How to be a good friend when no one's hanging out anymore

Alternate title: I take friendship very seriously

I took the New York Times “How Healthy is your Social Biome” quiz yesterday. To no ones surprise, I’m doing a great job at staying socially healthy, which is a relief because lately, it’s felt like the only thing I’m knocking out of the park.

Not me, but approximately me and my two hiking friends. Photo by NEOM on Unsplash

I take friendship very seriously. I’m not kidding: people love being friends with me, if only because I regularly reach out, invite, host, listen, empathize, validate. The greatest compliment of my life was when a friend I met in Italy, called me because she was going through a very challenging medical thing and her husband basically crashed out and couldn’t hold space for her. I love that shit. I love being the one you call.

Not everyone values friendship - most people SAY they value friendship, but what they actually value is not having to do anything alone. That’s valid - we live in challenging times and it can be difficult to navigate life without someone trustworthy. However, what most people yearn for is the younger version of friendship - the hours of unencumbered plans with people who also were unencumbered. They yearn for availability. They want to go see Cowboy Carter in Houston and since their husband wouldn’t be caught dead, they need a friend to go with.

I don’t judge that desire, but it is what most people get wrong about friendship. Friendship (good friendship) is incredibly time-consuming. Remember when you’d go out on a Friday night with your college friends, then have brunch the next day to debrief? That’s TWELVE HOURS of connection time. I read a statistic that it takes 94 hours to move someone from acquaintance to friend and we’re over here scheduling monthly coffees with that new person we met playing pickleball and wondering when this friendship stuff will feel easier. Spoiler: not for at least 7 years.

It’s also incredible embarrassing. This isn’t my idea - Kelton Wright wrote about this in a delicious post that I can’t find any longer (if you find it, please post in the comments! I’ll relink to it!), but building friendship takes a lot of energy, effort, and coordination. There’s also a lot of rejection. ‘No, I can’t make it this time’, ‘No, I don’t have childcare’, ‘No, we’re traveling’. It’s easy to give up making friends when the rejection is comparable to our current job market (woof).

I’m an undeterred friend. I read about connection daily, and prioritize friendship above almost everything else. My life has always felt the best when I’m on my phone less and out and about with friends more. I will bulldog you until you finally take me up for coffee. I will offer to stop by your house if you can’t find childcare. But that’s me - that’s not everyone, and it’s certainly not people who work 50 or 60 hours a week (let’s not even talk about 70 or 80). It’s not people who have young children. It’s not people who are stung with rejection when they hear a ‘no’ that maybe just means ‘not right now.’

I work hard at having a thriving social life - not just friends I can grab a drink with but friends with whom I can argue, who challenge me, who hike big mountains and backpack deep valleys, who leave their husbands with the kids for a weekend road trip, who are slightly more conservative (like ‘tax policy’-conservative, not ‘trans people don’t exist’-conservative), and who pick up the phone at all times of day and likely at night (though I haven’t had to do a 2am call in a while). All the time I spend organizing, connecting, and hosting folks pays off in the way of consistent invites to fun, healing things.

Recently, my brother was lamenting his lack of consistent friendships and, though he has small children and friendship is hard when you have small kids, he’s also a very good worker bee at his Fortune 500 company. I reflected to him that the skills which make him great at his job are diametrically opposed to the skills you need to be an excellent friend. Friendship requires flexibility and doggedness and empathy and patience. It means not canceling when you have a big work project or a tough work day. (Yes, to all the ‘listen to your body’ crew, have you ever giggled over oysters while venting about your boss’ toupee? It’s LIFE CHANGING. How’s your body feeling after that, huh?) It means being an emergency contact when dad can’t do pickup, which requires a level of flexibility in your day.

Most of all, being a good friend and reaping the benefits of a truly deep social life requires that you treat friendship as important. Most people treat their romantic relationship as important, their related family as important, and their friends somewhere on the “nice to have” list. I understand this, and I also disagree, because I’ve never met a romantic partner who has the emotional capability to be supportive of all the pieces of my personality all the time (to be honest, not even some of the time). It’s my friends who have been the ones to ask questions about my experience, who listen carefully, who follow up, and who don’t try to fix.

Usually when I write, I organize my writing into How To bullet points, but that feels disingenuous. I’m out of the advice-giving business but if I had any, it’d be to doggedly pursue friendships the way you’d pursue your next great professional achievement or your family or your favorite Netflix show. Also, it takes months if not years to build friendships. Some of the closest friends I have started with an occasional breakfast meeting and over the course of the last 3 years have turned into trips and hikes and concerts and a lot more.

If there is one thing I can wish for you, it’s the feeling of being able to reach out to a handful of people who love you, no matter when, no matter what, who will always answer if you ask them to. There’s no better feeling in the world than that type of love.