Yesterday I went to lunch with an old friend from school who is having a few problems with her boss. The problems that she is encountering are not insurmountable objects, which she knows, but they are on top of other, more serious, things going on in her personal life, the main one being that her Dad is receiving chemotherapy treatment for cancer.

Towards the end of lunch we discussed how as we have gotten older our need to discuss our problems and issues with anyone who will listen has lessened. In fact there are lots of things that we don't discuss at all and the ones that we do discuss are usually with the people that we have known for the longest.

It wasn't very long ago that I felt the need to talk about all of my problems, all of the time, to pretty much anyone who would lend an ear. The fact that I don't feel the need to do this anymore is just another example, I think, of how I have grown up in the past two or three years.

When I was younger I lacked experience and I doubted myself and my judgment and I had a total lack of conviction in any decisions that I made. You need other people's opinions to make you feel validated. Similarly, when people had their own problems I was always chomping at the bit to proffer my own point of view and advice, because in a round about kind of way it would make me feel better about the decisions I had made in my own life.

These days the idea of discussing some guy I quite like with a relative stranger is really unappealing. That person doesn't know the person I'm talking about and they more than likely don't know me and all the things I have been through and how those things have gotten me to this point in my life. I don't discuss my sexual exploits with people I work with anymore, not because I'm ashamed of myself or of those things, but because it has become boring to hear girls screech and say things like, "But doesn't it really hurt?" (No. It feels great!)

Don't get me wrong. I love meeting new people and making new friends. But I love the warm blanket feeling I get from thinking about all of the people who have been through everything with me over the past 18 years or so and that I have gotten to the point in my life where when I do need to talk about things, they listen and understand and get me and the situation quick enough for the conversation not to have to drag on over hours and hours of sobbing and nose blowing.