It was like one of those magical blind-date scenes out of a Hollywood rom-com, without the "rom." I met Brian, a New York screenwriter, a few years ago through work, which led to dinner with our wives and friend chemistry that was instant and obvious.

We liked the same songs off Dylan's "Blonde on Blonde," the same lines from "Chinatown." By the time the green curry shrimp had arrived, we were finishing each other's sentences. Our wives were forced to cut in: "Hey, guys, want to come up for air?"


That was four years ago. We've seen each other four times since. We are "friends," but not quite friends. We keep trying to get over the hump, but life gets in the way.



From BFFs to KOFs

No matter how many friends you make, a sense of fatalism can creep in: The period for making BFFs, the way you did in your teens or early 20s, is pretty much over. It's time to resign yourself to situational friends: KOFs (kind of friends) -- for now.


That thought struck Lisa Degliantoni, an educational fundraising executive in Chicago, a few months ago when she was planning her 39th birthday party. After a move from New York to Evanston, Ill., she realized that she had 857 Facebook friends and 509 Twitter followers but still did not know if she could fill her party's invitation list.

"I did an inventory of the phases of my life where I've managed to make the most friends, and it was definitely high school and my first job," she said.


"All of a sudden, with your wife out of the picture, you realize you're lonely," said Glover, now 56. "I'd go to salsa lessons. Instead of trying to pick up the women, I'd introduce myself to the men: 'Hey, let's go get a drink.' "



"You tend to focus on what is most emotionally important to you," she said, "so you're not interested in going to that cocktail party, you're interested in spending time with your kids."

The magic three


In the professional world, "proximity" is hard to maintain, as work colleagues are reassigned or move on to new jobs. Last year, Erica Rivinoja, a writer on the NBC series "Up All Night," became close with a woman, Jen, when they worked together on a pilot. Almost instantly, they knew each other's exercise schedules and food preferences. Jen could sense when Rivinoja needed a jolt of caffeine, and without asking would be there with an iced tea.

"But as soon as the pilot was over, it was hard to be as close without that constant day-to-day interaction," said Rivinoja, 35. They can occasionally carve out time for a quick gin and tonic, she said, but "there aren't those long afternoons which bleed into evenings hanging out at the beach and then heading to a bar."

Once people start coupling up, the challenges only increase. Making friends with other couples "is like matchmaking for two," said Kara Baskin, a journalist who works in Boston. "Not only are you worrying about whether the other woman likes you, you're also worrying if her husband likes you, if your husband likes her, if your husband likes him."

Not long ago, she invited her husband's new work buddy over for dinner with his wife. But the wife was visibly unimpressed by Baskin's half-furnished home (they had just moved in) and thrown-together spaghetti dinner.

"It was basically clear that his wife had been cajoled into attending," said Baskin, 33. "She settled on to our rickety Ikea kitchen chairs like she was lowering herself into a coal mine."


"But it was unspoken that we wouldn't be seeking their company again," Baskin said.

Adding children to the mix muddles things further. Suddenly, you are surrounded by a new circle of parent friends -- but the emotional ties can be tenuous at best, as the comedian Louis C.K. related in one stand-up routine: "I spend whole days with people, I'm like, I never would have hung out with you, I didn't choose you. Our children chose each other. Based on no criteria, by the way. They're the same size."

Parent friends

Even when parent friends develop a bond, the resulting friendships can be fleeting -- and subject to the whims of the children themselves.

Caryl Lyons, an event planner in Danville, and her husband found a budding friendship with a parent-friend couple hit a roadblock when their young sons, who had been close friends, drifted apart.

When the families planned a barbecue together, her son would say, "Can I have my other friends over?" said Lyons, 44.

External factors are not the only hurdle. After 30, people 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, said Marla Paul, the author of the 2004 book "The Friendship Crisis: Finding, Making, and Keeping Friends When You're Not a Kid Anymore."



"When you're younger, you define what it really means to be friends in a more serious way," said my screenwriter friend, Brian. (His full name is Brian Koppelman, and he wrote and helped direct "Solitary Man," a 2010 film starring Michael Douglas about a middle-aged man trying to reconnect with friends and family.)

"My ideas of friendship were built by 'The Godfather' and 'Diner,'" he said. "Your friends were your brothers, and anything but total loyalty at all costs meant excommunication. As you get older, that model becomes unrealistic."


"You're more keenly aware of the downside," said Koppelman, 46. "You're also more keenly aware of your own capacity to disappoint."

"I haven't really changed my standards for what it means to actually be friends," he concluded. "It's just that I use the word 'friends' more loosely. Making the real kind, the brother kind, is much harder now."