figuring out friendship

In her book, The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life With Friendship at the Center, journalist Rhaina Cohen details our historically recent obsession with marriage as the be-all, end-all, noting how many modern wedding ceremonies include spouses proclaiming that they are each other’s “best friends.” Indeed, many women told me that they felt ... See more

As with all things rooted in a group, group chats necessarily exclude even more than they include. All this whispering in digital ears requires someone — most of the world, in fact — to be on the outside. In one group chat I’m part of, members all had to approve the addition of a friend, because the dynamic had become so fixed that no one wanted to... See more

The term, which was coined by the sociologist Ray Oldenburg in the 1980s, essentially refers to a physical location other than work or home where there’s little to no financial barrier to entry and where conversation is the primary activity. The historical examples that Oldenburg cites in his book The Great Good Place include French cafés, German A... See more

A recent study out of the University of Kansas found that it takes about 50 hours of socializing to go from acquaintance to casual friend, an additional 40 hours to become a “real” friend, and a total of 200 hours to become a close friend.

In his 2001 book, Women and Men as Friends: Relationships Across the Life Span in the 21st Century , psychologist Michael Monsour argues that cross-sex friendships enrich our social networks, something one of the women who love guy friends I spoke to referred to as “inter-gendered stretching.” I could see proof of this even in my young children. Th... See more

But we didn’t set out to become friends. We set out to write together and see where it goes. What I learned writing this book is every friendship needs an “about,” and our “about” was so clear and so compelling from the jump.

This year, pay your taxes: Resolve to throw two parties—two because two feels manageable, and chain-letter math dictates that if every party has at least 10 guests (anything less is not a party!) and everyone observes host-guest reciprocity (anything else is sociopathic!), then everyone gets 20 party invitations a year—possibly many more. Bear in m... See more

I asked her for advice on making new friends, and she told me something a “friendship mentor” once told her: “Make the first move, and make the second move, too.” That means you sometimes have to ask a friend target out twice in a row—a strategy I had thought was gauche.