The 5-Year-Stranger Theory: Most friendships will end up lasting for no more than five years.

The theory behind this theory: Most friendships are really based on proximity and convenience.

Don't try to hold on to a friendship if it isn't working for you or meeting your reasonable standards.

Understand that to truly maintain a friendship, both of you need to put in the effort and prioritize it.

When you say you are BFFs with someone, do you mean best friends forever? Or best friends for five years? The 5-year-stranger theory that you may have seen on the Internet suggests that many times it is really just the latter.

What Is the 5-Year-Stranger Theory?

This theory suggests that most of your close friendships will last no more than five years or so—despite your best intentions. It's not as if you become friends with someone saying, "Hey, let's hang out all the time and then start drifting apart so that we eventually become strangers someday again." But that's what can happen—at least according to the theory.

The theory behind this theory: Most friendships are based on proximity and convenience—rather than some unbreakable bond. If you think about it, you are probably more likely to become friends with people you are going to school with at the time—or working with, playing pickleball, or living in the same neighborhood.

What's tying you together, then, is something external rather than what Randy Newman claims in the song "You’ve Got a Friend in Me” ("and as the years go by, our........

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