is probably closer to me than the other, because the two of us have no boundaries on our conversations. We insult each other hard, but out of genuine caring for each other.
My third would be my wife and companion. I met her at 27, and we married within a year, but it isn’t as close as the second friend I mentioned. We do take better care of each other, though.

@marinelife I mean best friends who are currently best friends, and the one who you have met the most recently, since I’m wondering if anyone has developed a best friend later in life.

I’m a little confused as to how it is possible to have more than one best friend, but I’ll take that to mean you can’t rank them. They are all really good friends, and you don’t have a best friend.

@burntbonez You can have several best friends at different times in your life. I had a best friend when I was a child, but life intervened and we are no longer friends. I don’t even know where she is.

For my life, now, I have someone I would call my best friend. I met him when I was in my late 20s. At the time we met, we were working for the same company. We still work together on projects from time to time.

In the example I gave you, I was an adult when I developed that friendship (as well as the friendship with my current best friend). I’m not sure what you mean by “later in life,” but I definitely think it’s possible.

Thank you, @marinelife.

For this question, I meant your current best friend. By later in life, I’m thinking in your fifties and older. It is my suspicion that most best friends were befriended before a person is twenty.

I have two people in my life I consider my best friends. Can’t choose one over the other. I met my 1st best friend when we were 9 yo. We got really close on her 10th birthday party. We are now 52. We have totally different lives, yet we have managed to remain close.

My second best friend is a former boy friend and after we broke up we’ve remained friends to this day. It’s been around 18 years. So yes, I guess it is possible to meet best friends later on in life.

I also have two runner ups though. My cousin and a coworker I met about 15 yrs ago.

@marinelife ditto!

I have 2 people I consider my best friends one when I was 16 the other when I was 26 yrs old, both of them I would count on for anything and they can count on me.

I seem to be changing best friends as fast as a hooker changes underwear.

My female bff I met when I was 15. I’m 35 turning 36 in a few months she is just a few days shy of 36.

My other bff was my husband. He has been gone for 3yrs & 23 days I started dating and met him in 2003. That time was worth it. He made his bff mark on my heart and since then I have felt like I have lost a leg and I’m trying to cope without it.

@Shippy Does a hooker even wear underwear???

I became aware of my best friend in sixth grade, but we didn’t become friends until eighth grade. Up until then she was just another person in my classes. In eighth grade we were in chorus and all of our classes together. She’s funny, very intelligent and very, very kind. That was 1977 and we’re still best friends.

Three – and we’re still friends 57 years later!

Sixteen. I married her nine years later.

I’ve known my best friend since I was around two years old. It’s possible that we met before then, but I don’t remember.

I have 4 best friends.
The first and I were in kindergarten together at 5 years old;
The second was in first grade with the first and I at age 6 (the two of them knew each other since they were 3 and their families attended the same synagogue);
the third I met at 16 (we’ve essentially saved each other’s lives at one point or another);
the fourth I met at 43… he is now my fiancé.

I lost my best friend because he doesn’t approve of the things I did when I was mentally ill. I had met him in college. But I’ve met someone in my bipolar group who I hang out with a lot. Last night he introduced me to some bartenders as his best friend. That was quite a shock for me. I thought we were just buddies.

Now maybe he kidding. He’s a big kidder. But I have a feeling it’s probably true. He’s hard for people to understand, but I pretty much get him. Plus we share a lot of life experiences in common. I don’t know if I’m ready to call him my best friend, but he is getting close. I’m 56. Actually, it’s probably one of the more unexpected things to happen to me at this point in my life.

There is a problem though. My wife doesn’t trust him at all. He can be very scary. He’s very aggressive, verbally. He doesn’t mean anything by it. It’s a way he pushes people away and keeps them from getting close. All he wants is to play word games. He values intelligence. He needs people who can spar with him. I can do it and it doesn’t bother me at all. He doesn’t make me feel threatened. I know he’s just another bear cup fooling around. But that’s not cool with most people and especially not with women, for the most part.

Whoa… I think I was still 17. First year of college. We are still best friends and although I don’t get to see him nearly as often as I would like (nothing like when we lived in the same dorm!), I love him like a brother and would do anything I could for him.

16, though the term friend is debatable. More like best acquaintances as long we’re intrigued by the other.

0. She’s two years older than me- our parents were next-door neighbors and best friends, and we have essentially been best friends since the moment that I was born.

I met my other best friend in middle school, around age 12 or 13, but we didn’t become friends until 9th grade when we had an English class together and bonded over making fun of our teacher. The rest is history- he and I have been extremely close ever since!

I’ve had a lot of people I called my best friends. I don’t really have anyone who is only my friend. I have best friends, and people I don’t hate.
I already said I was 13 when I met Austin, and we became best friends when I was 15.
I met Gage a little while after I turned 16, and he told me I’d become his best friend two weeks later. The sad thing is that we don’t talk anymore, and I still call him my best friend.
I met Henna when I was 13 also, and we were best friends instantly.

My current best friend I met when I was 23 I think. I’m 26 so not terribly long lived.

I totally think you can meet your best friend whenever. In fact knowing more about yourself and hopefully more comfortable with yourself they might be more suited to you. At least for ten years.

I think when you are young you change a lot. Or at least I have. Friends don’t always change with you. You can still be friends but on some level they don’t get you or you them. You just share memories and kind thoughts.

@rosehips Friends don’t always change with you. You can still be friends but on some level they don’t get you or you them. I know interests change and people change when they grow older, but I think the person you are deep down is still the same. I don’t agree with my best friend of 34 years on many things now like I did when we were younger, but I still get her, and it’s more than just memories and thoughts. Just tonight I wanted to reach across the internet and shake her for complaining about Obama, but then I laughed because I know how passionate she can be about the things she cares about. (just a thought. I know people can change dramatically. I guess I’ve just never experienced that.)

@jonsblond I am glad you had that experience. It probably means you were always on your path.

I did change dramatically. And while I am still facebook friends with my old best friends or most of them They moved and I moved and the things that kept us intimate weren’t there. The space meant no new memories and contact slowly faded. It doesn’t mean they weren’t important to me. It just means life is chaos and sometimes things once fused splinter.

We moved around a lot, so I didn’t really have a best friend until I was 13. Oddly, we met when I was hired by her mother to babysit she and her brothers (she was 11, and one of her brothers was 12, isn’t that weird?) I turned out to be the last babysitter they ever had, (they clearly didn’t really need one), and I didn’t see her again for three months because I had bronchitis all summer long. We ran into each other at the neighborhood playground, remembered each other, and hung out all that day. We were best friends by the end of the evening. We rarely see or even talk to each other these days, but we’d still drop everything to help one another, over 30 years later.

My other best friend is the one that @Fly refers to, above. We met when I was 21 and we’d both moved into a brand new neighborhood, right next door to each other. We were just nodding acquaintances for a long while, until I stayed late to help her clean up after a neighborhood party at her house. We talked all night long, and were amazed at how well we ‘clicked’. We are still best friends today, long after we moved on from that neighborhood. As @Fly said, our children are best friends, too.

Part of the problem with making friends when we’re older is that we don’t do the same kinds of things we did when we were young. We pretty much work and go home, and that doesn’t give a lot of opportunity to make new friends. Maybe if we put ourselves out there, out in the world a little more, it’d be easier. Go to meet ups and such, I don’t know.

My first best friend I lost when he aquired a certain girlfriend in our senior year of college. We had been friends since fith grade.
My present best friend I met in college and married her shortly after graduation.
All the old friends I hang out with are all college friends. When I left Corpus after high school, I pretty much lost contact with all those friends and I haven’t really got friendly with anyone since college.

Oh, I did meet my second husband in my late 30s, and I certainly consider him a best friend, too. :)

I don’t have a “best” friend, I find that incredibly twee & meaningless.

My oldest two best friends are like siblings to me. One lives an hour away, and the other a couple thousand miles away. We aren’t in touch often, our lives are different, but when we get together it’s as if no time had passed at all. And I know that I could count on them if needed. So even though it’s a different level of personal involvement, I still consider them best friends.

@ucme I don’t know if that is a cultural thing or a man thing? My SIL hates the expression best friend, but that is because she perceives it as a childhood thing, like what mean girls do to exclude others, which is not the American English meaning.

@JLeslie & @ucme Well, it certainly seems some here have a different idea of what a best friend is. My best friend has my back and I have hers. If I called her at midnight with a major problem, she would pick up the phone and cheer me up or do whatever she could to help me, and I would do the same for her. I wouldn’t call just any friend of mine, because I don’t have that connection with anyone else, and I would be afraid I might be bothering them at that late hour. It wouldn’t bother my best friend, because she loves me and she’s always there for me. We may go months without speaking, but when we pick up that phone we are right back to where we left off. The only thing that would keep us apart would be death. That’s my idea of a best friend. @JLeslie What would your SIL call a person in her life like this? Just a friend?

@jonsblond I define it the same way.

I think my SIL would say that is a very close friend. She doesn’t use the word best. I’ll have to ask my husband what word they use.

In America we tend to use the word friend lightly and broadly. A lot of people don’t differentiate by calling some friends just acquaintances.

@JLeslie I do see how best friend could sound juvenile, now that I think about it. I’ve used the word for so long that I haven’t thought of using anything else to describe it, and I only use the word when I’m speaking of my closest friend.

@jonsblond : That’s just how I would define a best friend too.

@JLeslie : I’ve certainly noticed that tendency in America. I’ve got a wide range of acquaintances and bar buddies with whom I hang out when it is convenient for both of us, but I have a very small circle of people I would call friends.

8 years old on our first day of Primary school.

@jonsblond She didn’t like when her daughter used it either, not at any age. She didn’t understand how it was used I think. I use girlfriend to describe my female friends, but my neice always exclaims, “girlfriend?!” When I do. I guess since the younger generation is more aware of lesbians that word might be falling out of favor to use to describe friends who are girls? I’m not sure. It also might be a product of a cultural thing; in Spanish there is no equivalent really for saying girlfriend for how we use it, exceot to say that the word friend, amiga, already tells the gender, because it ends in A. Also, some women seem to get pretty pissed off when women are called girls, they find it insulting or disrespectful I guess.

@jonsblond Oh I get where you’re coming from, I really do, I just don’t call anyone “best” friend, not since schooldays anyway.
Sure, I have friends who are better at dealing with stuff than others, but they all have they’re chosen field of expertise as it were & so are all equally valued…....except for Trevor, he’s just a dweeb ;¬}

@ucme I get where you are coming from too, once I thought about it a little more. poor Trevor ;)

@jonsblond Haha, when I tell him that he’ll be so flattered XD