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You can make feeble "acquaintances" after age 25, but you can no longer form a real, long lasting friendship, possibly the cut-off age is even lower, maybe even 20. And it only gets harder to make new connections as you get older. For true bonding you need proximity, repeated unplanned interactions, and a setting that encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other. This is why people meet their lifelong friends in elementary, high school or college. Research found that starting at age 25, we lose more friends than we make each year. In the professional world, "proximity" is hard to maintain, as work colleagues are reassigned or move on to new jobs. The workplace is a rather anonymous, superficial and competitive environment, so people usually hide personal details, vulnerabilities and quirks from colleagues. Once people start getting into serious long-term relationships in their 20s, the challenges only increase. Making friends with couples is like matchmaking for two. Children complicate things much more. Suddenly, you are surrounded by a new circle of parent "friends", but the emotional ties can be tenuous at best. You meet them because both of your children are friends, not you adults. Even when parent friends develop a bond, the resulting "friendships" can be fleeting and subject to the whims of the children themselves. And good luck if you remain childless, you have a good chance of losing your parent friend over the years as your daily routines grow to be vastly different. After 25, people also often experience internal shifts in how they approach friendship. Self-discovery gives way to self-knowledge, so you become pickier about whom you surround yourself with. I think also a big hurdle is that after age 30 people concentrate more on maintaining their existing friendships than forming new ones.
