“There does have to be a renegotiation of your friendship sometimes if, say, one friend has a newborn and the other doesn’t. Your friendship, on a very practical level, simply can’t stay the same – at least for a while,” says Cohen. “It’s likely that they won’t be gone forever, so be patient and take what you can get for the time being, whether that’s quick phone calls, messages or dinner at the kitchen counter surrounded by chaos.”

When it comes to more serious or permanent life changes – experiencing death, disability or illness, for example – your friend might not return to you in quite the same way; inevitably, we all go through hard times and kindness in the face of strife is rarely forgotten. Your capacity for patience and love is likely greater than you know.

Be vulnerable

Letting a friend know that you need them can sometimes be enough to restore a bond. After Haly moved away from her hometown in Ireland and across the seas to New York, she found that it was easy to presume her friends were unaffected by the distance between them. “I just think sometimes it’s important to tell your friends you miss them. Because when you’re apart, especially with social media, it’s easy to project and imagine that I’m missing them so much more than they’re missing me. Like, they’re living their life and everything’s fine,” she says.

There can also be other benefits to chatting with friends about the difficulties in your life that they might not have had experience with. “The value of having friends who aren’t in the same life stage as you is that it allows you to have precious conversations about your worries, regrets and fears with someone who isn’t just responding with ‘Argh, me too!’ but might have a different perspective,” says Cohen. Superficially your worries might look quite different. But deep down, we’re often all grappling with similar human challenges.

Make yourself available

OK, so we all know getting a job can mean we just don’t have time for each other any more. There are endless, tiring jokes made about the fact that, especially in London, you have to book someone’s calendar out six weeks in advance (this is true, but we move).

But, as the actor Franchesca Ramsey says in a recent video in response to a question about how she’s held onto so many friendships in adulthood: “Most people don’t want the real answer to this, but friendships, as with any other relationship professional or romantic, require work. And meeting people can definitely be difficult, but once you meet them and connect with them, take the initiative to follow up.” For me, this has always looked like making myself available to my friends as much as I can and actively balancing the scales between people who I have caught up with recently and those with whom I haven’t.

How to stay connected to friends who are at different life stages to you