In my humble opinion, few things feel as good as a promising, burgeoning friendship.

As inept as I’ve historically been at finding great men to date, I excel at making new friends. We all have our strengths, and that’s one of mine. Friendships have been the building blocks of my adulthood. I reached 36 as an unmarried, childfree woman with a solid career and a full life. For the last decade and a half, friends have been my companions, my confidantes, my pro bono therapists and my life partners.

The current state of American friendship is a mixed bag. Years of pandemic isolation made people really start to consider the role that friendships play — or fail to play — in their lives. Social circles contracted, loneliness abounded. As the world opened up, we all tried to recalibrate. Should we let friendships that had fallen by the wayside stay there? Should we take it personally if some people didn’t seem that interested in reconnecting with us? How should we be making new friends, now that we were so out of practice — and so many of us were now working from home? If we felt meh about a once-vibrant friendship, should we be telling that friend that it was over for good?

Confusion about protocol combined with a newly-raised consciousness about just how important close social ties are, bred the proliferation of friendship advice. Though well-intentioned, much of this advice feels like a word salad of therapeutic language and a corporate email. On TikTok, “how to break up with a friend” guides abound, including one that went viral where a therapist advises telling a friend that you’ve “treasured our season of friendship,” but you simply “don’t have the capacity to invest in our friendship any longer.”

What this all says to me is that people are yearning for community and connection, and grasping for clear ways to find it. And that’s why I was so excited to sit down with my friend Kelsey McKinney, a brilliant writer and the host of “Normal Gossip,” to have a free-flowing conversation about adult friendship: How to make friends, what it looks like to maintain healthy long-term friendships through different seasons of life, and whether “friendship breakups” should even be a thing.

Hope you enjoy! Xo

Friendship reading list:

“Stop Firing Your Friends,” Olga Khazan, The Atlantic, 2023

“Shine Theory: Why Powerful Women Make The Greatest Friends,” Ann Friedman, The Cut, 2013

“What Adults Forget About Friendship,” Rhaina Cohen, The Atlantic, 2023

“How Many Friends Do You Really Need?,” Catherine Pearson, NYTimes, 2022

“How To Find Your People,” Lane Moore, Vox, 2023

“Men Have No Friends, And Women Bear The Burden,” Melanie Hamlett, Harper’s Bazaar, 2019

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