Friendship for the Soul

It is so weird, friendship is so important when you are little and begin school. It wains in the years as we graduate and college and then our separate ways as we start careers and jobs and meet and marry our true best friends. As we build lives together and have children and go through the growing changing phases a=of life we let many friendships fade away due to busy lifestyles or time constraints and even moving and distance. People that used to know our thoughts and what we liked to do in life are now strangers in many ways. Life changes you. It molds you, and defines you. We travel everyday with new circumstances flowing in and out of our lives along with new people. We meet on a job or at a fund raiser or even at Church or across the street- in our lifetimes we will meet many new people without even trying. And then comes the days when the Children grow and move onto College and begin to move on with their lives and you are left standing looking at this man you have spent a lifetime with wondering- what did we do before kids? Who did we do things with? Where did we go?
I think everyone in this phase of life can identify with this. I am a stay at home Mom, my husband has worked 50 to 70 hour weeks for years and here we are, standing on the verge of having to be more then Mom or Dad. It has come to the time of life when we have to be actual people again, without our constant tag-alongs. So how do you start a life called middle age while still juggling having kids who call and need things along with taking on aging Parents who also need your time?
My son's answer to dealing with this is to start a friendship website. Where people put in their likes and dislikes and what they would like and expect out of a friendship, then the computer matches you with compatible people and you develop friendships within the group given to you. I am not so sure this would work. I think the differences in a friendship are sometimes the things that bind you the most but I have to admit his idea has left me wondering of the possibilities. In this electronic social media age, I can totally see this working. No messing around and surprises when someone turns out to be not what you expected, but then again isn't that when our learning begins and our lives change as we discover things about one another that change our view points and little by little change us? Molding us into a more tolerant, wiser person (at least in theory).
I can put out there for the World to see who I think I am and what others have said about me or my strengths but isn't that all just a point of view that isn't going to be seen necessarily the same by someone who has different life experiences? I could tell you the stories of my life and maybe you could see why I have become who I am but there again my stories are colored by my perspective. Feelings of the moment, emotions at the time add so much to our life's experiences and color our views- you can't share those, they are uniquely yours. So in the end like it or not it isn't easy to make true friends any easier when your in your 40's and 50's then it was when you were 3 and 4.