How many of you have long-term / lifelong friendships?

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Not me. My longest friendship was five years. The rest only lasted a year or two (or less). They usually ended when whatever interest I was using them to fulfill changed.

No

No close friends. I'm closest to my husband and sister (though not my brother much at all). I have some not so close friends that I stay in touch with. Others have dropped away through the years, lost contact. One that I've known since 1979, we worked together for years and we're both now retired. She and I keep in touch by email now. Two others I met through a writing group and they later moved away, we also keep in touch by email. But that's really about it.

I don't tend to invite or nurture friendship, I'm not comfortable with it really. I can only handle so many personal obligations. I need a LOT of time to myself in order to be happy, and I figure if I keep my marriage and relationship to my sister together I'm doing really well. I don't push it further than that. I do always keep an open mind though. Who knows who I'll meet in the future? You just never know.

I've had the experience in the past few years of losing my parents and two old friends, and another friend is now terminally ill - barring a miracle or very good luck. So that trims down the list too. My husband has lost even more, since he tends to have friends who are much older than him. Many have died.

My friendships used to last 2 years, back when I was still capable of making friends. I once had a friend for 13 years. I can't believe it, it was either a miracle or there was something very wrong with her.

It ended when she had at last made better friends than me (or as someone above put it) allies, her values became more and more extremely socioeconomic and I was getting friendship crumbles. One day she overdid her typical coldness, I'd had too much, told her off and stopped answering her calls.

I've felt a lot better since, now able to develop myself in my own ways rather than being constantly trying to emulate her and her friends' socioeconomic obsession at the price of anything humane.

She knows she has a problem, but the world is so full of this kind of socioeconomic obsessed people that she's more popular being like that than not, so she has no motivation to heal that addiction. If she ever needs a true friend, though, she (and so many others I know) will be in trouble.