Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close - 'A life-affirming guide to creating and preserving great friendships' (Elle)

It’s about how it’s critical to have people in your life who love you and see you when you’re fun and sparkly and on top of the world, but also love you when you’re stagnant and petulant and self-sabotaging and letting them down. It’s about how that kind of love makes you believe in other kinds of love. It’s about how the essential texture of life ... See more

Even friendship is often cemented with sacrifice. Sharing secrets and intimate details, for example, makes you vulnerable but engenders trust. In my own life, one of the things that helps me feel closer to someone is wasting time together . My childhood and teenage friends are dear to me in part because we've sacrificed countless hours to each othe

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* “Like a marriage, the best friendships require investment, compromise, and sacrifice. By creating shared alignment, trust, and companionship, strong friendships nourish the soul and sharpen the mind.”

Some social scientists and even philosophers suggest a different vision of friendship, in which friendship is conceived not as a ledger of emotional debits and credits but as an organic creation — an artwork — built by the friends themselves. Conceived in this way, friendships are not ranked or stratified along a bright line from BFF to near strang... See more