Twenty years ago, a young boy told his single dad that he was his best friend. His dad, in response, said, "I'm not your best friend. Friends go away." Fast forward to today, and that boy, now 27, shares a bond with his 62-year-old father that’s the true definition of a beautiful father-son relationship. His dad has always been someone he can open up to without hesitation. Recently, the man—who goes by u/sneezedr424 on Reddit—shared an emotional exchange with his father that moved him to tears. Posting in the r/MadeMeSmile group, he captioned it simply, “I love my dad.”
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In the post, he shared a screengrab of a text message he sent to his dad. “Thank you for always having my back,” he wrote. “Today was so sh***y, but talking with you made it substantially less so. You always encourage me to see the better light in things and help me find solutions to frustrating and difficult problems. Even the simple act of hearing your voice makes me smile, and relaxes me.”
Representative Image Source: Getty Images | Morsa Images
He concluded the message with a teary-eyed emoji, writing, “I love you more than you will ever know. Thanks for being everything that you are.” In a response that stirred people’s hearts, the text message of their dad read, “I’m your dad. That’s all I ever wanted to be.” The crisp one-liner amassed 50,000 upvotes and over 600 comments.
People said they felt bemused by the heartwarming and open relationship between him and his dad. Those who have tough or absent dads said they were envious. “This is wonderful - both what you said and his response. As someone whose parents never ever had their back, I'm envious. Please don't ever take it for granted,” commented u/indymlvc. u/lasonna51980 said, “Man, I wish I could text my dad that. Good for you both for having a great relationship.”
Image Source: Reddit | u/certain-flounder2242
Reflecting on the sweet interaction, u/madamnaturegalaxy3 wrote, “You two are so sweet. The way you express your feelings to him shows that you're comfortable being vulnerable with him. I wish my dad had been that for me too.” u/wil added, “As a son, I did not have this dad. As a dad, I'm doing everything I can to be this dad to my sons.”
Image Source: Reddit | u/tru2me8
In a comment, the Redditor revealed that his dad is the parent who raised him and his brother all by himself for most of their life, while their mom was out of the picture for some reason he didn’t explain. He said that his dad started out as a park ranger and some days they barely had anything to it. “Despite that, he continued to do things like take us on road trips, take us to museums, go to parks and hike, anything he could think of. Once a week we would go to Blockbuster and get a movie. He was always available physically and emotionally, which is amazing for a single parent, and now he gets flowers on Mother's Day and tools on Father's Day lol.”
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Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.