What's Age Got to Do With It?: The Importance of Intergenerational Friendships
A few Christmases ago, I found myself reflecting on time and relationship. As one does during the holidays, I was on break from work and filling my days off with seeing as many people as I could.
I met my friend Mike for lunch. I believe Mike now stands as my oldest friend.
All my “old friends from high school” have faded from my life, replaced with my “old friends from college” as the people I’ve known the longest. Except Mike.
He’s the only person (who I’m not related to by blood, obvs.) that I knew in high school with whom I still keep in touch. We get together as often as time allows, enjoying the easy comfort that comes from such a longstanding friendship.
Later that night, I met my friend Miranda for dinner (who you may remember from another piece about how we revolutionized gift-giving). She was back in town for Christmas and we were squeezing in as much time together as we could—our dinner giving way to our traditional odyssey of finding gifts for everyone on her Christmas shopping list in one night (we’re impressive like that).
I met Mike when I was in high school but we didn’t go to high school together. Rather, he was my youth minister. I religiously (heh, no pun intended) attended the high school youth group at my home parish from tenth through twelfth grade. After I graduated, he and I remained close and grew into real friends.
I did a lot of work with Mike as I was in college too, ultimately taking over his job as a youth minister at the same church when he moved on. I worked at that church for six years before I began teaching high school full-time myself and Miranda was one of my youth group kids.
After she graduated and switched her major from business to education, she reached out for advice and our friendship blossomed from there. Now she is one of my closest friends and a trusted natural support.
I don’t often think of my relationships with Mike or Miranda as intergenerational, even if that’s a correct term. I’m an elder Millennial—a Xennial, if you will—so Miranda and I cover both ends of the Millennial spectrum, while Mike adds a dash of Gen-X representation to the mix.
The reason I don’t think of these relationships as intergenerational (and I guess to be fair Miranda and I aren’t, even if there are more years between us than Mike and myself) is because when I think of that term, it seems to imply a disconnect.
It conjures images of waving fists, croaking voices, concern over who’s on whose lawn, and debate over “you kids and your music!” And that never happens (though I am more likely to discuss Cardi B. with Miranda and Poison with Mike).
That sort of goes without saying though, right? If there was this great sense of difference between us then the relationships wouldn’t’ve developed as they did, nor stayed as strong and healthy as they have for as long as they have.
Miranda and I have been friends for over a decade now, Mike and I for over two. That sort of bond doesn’t last if the connection isn’t an authentic and deep one.
So, I don’t often think of those friendships as intergenerational, though I (sort of) was that day over Christmas break when I was reflecting on the poetic symmetry of having lunch with my former youth minister who became such a great friend and then dinner with my former youth group kid who became the same. It felt special to see how the same place, the same job, linked me with two of the most important people in my life—two beautiful friendships, born of the same sort of relationship with myself in both roles between them, student and youth minister.
How neat is that?! (I unironically think people should start saying neat again. So now you’ve read it and can pass it on. Why did it drop off? It’s a fun word!)
I also have Gen-Z friends in my life, notably Bella and Ki from this very magazine!
Bella was one of my first students when I moved from youth ministry to teaching high school. Her writing was brilliant even then, and I am in no way surprised she is now my editor and a fellow author here. I met Ki through Bella and our little movie club (a name we can’t trademark because Cinemark already has, phooey) grew from there.
We regularly go to the movies and dive into deconstructing the films at length afterwards (we still remain divided over Bugonia).
Sometimes we’ll default to playing generationally expected roles. For example Ki (who manages all the social media accounts for Butterfly) dances through the online world creating a presence with a grace and skill I couldn’t imagine much less replicate if my life depended on it (my social media energy is best described as intermittent attempts at pithiness).
When Bella and I canvassed for Kamala Harris, I was happy to knock on everyone’s doors and chat with all the people who answered if she logged our information on the app they asked us to use (an app I didn’t even download).
But mostly, with Bella and Ki as with Mike and Miranda, those friendships are just friendships. Again, if there was a great sense of difference these relationships wouldn’t’ve developed as they have.
Now that’s not to say intergenerational friendships don’t bring their own gifts! Most often I see it in the form of perspective. Our point of view is shaped by a myriad of different factors, big and small, of which our age is an important one.
The way we see, live, move, and exist in the world is different if we’re in our twenties than if we’re in our forties. For example, I am less inclined to sneak down front at an Aerosmith concert now. I’d still do it, obviously, but with skills honed in years of practice and wisdom.
With my younger friends, I can listen to their triumphs, trials, and tribulations and be with them in all of it with the sort of mindfulness and point of view that only comes with having already made most of those mistakes myself.
By the same token, they keep me grounded in an energy, a joy, and a spontaneity that we are at risk of losing as we grow older. In our youth—our teens and twenties in particular—we buck against any limits we didn’t choose for ourselves. Our lives will be what we will them, a determination we can lose if we let ourselves become complacent and settle as we grow older. So, my younger friends help keep me anchored in the limitless potential of now.
With my older friends, there is a peace I can touch vicariously from being in the presence of people who are happy with the shape and nature of their lives. In the unending process of becoming, it’s nourishing to be around people who are happy with who they became (even if the process continues every day).
I can then regale them with tales of the dating scene and going to the movies, concerts, or even another city at the spontaneous drop of a hat. Also, my other Xennial and Gen-X friends remember how great it was to go over to someone’s apartment for the first time and get to know them by perusing their CD and DVD collections. So many important insights! So quickly!
I’m not sure if these sorts of relationships have been more rare in the past and are becoming more common now, or if we are just talking about them more now. Either way, I imagine they will continue to be more and more prominent given the shape of the modern workplace.
People are living longer and retiring later (whether because they enjoy working or because our hideously unbalanced economy concentrates such a large portion of the wealth in the hands of the few) and this means we have the potential to live and work beside Gen-Z-ers, Millennials, Gen-X-ers, Baby Boomers, and—in rare cases—a few members of the Greatest Generation each and every day.
This also means we have the potential to form relationships across all those generational lines.
We should embrace this gift. In an age when we’ve all been conditioned to check our phones for the answer to any question, we’re forgetting how to ask other people (especially those we don’t know well) for answers, advice, and input. Sometimes we even fear asking another person. We are worse off for that.
We now know human beings are not designed to learn from machines. Studies done for 80 different countries and in the U.S. alone for over 60 years consistently show when technology enters a classroom learning drops. It’s not a matter of the wrong technology or the wrong lesson plan; it’s that biologically and psychologically we are literally made to learn from other people.[1] Period. Full stop.
So, in each conversation we have with another person lies the potential for learning, for diving into another person’s knowledge and lived experience. This potential for learning is greater when we converse across generational lines as our lived experiences are often more varied.
Each conversation also carries the potential for connection which holds the potential for communion. In communion, meaningful relationships are born.
In such relationships we are changed and our world changes along with us. Just take a moment to think of your friends. Think of how they’ve changed you, challenged you, made you better, tested and tried you, frustrated you, helped you, healed you, trapped you, and freed you.
Now imagine how different our world could feel if we expanded the circle of people with whom we shared such a bond beyond our age range and our online sphere. I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for kindness, friendship, and connection to feel like the norm. That change begins with us and who we let into our lives.
It’s not like it’s a major act of self-sacrifice either! This isn’t a trial or a burden. Miranda, Mike, Bella, Ki, and all my loving friends and brilliant natural supports, regardless of their age, bring so much to my life. I wouldn’t be who I am without them.
All friendships are a gift. Such relationships are born when our love, trust, and shared interests lead us to willingly weave our lives into another’s and then do the work to stay there.
One of my favorite Doctor Who quotes speaks to this when the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) tells Rose (Billie Piper), “You need a lot of things to get across this universe. Warp drive. Wormhole refractor. You know the thing you need most of all? You need a hand to hold.”[2]
Our friends are those hands.
Isn’t that neat? It’s also life-affirming and soul-nourishing. Our friends help fill us up when we are running on empty. They share our joy and our tears. And in forming those bonds across generational lines, we learn how much more unites us than divides us.
As I said above, I rarely think of my relationships with Mike and Miranda or Bella and Ki as intergenerational. But I always think of them as friends, and friendship can’t exist without points of commonality.
What makes this easier is, even if your workplace isn’t generationally diverse, we can all begin building these relationships in our family. Starting when I was 14 years old, every Friday night has been dinner at Grandma’s. When Grandma passed away in 2020, the location changed but the ritual remained. Now we do Friday night dinner at my parents.
The number of people around the table is always growing and always shifting. While we may’ve lost our member of the Greatest Generation, we all continue to find such love, knowledge, support, and fun as our gaggle of Gen-Z-ers, Millennials, Gen-X-ers, and Baby Boomers come together each week.
When I talk about those who I turn to for love, support, and insight; Mom, Dad, and Aunt Judy have always been on the top of that list—as important to me now in my forties as they were in my teens.
At this point in my life, I have spent far more Friday nights gathered around the dinner table with my family than I have not. We are all richer for it.
I see it in how my Gen-Z cousins value it just as much as my brother and I always have. I see it in all the friends and partners who have joined us through the years, too. Miranda has been a part of Friday night dinner before and always tries to make it when she’s in town.
While there are undeniably differences among generations, even on the macro scale I suspect we’re not as different as we may seem. That’s been my lived experience anyway, and it makes both my life and my world view brighter. The more we see this and the more we practice it, the greater our potential for connection.
We are here for communion. To be human is to be a social animal, to live in relationship. So, there is nothing like having that hand to hold reaching out for us when we need it.
📚Want to dive deeper? Here are the studies and books that informed this article📚
[1] AJ Huston (ajwordartist), “Listen Please #everythingispoetry #707ampacific #dreambigger” Instagram, January 31, 2026. https://www.instagram.com/p/DULxLX3D5Qp/
[2] Euros Lyn, dir. “Fear Her.” Doctor Who, season 2, episode 11, BBC, 2006.
