Paul Angone - 20 Relationship Secrets for Your Twenties: A Portion from 101 Secrets for Your Twenties

2013 BY
PAUL ANGONE

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Cover spread design: Tan Nguyen

Cover image design: Natalie Mills

Interior design: Erik M. Peterson

Secret #87 originally published on LoveandRespectNow.com

Secrets #38 and #96 originally published on RELEVANTMagazine.com

ISBN: 978-0-8024-1084-9

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Printed in the United States of America

This Portion Adapted From: 101 Secrets for Your Twenties by Paul Angone

Introduction

The Secret to Applying the 101 Secrets

Acknowledgments

The following content is taken from 101 Secrets for Your Twenties, by Paul Angone.

If you are interested in hearing more from the team that facilitated this adapted content, visit moodycollective.com.

Making friends was so easy when we were kids. Or at least thats how my nostalgia remembers it.

You tackled a kid at recess. Partnered with someone for Bio Lab. Played a basketball game at the park. Got cast in a play. Moved into a dorm.

Then bam, you had a friend.

Lots of them.

Like the kid whose dad worked for Nintendofriends just waiting at your doorstep.

And then college happenedthe height of Friend Mania.

And then college ended and with it, so did many of your friendships.

Then you entered the abyssthe Friend Abyss.

Your 20s and 30s are deep, uncharted waters where friends are dumped in black bags never to be seen again.

All those friends-are-friends-forever friends, gonethe apparent expiration date on forever lasting about two and a half years.

Because you move. Get married. Have kids. Or work a 60-hour a week job. Keeping friendships in your 20s becomes harder than G.I. Joes abs (thats prison-walls-hard, people) because you dont have the same shared experiences anymore. Youre not going to class, then eating lunch, going to practice, eating dinner, hanging out until 2 a.m. like you did in college.

Now your best friend calls and the first thought in your head might be, Really. Now. I dont have time.

You stare at the phone as if to say Im sorry as the ring lets out one last cry for help before its sent to voicemail like a kid sent to detention for not showing up on time.

Maybe youll call back in a day, or maybe a week. But most likely when you do, youll get voicemail too. Then youll begin the respected twentysomething tradition: Voicemail Tag. Almost as fun as freeze tag when we were kids, with one big differenceits not fun at all.

So after a couple back-and-forths on voicemail, then a couple texts, then a couple Facebook messagesnext thing you know your friendship has been reduced to throwing out the once-a-year Happy B-Day!!!! Facebook wall post, giving it four !!!! to show just how excited you really are about your friend (check that friendship off for another year).

If keeping up with old friends is hard, making new ones is Bruce Lee-Fists-of-Destruction harder.

Between work, spouse, babies, work outside of work, and then those silly things like the need to sleep, who has time to go meet new people? And then actually go through the long, awkward process of Friending.

And the only thing harder than finding new friends post-college? Finding new couple friends post-college. Now four people to toss into the Compatibility Blender.

And the only thing harder than finding couple friends post-college? Finding couple married friends with young babies who:

A. Arent on the fast track to divorce. So that by the time you finally go through all the awkward lunches, meet-and-greets, and you seal the friendship deal, one of them isnt off with their new assistant.

B. All four adults like each other, but the baby keeps slapping yours in the face and throwing temper tantrums like a spoiled teenager who gets a Kia for her first car instead of a BMW.

This twentysomething friend-shoot aint easy

If your friend is rolling around in that Range Rover or is posting pictures in front of that three-story mini-mansion, your friend either:

Robbed a bank.

Is making heavy withdrawals from their parents piggy bank.

Is making heavy withdrawals from Visas plastic bank.

Is part of the .02 percent Twentysomethings Club that are making heavy deposits on their own.

But remember, sometimes its those who have the sleekest exteriors and the prettiest dining room sets who have the most garbage shoved in their closets.

Have you read the book or seen the movie Into the Wild? Its a true story of a guy named Chris McCandless, who graduates from Emory University top of his class, then leaves it allhis family, his savings, his car, safety, sanity, to go to Alaska to live on the land with little belongings or training.

He goes to the wild to escape all comfort and trappings that distract a person from finding truth. But as the movie progresses we also see hes escaping memories of an abusive dad, and as he changes his name to Alexander Supertramp, hes also trying to escape from himself.

Chris makes it to Alaska and lives in the wild. Then he becomes lost in the wild, then realizes hes truly alone in the wild, then trapped in the wild as the river floods and blocks his retreat. Then (the book came out in 1996 and the movie in 2007, so I think the Ruining the Ending Statute of Limitations has passed), Chriss final chapter is Death in the Wild.

Into the Wild wasnt an easy movie for me to watch. For many reasons. Mainly because I recognize some of myself in Chris McCandless, on a search for truth no matter the cost. I remember questioning, wrestling, doubting, and feeling very much alone.

And if youre in a very intense season or place of questioning, you know as well this can be a very lonely place. Sometimes painfully undeniably unrelentingly so. And theres something of strange importance that takes place in us when we are stripped of all the things that used to keep us company.