Looking for what someone needs: Do they want comfort? Empathy? Advice? Tough love? (If you don’t know the answer, loop more.) Asking permission. “Would it be okay if I told you how your words affect me?” or “Would you mind if I shared something from my own life?” or “Can I share how I’ve seen others handle this?” Giving something in return. This ca

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Stay together, I said. It’s going to get hard. Your kids are young. Your careers are just starting to take off. But stay together. Be there, even when it’s hard. Even when it’s inconvenient. After I got off the call, I kicked myself for not remembering a quote by C.S. Lewis: “Friendship is unnecessary,” he wrote, “like philosophy, like art, like th... See more

* “The dynamic of friendship is almost always underestimated as a constant force in human life: a diminishing circle of friends is the first terrible diagnostic of a life in deep trouble: of overwork, of too much emphasis on a professional identity, of forgetting who will be there when our armored personalities run into the inevitable natural disas... See more