It’s amazing what can happen in a year.
Pleasant surprises, disappointments, and decisions can change everything. People leave, while others come home. You can miss out on things you really wanted but be gifted moments you didn’t realize you needed. Entire books can be written. Perspectives can be changed.
When I started writing this book, I already considered myself to be a good friend. I cared, I cooked, I showed up. When I told people about the book’s topic, there were no looks of surprise or confusion, only affirming nods and encouraging words, which reminded me that my decision to dive heart first toward friendship made sense. At that time, I knew there was more to learn about the power of friendship, in all its iterations, but looking back, I can see I underestimated just how much.
The Saturday night after I wrote about the liking gap, I decided to go to a birthday party I’d planned on skipping. I spoke to people I’d only met once or twice, and many others I was meeting for the first time. I pushed myself through crowds and conversations with the knowledge that I was most likely underestimating how much people at the party liked me. The change I felt within myself that night was dizzying.
After coming across a study titled “I like that you feel my pain, but I love that you feel my joy,”1 which found that we want those closest to us to celebrate our wins just as much as they comfort us through our hurt, I tried to do just that. I’ve always prided myself on being a good listener, someone to turn to on the worst day, who will make up a bed in the spare room, do your grocery shopping, and maybe give you advice, if you’re up for it. But I’d never considered the importance of putting in that same level of effort for people who have just done the thing. After learning that flowers and kind texts and tight hugs can be just as meaningful when reacting to the good things in life as to the bad, I felt my own focus shift. I saw how much it meant to people. I took note when friends returned with more good news, after being reminded how excited I was to celebrate them. The closer I came to writing this final chapter, the more important it felt to ask myself: What would it look like, in practice, to take more of my own advice when it comes to friendship?
What I’ve learned is that it looks like a lot of tiny things. It’s listening to tipsy friends when they tell me they don’t know what they’d do without me and believing that it’s true. It’s taking the obligation I feel toward my family and applying that same dedication to my friendships. It’s pressing pause on life—even in the most inconvenient moments—and being there for the people I would want to do the same for me. It’s remembering that no matter how many times I’ve done all of these things in the past, the most important thing is to continue them into the future.
One year on, the art of practicing what you preach has never felt so within my grasp.
When imagining what this book might become, I hoped to understand how my own friends came to mean so much to me; I wanted an answer to the question, a formula on how to ensure that these relationships go from strength to strength. But the truth is, there is no end to the work that needs to be done if there is ever to be a real shift when it comes to realigning the importance of our relationships. For friendships to no longer sit in the shadows of everything we’ve been taught to believe about nuclear families and soulmates, we need to keep talking, keep searching, and keep trying.
This book is not an end point, but a starting point. It’s a reminder that no matter how passionately you adore your friends or how clearly you see their worth, there is always further to stretch. There are always more promises to make. Even if you already love your friends fiercely, there is always more room to grow.
You don’t have to have a lifelong best friend to be someone who cares about friendship. You don’t even have to feel like you have any close friends at all. In every conversation I had while writing, even when talking to people about the friends they loved most, or had lost forever, flaws almost always emerged. There are endless opportunities for people to show up or let you down, and for you to do both of those things in return, but committing to friendship means understanding that even our most important relationships aren’t without their imperfections.
I wasn’t drawn to this work because I consider myself a perfect friend, but I hope to be a better friend now that I have done the thinking, listening, and reflecting necessary to push back on what society expects us to believe about the value of friendship. Because caring deeply about friendship isn’t just about the individuals who make up our treasured relationships; it’s also about challenging the forces that ask us to place these people second. To give friendship the power it deserves, we need to adjust the scales that prioritize our productivity, our families, and our partners above all else.
All of us, whether we’re aware of it or not, have fallen into the habit of putting our friendships second. The label “just friends,” which so many of us use in an offhand way, exists as a counterpoint to “lovers.” It is a way to minimize our friendships so they don’t become something our romantic partners need to fear or envy. But with all I know about love and about friendship, I can see that “just” exists only to downplay the relationships that, for many people, end up mattering the most.
Who is there to make us feel at home in new neighborhoods and countries? Who provides comfort at work and safety outside our relationships? Who do we go to when our hearts get broken? And who makes being alone by society’s current standards feel anything but lonely? More than ever, I am firm in the belief that the only answer to all of these questions is our friends. And it’s about time we put them first.