An Exploration of Friendship and Well-Being in Established Adulthood and Midlife

The current paper explores adult friendship and its relation to satisfaction with life and loneliness during established adulthood and midlife. The sample (n = 124) consisted of 59 established adults (30–45 years) and 65 midlifers (46–65 years), with the majority of participants characterized as White, middle-income, and female. Participants completed the Network of Relationships-BSV scale (Furman and Buhrmester, International Journal of Behavioral Development 33:470–478, 2009) to measure friendship quality, the Satisfaction with Life Scale (Diener et al., Journal of Personality Assessment 49:71–75, 1985) to measure one’s global sense of life satisfaction, and the UCLA Loneliness Scale (Russell, Journal of Personality Assessment 66:20–40, 1996) to measure participants’ level of loneliness. Results suggest that friendship plays a more central part in the lives of those in midlife compared to those in established adulthood and that loneliness is higher in established adulthood than in midlife. There were no significant differences in satisfaction with life for the two groups. Implications of the findings are discussed with regard to the middle adult years as two distinct age frames.