Friends Come in Seasons - Advice for Transitions in Life

I was once told that people come into your life as you need them, and they exit your life as you don’t. When we talk about friendship, it’s usually framed as something that should last forever—but rarely do we acknowledge the seasons that come with it. In most cases, forever isn’t how it goes. Throughout my life, I have made and lost many friends. Some I thought would be there for a lifetime; others left over the smallest details. Often, I found myself wondering why it happened, feeling sad, internalizing their actions, and holding onto a bit of bitterness for a while.

As life would have it, friends don’t just stop coming in and out of your life just because you’ve decided it has already happened enough times.

For me, this is still happening even today. I recently was having a heart-to-heart with one of my good friends, and she gave me some solid advice. She told me that “friends come in seasons”. For me, whenever I make a new friend, I get really excited about them. I decide that we are friends and generally speaking, that person gets all the perks and benefits of being my friend, including my trust.

While how we show up in our relationships is certainly a conversation on its own, what I want to talk about here is the mindset behind loving someone and being grateful that they are in your life, and also to some degree being aware that they are there of their own accord. Be open to the possibility that they might only be there for a season.

I wrote a post that speaks to this a bit more, Everyone Has Something to Teach Us. And while many friendships don’t quite make it to the end of your life, or to your wedding, they are still valuable in their own right.

The Mindset Shift: Loving Without Attachment

We’ve certainly discussed before, how you show up in life is important. Making the choice to be a committed friend, follow through on plans, and be a reliable source for your friends is an important decision if that aligns with the type of friend you would like to be. It’s important to remember that you have responsibility for your own actions, and no control over how someone else acts – and this is the part where we remember to let other people have responsibility for their own actions.

Remember that this person is in your life of their own accord. Ultimately people choose to spend their time in ways that provide a benefit to them. It’s okay to acknowledge that as adults, we only have limited time throughout our day and our weeks, so the reality is people will spend their time with you as long as it benefits them.

Be open to the idea that the new friend you’ve made is enjoyable to be around, and maybe the two of you can spend time together, however long that happens to be. Also be open to what they may be teaching you. Even folks who enter our lives for the shortest periods of time, can teach us something.

Every interaction we have in life can bring us value, if we can figure out what it is meant to teach us.

Why Friendships Change Over Time

Friendships change as you get older. When you’re younger and you’re making friends, usually that’s due in part to proximity. The people that you make friends with are probably the same people that go to your school or college, maybe you make friends with people that live near you or are in the same friend groups as members of your family. As an adult, there really aren’t any places where people are forced to see each other regularly – prompting friendships by proximity. So, making friends becomes something that is more consciously sought out.

New friendships made as an adult tend to center around a common interest. They aren’t necessarily meant to be deep and lasting. While they certainly can be, these types of friendships are generally just based on spending time with people whose company you enjoy, brought together by a common interest. Then, you go about your life and see them next time.

The Spiritual Side of Connection

The idea that every connection we make is rare — even miraculous — is something many Eastern philosophies deeply embrace. In Korean culture, there is the concept of “인연” (Inyeon), which loosely translates to “fate” or “connection.” It’s the belief that every meeting — even if it’s just brushing past someone on the street — is the result of countless lifetimes of karma bringing two souls together for that moment. In Buddhist thought, this idea appears too: every interaction is the result of conditions coming together in a very specific way, and those conditions may never repeat themselves exactly again.

When you stop to really think about it, the odds of meeting any one person are almost impossible to calculate. There are billions of people on this planet. You had to be born in this time period, in this country or city, living this particular life. They had to be born where they were, take the steps that led them to this very point, and then — somehow — the two of you ended up in the same place at the same time. And not just that — you noticed each other, you spoke, you connected. That type of thing is magic.

Fate and Friendships – the Bigger Picture

Many Eastern traditions encourage deep reverence for these moments. In Hinduism, there is the idea of samskara — impressions or patterns that carry over lifetimes — suggesting that the people we feel an instant connection with may have been significant to us before. In Buddhism, there’s the teaching that every person we meet is both teacher and student: we are here to learn from them, and they are here to learn from us. Even a brief encounter has meaning — and if someone becomes a close friend, partner, or confidant, that relationship holds spiritual weight.

When we truly understand how rare it is to meet someone we connect with, it deepens our gratitude. It shifts relationships from being something we take for granted to something sacred. When you talk with someone, when you share space with them, when you trust them enough to share your inner world — that is profound. Out of billions of possible connections, you and this person found each other.

And this is where your earlier reflection about friendships coming in seasons becomes even more powerful. If we approach friendships with the awareness that every connection is sacred, then even if a friend’s season in our life ends, we can honor what that friendship brought us. We can see it as a karmic meeting — meant to teach us something, to help us move from one place to another in our personal growth — rather than as a loss or failure.

The Nature and Purpose of Seasonal Friendships

As we go through our own seasons of life, the friends that we have see us through those times. We have friends that support us through uncertain times. We also might have that one friend who gives us a piece of advice that prompts a whole new way of understanding. And sometimes, we just have friends to laugh with us when something silly happens.

Have an open mind when it comes to your friendships, depending on where you are in life, your experience might call for certain interactions. Some friendships are deep, some are light and all of them are meaningful in their own right.

There might be people who helped you through a breakup that you actually haven’t talked to in years. Regardless of the reason, you still look back on them with gratitude – they helped you on your journey. You may have had friends in the past that were with you through a certain period of life, college is a great example of this. Even if you haven’t talked to some of your college friends in years, they were still there for you to enrich your experience.

If you look through other areas of your life where certain people only remain in memories – you will find that each of these memories were steps on your journey that got you here. These people and these moments are all something to be grateful for.

Seasonal, and Still Meaningful

Friends truly do come in seasons, and that doesn’t make them any less special. Appreciating friendships for what they are — without forcing permanence — allows you to hold space for new ones to enter.

Celebrate the people who’ve walked with you, whether their season was short or long. Don’t forget that everyone has something to teach us, just as we have something to teach others. Just because a relationship only lasted for a certain amount of time, doesn’t make it any less successful than another one.

All of the people we meet throughout our lifetime are special, even though it may be difficult to see at times. All we have to do is make the choice to see how it helped us grow on our journey – which is what it’s really all about.

Resources If you’d like to learn more about the seasonality of friendships and the mindset behind accepting and being grateful for them, check out these links:

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