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"I used to form friendships based on how much my gal pals and I had in common. I didn&amp;#039;t go so far as to check blood type or astrological sign, but I certainly gravitated toward those who shared my tastes in music, food, fashion, and (what at times could be problematic) men. Inevitably, in the self-contained worlds of classroom learning, dorm living, and career launching \u2014 there&amp;#039;s nothing more bonding than comparing horror stories of bad dates and awful bosses \u2014 we also shared a birth year, plus or minus one.  Now that I&amp;#039;m a little older (and, debatably, wiser), I&amp;#039;ve discovered a new set of friends: women from different generations. &amp;quot;Bridging the generation gap not only increases the friend pool, but it also expands and supports mental well-being,&amp;quot; says Anna Kudak, Ph.D., coauthor of What Happy Women Do. &amp;quot;Friendships with older and younger people help broaden your perspective, which in turn allows you to have compassion and empathy in your day-to-day life.&amp;quot;  I developed a friendship with my neighbor Kit, a good 30 years older, over years of consistent casual contact. In our conversations by the backyard fence, we shifted from talking about the weather (and neighborhood gossip) to discussing the joys and challenges of parenting, our often unrequited love for gardening, and our recipes for the latest baked goods. I knew our friendship had reached a new level when Kit began asking for the occasional ride to a doctor&amp;#039;s appointment. She was a private person, and the favor signaled a level of trust and intimacy that I treasured and that I&amp;#039;ve missed since Kit passed away, at 80, last year. Then there&amp;#039;s M&amp;#039;Balia, a dozen years my junior, whom I met at a birthday party four years ago. We&amp;#039;ve bonded over all the big stuff (family, religion, the search for the perfect takeout burrito) and have laughed until we&amp;#039;ve cried at our mutually misguided efforts to help each other out during the occasional wardrobe emergency: Her bright, cleavage-revealing shirts make me look like I&amp;#039;m trying too hard; my offerings make her look like she&amp;#039;s given up. (&amp;quot;Really?&amp;quot; she&amp;#039;s asked, holding up my admittedly drab tunic as if it were radioactive.) Whether with older or younger women, those friendships connect me to where I&amp;#039;ve been and where I&amp;#039;m going. Suzanne Degges-White, Ph.D., coauthor of Friends Forever: How Girls and Women Forge Lasting Relationships, says, &amp;quot;What was confirmed in our interviews with hundreds of girls and women was that the friendships that stood the test of time were not those built on &amp;#039;shared demographics&amp;#039; alone. Although we may find ourselves in casual friendships with women who are similar to us \u2014 in age, motherhood status, career choice, social class, etc. \u2014 the relationships that will deepen and grow are built on much more personal and meaningful factors. The friendships that endure are those that provide unconditional acceptance, compassionate honesty, and mutual trust. We need friends who have been around the block a time or two and will help us turn the corners in life as well as friends who will energize and inspire us with new perspectives and unique insights \u2014 and who may also appreciate our support as they navigate their ways through life!&amp;quot; Here are five ways to make and keep decade-spanning friendships. 1. Expand Your Network &amp;quot;Our lives tend to be pretty age-segregated,&amp;quot; says Rebecca Adams, Ph.D., a sociology professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s not just that we prefer people like ourselves; it&amp;#039;s also that we have a greater likelihood of encountering people like us. Unless you share an interest with a person of a different age, you&amp;#039;d have to go out of your way to see the person,&amp;quot; she explains. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s difficult, since one of the main paths to friendship is unplanned, repeated interaction.&amp;quot; Their leading people to consistently cross paths is one reason churches and other religious organizations are a breeding ground for intergenerational friendships. Taking a class, joining a group, or signing up to do community service also will immediately throw you into circles you might not frequent otherwise.  That&amp;#039;s what happened to Mary Clampet, 67, of Norristown, PA, who connected with three college students \u2014 Lucy, Esther, and Catherine \u2014 from England when they came to Philadelphia in 1998 to volunteer at a Christian school there. &amp;quot;Having the shared experience of working together in one of the poorest neighborhoods in southwest Philly drew us close fast \u2014 and eventually made us lifelong friends,&amp;quot; Clampet says. Even now that they&amp;#039;re living in different countries, the four stay in touch by e-mail and have even visited one another across the Atlantic. &amp;quot;Every time we see each other, it feels like no time has passed,&amp;quot; Clampet says of her friends, now all moms in their early 30s. 2. Keep an Open Mind Veronica Henry, 42, from Cleveland, discovered that music could quickly bridge the age gap when she met Diana Trego, 62, at a Jimmy Buffett party in Pittsburgh on New Year&amp;#039;s Eve 10 years ago. &amp;quot;We are different in many ways,&amp;quot; Henry says. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m a die-hard Republican, and she is a staunch Democrat; she is a grandmother with kids my age, and I&amp;#039;m married with dogs, no children; she is planning on retiring soon, and I recently embarked on a real estate career. However, we are both redheads and love Jimmy Buffett, and we have become, unexpectedly, great friends.&amp;quot; It helps to remember that regardless of the package, the core values we want in friends are not age-specific. &amp;quot;What all of us look for in friendships and how we manage them is pretty universal,&amp;quot; says Rosemary Blieszner, Ph.D., alumni distinguished professor at Virginia Tech. &amp;quot;You want someone you can trust and confide in, someone who cares about you and whom you care about; someone you share interests with or, if you like novelty, someone who&amp;#039;s going to introduce you to new things.&amp;quot; Meredith Broussard, 37, who is a writer and mom to a kindergarten-aged son in Philadelphia, says that her older women friends serve as a personal GPS system: &amp;quot;They&amp;#039;re great models for what kind of person I want to be, especially when it comes to the kinds of relationships I want to have with my husband and my kids. They provide me with a moral compass, and they&amp;#039;re also just a lot of fun.&amp;quot;  3. Consider the Rewards The benefits of all friendships include not only happiness, but also well-being. Various studies have found a strong connection between people&amp;#039;s social networks and their psychological and physical health, and among women, the impulse to &amp;quot;tend and befriend&amp;quot; in times of stress correlates with the body&amp;#039;s release of oxytocin, a hormone that promotes a sense of calm, UCLA researchers found. Intergenerational friendships can ratchet up the healing power of friendship with the benefit of age-provided wisdom and perspective. For Amanda Milloway, 27, of Raleigh, NC, friendship with 50-year-old Jo Carol Mitchell-Rogers of Greenville, SC, turned out to be critical to her health. &amp;quot;She saved my life,&amp;quot; Milloway says. Almost seven years ago, Milloway moved for work to a town where she knew no one. The adjustment overwhelmed her. She kept in touch with Mitchell-Rogers through e-mail and semiweekly phone calls. Mitchell-Rogers recognized that Milloway&amp;#039;s mood was spiraling downward after hearing reports of the weekends her younger friend spent crying and pacing or scrubbing the floor with a toothbrush. &amp;quot;When she realized that it was not just sadness,&amp;quot; Milloway recalls, &amp;quot;she very, very gently suggested a counselor, knowing that would not be easy for me to hear because of my &amp;#039;toughen up&amp;#039; background. She planted that seed, and when I couldn&amp;#039;t take it anymore, I called and asked her how I could find someone. She went looking and found me several different counselors, one of whom I chose.&amp;quot; 4. Listen and Learn Most of us no longer live in homes with two or three generations under one roof, but taking the time to cultivate older friends can yield vital nurturing and support. A study that appeared in the Journal of Marriage and Family showed that older adults tend to feel less ambivalent about (i.e., more close and committed to) their friends: If they&amp;#039;re there for you, they&amp;#039;re really there.  Older friends \u2014 and that can even mean someone in her 80s, if you&amp;#039;re in your 60s \u2014 offer the benefit of experience. &amp;quot;Age peers can be sympathetic,&amp;quot; says Virginia Tech&amp;#039;s Blieszner, &amp;quot;but they won&amp;#039;t know what to say if they haven&amp;#039;t gone through it.&amp;quot; That&amp;#039;s what Jayna Grassel, 22, of Delmont, PA, found: &amp;quot;Three years ago, I joined my library&amp;#039;s knitting group, the Knotty Knitters, whose youngest member was 64,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;But around the knitting table, we&amp;#039;re all the same age. Every week I store away information on how to nurture my marriage, what to do with a rotten batch of tomatoes, and how to deal with pushy in-laws. My older friends give me relationship advice and encouragement in my new career, and they have taught me new ways to knit. Sometimes I look around the table and ask how I got so lucky to have eight women who have done it all before \u2014 careers, marriage, children, and now grandchildren \u2014 and are there to guide me.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Older people are less likely to perceive situations negatively,&amp;quot; says Blieszner, &amp;quot;and they&amp;#039;re typically more tolerant, or willing to pick their battles and not get aggravated about every little thing.&amp;quot; They&amp;#039;re also less prone to drama, according to researchers Lawrence Weiss, Ph.D., and Marjorie Lowenthal, Ph.D., who found at the University of California, San Francisco, that older adults perceive more complexity in situations than younger people do. Milloway, the 27-year-old editorial assistant, has seen the wisdom of her older friend, Mitchell-Rogers, in action. &amp;quot;Even when she really vehemently disagrees with someone, she can understand where they&amp;#039;re coming from,&amp;quot; Milloway observes. &amp;quot;She would be embarrassed to hear me say that I look up to her and would like to emulate her in almost every way, but it&amp;#039;s true. The way she moves in the world, the way she interacts with people \u2014 it&amp;#039;s humble, and it&amp;#039;s patient and compassionate.&amp;quot; 5. Cherish Similarities (and Differences) When Rebecca Adams, of the University of North Carolina, interviewed older women, they said that younger friends often provided &amp;quot;instrumental&amp;quot; support, whether it was by mowing lawns or by running errands. Younger friends also helped keep older friends current. Mary Harris, of Charleston, SC, who is in her 50s and a mother of college-aged children, is pursuing a graduate degree and says her younger school chums help keep her abreast of what her own daughter is going through \u2014 or will someday go through. &amp;quot;Talking to them makes me aware of things I might want to bring up with my daughter, even though she might not be at the same stage,&amp;quot; Harris says. &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s not wrestling with whether to move in with someone at this moment, but talking with these other young women about it makes me think about the best way that I could talk to her about it when the time comes.&amp;quot; Thinking of friendship in terms of what you get from it can sound crass, but love and fulfillment, trust and laughter, inspiration and soul-sustaining intimacy, aren&amp;#039;t commodities; they&amp;#039;re what makes life worth living. I see untempered passion in my 31-year-old pal Addie, who&amp;#039;s discovering her voice as a taxpaying, voting citizen, making choices in her career that support her beliefs. I see my 79-year-old buddy Dottie struggling with one physical ailment after another, but still possessed of a wit so dry and generous that the very air around her courses with joy. For me, perhaps the greatest payoff of being close to people of different ages is the way it weaves me into the larger fabric of life. But the benefits can be as practical as they are emotional. My own mother, who&amp;#039;s 87, has good friends ranging in age from their 30s to their 90s. &amp;quot;What&amp;#039;s distinctive about the younger ones?&amp;quot; I asked her recently. &amp;quot;Well,&amp;quot; she said after a pause, &amp;quot;they&amp;#039;re a lot more mobile.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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