My closest friends all live in my phone. By which I mean, I have an active group chat. It began 1o years ago as a casual work chat, but we message every day. Recently, one of us shared a link to a news story about seven friends in their 30s who pooled resources to build their dream home. “We’re doing this, right?” I responded, half-joking, but the seed had been planted. Why would I peg my future to a life partner I don’t have yet, rather than the friends I’ve had longest?
Almost four years after Covid imposed long-term social isolation, many of us are rethinking the value of friendship, including Gyan Yankovich, the author of Just Friends. “So many of the things we do and milestones we celebrate revolve around the idea that the nuclear family and marriage should be valued above all else,” she tells me. “The way society is set up doesn’t make prioritizing friendship easy.”
I had long held some vague expectation that I would eventually have a life partner and be “set”, whatever that means. But I’m now in my late 30s and rapidly reconsidering. Divorce rates in the US have decreased slightly in the last 10 years – but so have marriage rates. Culturally, we are at our most individualized, self-optimized and self-employed.
I also have the fewest friends I have ever had – intentionally – and not just because of my hermetic tendencies. I prefer to invest my time wholeheartedly in mutually enriching friendships. This isn’t unusual: according to a joint study by Oxford and Aalto University, your social network is at its broadest when you’re 25, on average, after which it pares down to fewer but closer connections, and making new friends becomes more challenging.
Before my 30s, I’d float between friends as each found a romantic relationship that dominated their focus – then we’d drift back together after they broke up. This cycle of placeholder companionship made me a bit apathetic about friendships until I realized I didn’t have a go-to name for an emergency contact.
So I made a concerted effort to invest in my support system. I reached out to old friends to catch up. I said yes to their invitations. I opened up to them about my insecurities. I even asked some of them for help (previously unthinkable, as someone who once said “no worries!” to a packed subway after I’d fainted). Socializing requires a lot of energy, but it always feels satisfying.
Our hyperconnected culture has resulted in massive social alienation, with loneliness now a health epidemic. Social isolation increases the risk of early death from all causes. Research states that a lack of social connection is as harmful as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. It’s not just a Covid-era development; loneliness has been on the rise for the last 20 years, especially since smartphones became ubiquitous.
Social media can enable connection, says Irene Levine, a psychologist and the author of Best Friends Forever: Surviving a Breakup with Your Best Friend. However, she warns that digital relations are not a substitute for “face-to-face, hip-to-hip get-togethers when two friends can leisurely connect and share – even spending time together saying nothing. Online friends can’t provide the type of caring and support from friends who live close by.”
Indeed, Yankovich says she now thinks a sense of obligation is an important element of maintaining friendships – in a good way. “I’d always thought of obligation as something with a somewhat negative connotation, usually closely tied to family,” she says. “I think it’s important to show up, care, protect and build a future with someone in the same way we’ve normalized obligation between people who are married or related by blood.”
In Okinawa, Japan, this concept lives in moai, or small groups of lifelong friends (the word translates loosely to “meet for a common purpose”). Moai originated centuries ago as a means of local financial support; friends might contribute money to a communal safety net for anyone in the group who needed, say, medical expenses or home repairs. These days, the concept has expanded to social support systems, including regular social activities with friends. Okinawa is considered one of the world’s blue zones – areas with high concentrations of healthy people living into their 100s – and moai are considered a significant contributor to this longevity.
“Friends encourage us to live healthier lives and are the first to let us know when we need to get help, whether it is from a doctor or therapist,” says Levine, who added that friendships can often be overlooked due to demanding jobs, caregiving and busy modern lives. “Yet it may be just as important to nurture these relationships as it is to exercise, eat nutritious foods and get a good night’s sleep.”
Quality friendships have physiological effects. Talking to supportive friends can keep blood pressure reactivity lower, and having a friend present during a difficult task helps to reduce cardiovascular reactivity. One study concluded that people judged a hill to be less steep when climbing it with a friend compared to going it alone.
Close friendships are a critical factor in not just longevity, but also in making those lived years fulfilling. “I used to be super isolated due to illness in my 20s, and I’ve realized that being around others you care about helps foster your sense of self because when you’re alone you’re just stuck spiraling within your own created reality that isn’t necessarily true,” Alex, 33, from Brooklyn says. “I feel like I’ve been able to develop a more full understanding of who I am in all of the different roles I can exist in through deep, intentional friendships.”
Fulfilling friendships require, at minimum, spending time together consistently, which can be difficult. Our needs and responsibilities change as we age. Sometimes we outgrow friendships, especially with big life changes like starting a family. “Having a baby really changed things in my friendships,” Kara Nesvig, a 34-year-old from Minneapolis, tells me. Some friends showed up for support, and some disappeared. She was able to bond even more closely with others: “I was fortunate enough to develop a super-tight friendship with three former co-workers because we were all pregnant at the same time. That has been one of the most beautiful surprises of my friendship journey.”
We can’t all wait for life-altering events to determine who our real friends are. It might be more realistic to invest in our present relationships. That might mean something as simple as picking up the phone more often, or more planning and effort, like offering to pick up a friend’s kid from school or accompanying them to a medical appointment.
Or we can decide to invest in seeking out new friendships. Yankovich says we often think meaningful friendships require years of knowing a person. But I’m not the same person I was in school, or even in 2020. “There’s no reason why a new friend can’t come to know us – the current iteration of us, at least – just as well,” says Yankovich.
Lacking legal or blood ties, friendships often get overshadowed by our marriages and biological relationships (despite sometimes outlasting them). But there’s no good reason friendships shouldn’t receive as much consideration as those bonds. “One of the things I was most nervous about when writing about why we should prioritize friendship was that I’d be judged as someone who didn’t love their partner (I do) or who wasn’t close to their family (I am),” Yankovich says. “When people are permitted to admit that their friends are just as important to their happiness as their kids, partners and parents, most people will.”