As I rolled through my teens, 20s and 30s, I gathered friends like lint: at school, at university, during a year spent in Latin America. Of course, as the years passed, some fell by the wayside, but overall, it all felt accumulative – and easy. Until one day it wasn’t.

Whereas once I had maybe 15 close friends and a further 10 or so fluctuating pals I could call up for a drink, now there are only a handful of people I’m in regular contact with. And I can easily go weeks without any social plans at all, which is not how I imagined my 40s would be.

The comforting thing is that (ironically) I’m not alone. In a 2022 survey, 76% of women revealed that they have fewer close friends than the year before, and one in 14 don’t have any at all. Around a third of the respondents blamed this on physical distance – something that’s played a big part in shaping my own friendships (or lack thereof). I live in London, and when my friends and I were in our 20s, a number of us clustered together in and around Hackney. But as we moved into our 30s, the city’s insane property prices scattered us further towards the outskirts, and often in opposite directions. It meant that a casual dinner at someone’s house often involved a three-hour round trip across the city. Then eventually, of course, some friends abandoned London altogether, while I stayed put for work.

“At 40, I thought I’d have more friends. Diverging life paths made me lonelier than I expected”