9 Thoughts on Friendship

Ask questions, learn to repair, accept what's on offer & never ghost

I’m by no means a perfect friend, but connection matters so much to me, and when I speak at an event or do an interview, the topic of friendship comes up every time. I think that’s because it’s something that matters to all of us but also it’s hard to get right, and we all want to learn how to deepen and enrich our connections with the people we love.

Here are a few thoughts I share over and over:

1. It takes effort and time both to make friends and to maintain meaningful friendships…and it’s worth it.

Often when we talk about dating, we remind people that it’s hard but worthwhile—that if what you ultimately want is a partnership, then it’s worth it to put in the time and risk and awkwardness to get on dating apps or let your friends set you up or whatever. We expect dating to be an investment of time and energy, in service of meaningful partnership at some point.

The same is true about friendship, and I think it’s helpful to talk about that. It’s work. It’s vulnerability and effort and time and energy, and I think it’s incredibly valuable—absolutely one of the greatest investments we can make with our time and our effort—but it doesn’t happen magically.

Lots of times when people ask me about friendship, I realizes we talk that they want deep, committed friendship…but they want it to sort of appear out of thin air without time and effort. They don’t want to make time. They don’t want to take the risk. They don’t want to invest over and over. And so I give them the bad news gently: that’s not how this works.

There is good news, too, though, alongside that bad news. The good news is that I don’t believe the myth that some people are good at friendship and some people aren’t—or maybe I believe that’s true, but also it’s changeable.

What I mean is that friendship skills are learnable and practice-able just like any other skills. Sure, some people have more natural aptitude or relational intuition, but anyone can learn how to be a better friend—it’s like learning to play an instrument or sew or shoot free throws. It’s learnable, and so so valuable.