What is your longest adult friendship and why?

This weekend, my best friend of 10 years flew from Oregon to visit me in Texas. Sometimes I’m amazed that we’re still as close as we were that long ago. Distance doesn’t affect our friendship one bit and even if we go through periods where we don’t keep in touch as well, we always pick back up where we left off. We’ve each been through a marriage and a divorce, she has had a child in that time, and we got matching tattoos together last year to commemorate our friendship.

Spending time with her this weekend made me wonder about long term adult friendships. What’s the longest friendship you’ve had? Why? What role do you play in each other’s lives? What life changing, or even minute, events have you been through together or watched one another go through?

I’m not really interested in childhood friendships unless they’ve now led into full, lasting adult friendships. I’m not thinking along the lines of a marriage either because that’s just a different kind of relationship :)