The Friendship Theory of Everything

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

A big project of mine over the next year will be writing about cultural scripts and expectations in friendship. Friendship is vastly undertheorized as compared to romantic relationships, but they’re just as important: they affect our quality of life in the most fundamental ways. Friendship is an entry point to everything: work, romance, sense of se... See more

Friendship is a bulwark against stasis, a potential source of creativity and renewal.Practically everyone who studies friendship says this in some form or another: What makes friendship so fragile is also exactly what makes it so special. You have to continually opt in. That you choose it is what gives it its value.

The thing I’ve learned over time is that friendships are not fungible—no two people are the same, obviously, but also you can’t replicate the experience of someone knowing you through a particular era of your life. You can never go back to that period of your life; you can never replace the people who witnessed you and supported you. To me, relinqu... See more