QUALITY FRIENDS

Be Mine

I’m a crap friend. I’m the WFF (Worst Friend Forever) to the BFF of friend hierarchy. I wish I could say I was better. I’m not.

It’s not because I lack the typical qualities of a good friend—loyalty, empathy, keeping confidences or genuinely caring about people. It’s because I’m terrible at staying in touch. I’m also not particularly good at having the same conversations with the same group of social friends, no matter how long I’ve known them, over and over again.

Unless you’re in my very smallest subset of friends (and by smallest, I mean very few), we probably don’t speak more than a handful of times a year.

And another thing. Don’t hate me. I love women. Some of my best friends are women. But as a woman, I’ve never liked traveling in a pack. I don’t gossip. And when a large group gets together, I find most people, women and men alike, well... loud, with everyone seemingly competing to be heard. It’s just not my thing.

All of which makes me a really good friend to a very specific type of person...and probably not a very good friend to many others.

But I’ve had a bit of an epiphany.

While I’m incredibly grateful for the friendships in my life, I’ve come to realize I haven’t really developed any new ones in recent years. Don’t get me wrong. I adore and appreciate my friends. It’s just that the more I thought about it, the more I realized I was missing some very specific kinds of friends in my world.

So, this is me, officially putting out the word.

Calling all friends.

To my existing ones: I love you. I couldn’t do life without you.

To new ones: I’m not just looking for any kind of friend. I’m looking for quality friends. And I’ll do my best to be one too.

The idea is to become more intentional about friendship itself. I want to make room for new people, new perspectives and new relationships that reflect my life today. I want to cultivate deeper relationships. (I’m good at the deep part. I’m just not great at the time commitment.) But I’m down for trying.

In fact, I think it’s something we should all consider.

Because when you really think about it, most friendships are born out of circumstance rather than intention. There are the childhood O.G.’s who knew us before we knew ourselves. The bestie who becomes our true north. The business friend who understands our ambition. The parenting friend born out of playdates and recitals. There are so many kinds of friends, even the friend with a shelf life who was exactly what we needed until they weren’t.

But how many become truly deep and meaningful?

What I’ve come to understand, and why I find friendship so fascinating and something I want to work harder at, is that friendship isn’t one relationship. It’s many. It’s an ecosystem and, I would argue, part of our personal architecture too. How we design and build these relationships has tremendous influence on how we experience life.

Unlike family, friendship is chosen. Every meaningful friendship exists because two people continue choosing one another, again and again, through changing seasons, circumstances and versions of themselves.

That’s growth. That’s meaning. And, increasingly, the research tells us, it contributes to our longevity too.

Perhaps that’s why quality matters so much more than quantity.

THE ARCHITECTURE OF FRIENDSHIP

The Foundation And Science

Every meaningful structure needs a blueprint, and friendship is no different. It just rarely gets treated like one. I think that’s my point. (And you know I love the science.)

We talk about building a career, building our bodies and building wealth. But we almost never talk about, or I dare say think about, building a friendship, even though structurally it works the same way: foundation, framing, maintenance and time.

Good things, yes, take time to build.

Researcher Jeffrey Hall at the University of Kansas actually put a number on it. His 2018 study found it takes roughly fifty hours together to move someone from acquaintance to casual friend, ninety more to become real friends, and more than two hundred before someone becomes a close friend. Two hundred hours. That’s not chemistry, that’s construction. It’s proof that closeness isn’t a feeling that simply strikes. It’s a structure you build, hour by hour, the same way you’d lay a foundation. Maybe that’s why so many of us never quite make the full investment.

Closeness isn’t a given; it’s earned through accumulated time, shared experiences, reliability, trust and consistency.

And time is only part of the equation.

Anthropologist Robin Dunbar discovered that while we may know hundreds, even thousands, of people, our brains can sustain only a surprisingly small number of meaningful relationships. His research suggests that although our broader social network extends to roughly 150 people, our true inner circle is dramatically smaller: about five people make up our deepest support system, around fifteen form our closest circle, and approximately fifty become genuine friends.

Even in an age of followers, group chats and social media, those numbers haven’t fundamentally changed. Technology has expanded our networks. It hasn’t expanded our capacity for closeness.

Which brings me to more circles, and caps.

Not every friend plays the same role in our lives. Some are the constants, the people we know we can call at three in the morning. Some belong to a particular time, chapter or shared experience. Some challenge us to grow. Others bring joy, laughter or perspective. None is inherently more valuable than the other, but they aren’t interchangeable. They’re simply different.

Knowing where someone sits within your circle, or which cap they wear in your life, isn’t cynical. It’s clarity. It helps us appreciate people for who they are, and what they’re capable of, rather than resent them for who they aren’t. The strongest friendships aren’t those that all look the same. They fit the role they’re meant to play.

YOU’VE GOT A FRIEND

I See You

If you ask me what the very best friendships have in common, I think it’s this: they make us feel seen. You can be you. I can be me. No performance required.

There’s magic (and such relief) in the friend who notices what you didn’t say out loud, hears the slight change in your voice, or realizes you’ve gone quiet in recent days. And there’s comfort in being able to recognize it in others too.

There’s a name for it. It’s called attunement: the ability to recognize another person’s emotional state without them having to explain it. I call it special because it’s one of the most profound expressions of friendship. It simply says, I see you.

I’ve been fortunate to have a few friends like this, and it’s no small thing. It’s what happens when years of shared history, genuine attention and trust allow someone to know us almost as well as we know ourselves. On occasion, it’s even a new friend who’s simply extraordinarily empathetic, someone who naturally connects with us, forming an immediate bond.

Deeply seeing someone for who they are, accepting them and still loving them is one of the greatest gifts we can give another human being. I really believe this. And it’s easier said than done.

We humans judge. We have strong opinions about everyone and everything, including our friends, especially our best ones, no matter how supportive we want to be. So to truly accept another. To notice. To pay attention. And to commit to loving them anyway, despite their flaws (and ours), is unique today.

In a world that moves fast, where so many of us feel alone, friendship quietly says, I’ve got you. I know you. You matter.

GIFTED

You Give Good Friend

We’ve all met them.

The person who seems to have an out-sized, other-worldly gravitational pull. They have lots of friends. They’re always at the center of friendships. Their friendships last. People confide in them. They introduce you to and share a new world of friends. They somehow stay connected across decades, even cities, continents and seasons of life. They share holidays, and always have someone in the guest room.

How do they find the time? And the depth to have so many rich relationships? I can’t help but think about Dunbar’s theory. Do humans even have this bandwidth? Do people like this really exist?

Well, I can tell you they do. I have a friend like this. And I marvel at her. She’s magnificent to watch. She’s one of my oldest friends since college, and she has always been the sun among an entire constellation of people who gravitate toward her.

She’s beautiful, fun, grand, and the most strong-willed human I have ever met. She has literally willed her life into existence and can do the same with almost anything. You just want her to will yours too.

Her world is large, much like her magic. But that’s never been the source of her charm. Even when life was simpler, smaller, she somehow made it feel grand. Her old car was glamorous, not old. An ordinary night out became an adventure. She has always had an uncanny knack for making almost anything, including nothing at all, feel enchanted.

And perhaps that’s why she’s such a gifted friend. She has the same ability to make people feel special. She’s a good friend, a loyal friend, and a deep friend. To many. It comes naturally to her. It’s extraordinary. And she wears both the pleasure—and what can only be described as the responsibility—well. She is fiercely loyal to those she loves.

It’s tempting to believe these people are just charismatic. Or naturally extroverted. But I promise you, that’s not it.

I’ve come to believe that being a quality friend, especially one who can really nurture friendships, is a skill set. And while it may come naturally to some, for most of us, it doesn’t.

But we can all learn from these people and acquire better skills.

And there’s hope for us mere mortals. No superpower is required. Researchers have found that one of the strongest predictors of lasting relationships isn’t grand gestures at all. It’s something called capitalization: our ability to genuinely celebrate another person’s good news. In other words, the better friends aren’t just the ones who stand beside us when life falls apart. They’re the ones who clap the loudest when life comes together. That made me stop and think.

Most of us assume friendship is tested in adversity. This is true, but it’s tested every bit as much by someone else’s success. How you respond to a friend in celebration is just as important.

Which brings me to the good stuff. I’ve found the people who master friendship share an incredible trait: abundance. And I don’t mean the material kind. They’re generous of spirit and nature. And they’re enormously grateful, always acknowledging the good things in life.

Whether these traits bestow a special reserve that affords them the ability to be a great friend is anyone’s guess. But these people remember the thing you mentioned in passing three months ago. They give. They celebrate without comparison. They will tell you the difficult truths, and keep your confidences. They forgive. They make time. They show up. And not only for the milestone moments, but for the ordinary Tuesdays.

None of those qualities require extraordinary talent. Yet together they create something rare: a person others instinctively trust with their lives. And whom they want to be around.

Like taste, confidence, and leadership, the architecture of friendship is a collection of small, intentional behaviors. They’re practiced consistently over time, not reserved for just the big moments.

Perhaps that’s why I’m thinking of friendship differently today. Less an attachment born of a situation, and skills applied to an intentional act. Something to be learned and shared. Something we cultivate as part of our own self-growth.

The truest test of whether you’re gifted at friendship isn’t whether you can spot these traits in someone else. It’s whether you embody them yourself. Being a quality friend is, first and foremost, a practice of becoming one.

FAIR-WEATHERED FRIEND

Ahh, we know this kind too.

The friend who’s magnetic in the sunshine and nowhere to be found in the storm.

Fair-weather friendship isn’t always dramatic, but it’s ebb and flow is more draining than supportive. And they, like any close relationship, can sting. These friendships aren’t necessarily marked by shocking revelations, explosive arguments or an obvious ending. Sometimes they fade more quietly than that. But, ultimately they find their ending. At least they should.

These are the ones you often recognize through the gradual realization that someone was never really invested in the friendship itself, or in you. They were simply enjoying the circumstances surrounding it.

We’ve all experienced them. And if we’re honest, we’ve probably all been on that less-than-appreciative or taking side, at least once. Perhaps that’s why we recognize the hurt so deeply.

Friendship is one of the few relationships we choose freely, so when that choice no longer feels mutual, and it’s time to terminate the relationship, or it’s quietly withdrawn, the loss can be surprisingly profound.

We question ourselves. We replay conversations. We wonder what changed. Sometimes nothing did. Sometimes life simply pulled two people in different directions. Other times, the imbalance had been there all along. We just didn’t want to see it.

A healthy friendship requires generosity of spirit, but it also requires reciprocity. It asks for mutual effort, mutual respect, and a shared commitment to the relationship. Without these things, one person inevitably carries more of the emotional weight, and over time, even the most generous among us begins to feel depleted rather than supported.

The warning signs are usually there.

The red flags rarely appear all at once. They accumulate quietly: the one-sided effort, the broken confidences, the inability to celebrate your success, the one-sided conversations. We’ve all seen them.

Perhaps the hardest lesson friendship teaches us is that not every relationship is meant to last forever. It teaches us what feels good. And what doesn’t. Both have something to teach us.

Every friendship has something to teach us. Even the bad ones. Knowing when to call it a day, and honor the lesson, even if you’re no longer honoring the friendship, is one of the most important forms of wisdom we acquire.

THE FRIENDSHIP AUDIT

Burden or Blessing

The cycle of friendship is as old as the story of life.

People come into our lives. And people go. Some stay for decades. Others remain only for as long as we needed them to. It’s the natural rhythm of living, growing and falling into friendships, and sometimes falling out.

The cycle is the story.

The joy of finding your people combined with the heartbreak of outgrowing some of them. It’s also the gratitude of discovering new friends and rediscovering old ones.

And how could I not mention pets in this article?! They may just be the very best quality friends of all. That will have to be an entire Substack unto itself.

I’ve had some good ones. I can’t help but think of our most recent guy, Homer. Who would have thought I’d end up with beagles and bulldogs? Then again, I’m a mom of boys. Homer was my constant companion, the perfect home and office buddy. What an unconditional friend he was. He was so good, I can barely imagine another dog.

Whatever you think about friendship, I think the thing to remember is that, unlike family, it’s a relationship that’s chosen, which makes it both more fragile and more meaningful. Nobody is contractually obligated to be your friend. Every meaningful friendship exists because two people choose one another.

Which brings me to one final question, the one I think we all ask ourselves from time to time.

Is a friendship a burden or a blessing? In the most honest sense, this is the accounting of an ordinary life. And ordinary friendship. Does a friendship make us more ourselves? By this I mean more expanded, or more complete? Does it make us better than the way it found us?

I don’t believe every friendship has to pass a test. But I do think our relationships deserve evaluation from time to time. One that is healthy and rewarding feels like a worthy goal.

And the good news? Quality friendships have a remarkable resilience. When they’re built on mutual respect, reciprocity and true generosity of spirit, they last. Which means we have a better chance of living longer, healthier lives too (don’t forget the science!).

So there’s the audit. It’s whether we’ve invested our time in quality friends. And not simply whether we’ve found them. But whether, through all the cycles of our lives, we’ve become one.