Where Have All the Good Friends Gone?
Episode 497 | Author: Emilie Aries
Feel like you’re the only one keeping your friendships alive?
Recently, I received a note from a listener, Amanda, about making friends as an adult. Her concern is extremely relatable: how does someone build or rebuild stronger friendships when it seems like you’re the only one putting in the effort?
Chances are, you’ve experienced some shifts in friend frequency and intensity in your adult years—we’re all busy with our careers and our families, and sometimes it can feel like we’re screaming into the void when it comes to making plans and achieving platonic intimacy. So, let’s look at this from a classic Type A perspective: What’s going on, and how can you start to fix it?
Flagging friendships are on the rise
The media has covered this topic a lot lately. In a great article on Slate entitled I’m Starting to Think You Guys Don’t Really Want a “Village”, the author highlights the contrast between the old “it takes a village to raise a family” adage and the heavy individualism of American culture. There’s an inevitable result: the ongoing isolation of parents.
I talked about this in episode 479, American Parents Are Not Okay. More and more research is showing the huge mental health impacts of parental pressure and isolation. On my old podcast, Stuff Mom Never Told You, Bridget Todd and I even covered the unique challenges of making female friendships back in 2017 on the episode Can We Be Friends?.
Recently The Atlantic added to the chorus of outlets talking about our loneliness problem with a piece called, Americans Need to Party More, making the case that everyone says they want a “village,” but no one seems willing to do the organizing and hosting.
In other words, this is nothing new. So, what can we do about it?
How to strengthen existing relationships and forge new ones
Let’s break down five things that I am trying to do and highly encourage you to tackle when it comes to making friends, keeping friends, and being a good friend.
Get clear on what you’re craving
In her email, Amanda mentions that the people she engages with have a tendency to keep things surface-level, while she wants to go deep. I’d encourage her, and any of you who feel the same, to start by getting more granular about what that means.
What specifically are you longing for? Is it more reliance on one another, tackling tougher conversation topics, or just hanging out more often? Do you want more spontaneity, more laughter, more fun?
After doing a bit of soul-searching on this myself, one thing my husband and I identified was the desire to have more parental hangouts where our kids can play together and the adults can get some actual talk time.
To make that happen, we adopted a ritual we call F*ck It Fridays. We order pizza rather than cook and, if we aren’t too exhausted from the week, we invite a family with kids around our kids’ ages to come over and hang out—a friendly gathering that keeps things casual.
Once you’ve identified what specifically you’re missing, you can start designing solutions that meet your unique needs. Ritualize these routines and you don’t need to think twice about it - it’s a nice way to “set it and forget it” and reduce the mental load of planning and organizing.
Prioritize experiences over status updates
So often, when we do finally get together with friends, we spend the whole time taking turns listing what’s happened since we last saw each other. That’s a natural next move, but it only adds to that sense of the “surface level” friendship that Amanda mentioned feeling frustrated by. To go beyond the “grab coffee and catch up” classic, try planning adventures and inviting friends to join you.
Whether it’s a new restaurant you’ve been meaning to sample, an art exhibit that looks interesting, or a fun fitness class—make a plan for something you want to do anyway, and then reach out. Personally, I’ve been getting really into pilates, and I’ve been inviting friends to attend with me. If they can’t make it, it’s no big deal because I wanted to go anyway.
Lower the bar for hosting
The Atlantic article Americans Need to Party More points out that people always say they want more socializing, but people aren’t willing to host! It’s fair enough, I suppose, since hosting puts a ton of emotional and physical labor on the host. But it doesn’t have to.
One of the key features of my family’s new Friday approach is the casual aspect. Too often, I think we refuse to invite people over because it would mean we’d have to clean the house from top to bottom and cook a fancy meal, and who has time for that? If you can accept that the place isn’t spotless and the meal is delivered, the prospect of having people over becomes a lot less daunting.
There are two benefits to lowering this particular bar: one, it encourages more spontaneity—you’ll feel comfortable inviting people over with just a day or even a few hours' notice; sometimes, that works best for our busy lives, where free evenings sneak up unexpectedly. And two, it lowers the bar for your guests, too, reminding them of this low-key option and making them more likely to return your invitation in the future.
Cast a wider net
After you choose which adventure you’re going to recommend to your pals, share the invitation in a group chat rather than a private DM. That way, you increase the odds that people will come, and you’re less likely to feel rejected if you don’t get any bites. This approach might reveal some who aren’t willing to invest in the friendship, but it also gives more people a chance to convey just how willing they are to show up for you.
Catch and release resentment
If you tend to pour yourself into your friendships and often feel like that effort isn’t reciprocated, try taking a step back. When I had more free time to devote to planning and initiating get-togethers, I was often dismayed by how few people accepted my outreach and how little I received in return.
Such situations can lead you to question whether there’s something wrong with you, or your kids, or your partner that’s making people balk at your invitations. Almost always, the truth is that it’s them, not you. They, like so many of us, are overscheduled with work, and housekeeping, and caregiving, and they just aren’t capable of investing in friendships right now.
If you feel resentment starting to build, let this be a reminder to decenter yourself. Even if they forget to express it, people appreciate that you took the initiative, and they’ll remember it. However, if you do all the heavy lifting, they might also take it for granted that you’ll always be the one to make the plans, so consider taking a step back if you’re starting to begrudge that emotional labour.
In doing so, you might just open the door to incoming invitations. If and when this happens, try your best to say yes when you can, to build that goodwill and set an example for all the busy people in your life: Making time for friendship is necessary and healthy.
What are your thoughts around maintaining and building deeper friendships as an adult? Embrace socializing by sharing your thoughts on our Courage Community on Facebook or our group on LinkedIn!
Related Links From Today’s Episode:
I’m Starting to Think You Guys Don’t Really Want a “Village” on Slate
Stuff Mom Never Told You, Can We Be Friends?
Americans Need to Party More on The Atlantic
Bossed Up Episode 479: America’s Parents Are Not Okay
TAKE ACTION on the issues that affect us the most:
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EMILIE: Hey and welcome to the Bossed Up podcast, episode 497. I'm your host Emilie Aries, the Founder and CEO of Bossed Up and today I want to talk about where have all the good friends gone?
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Today's episode was inspired by a listener, Amanda, who wrote in and shared the following, “I found your podcast after I was let go for my CFO/COO role during COVID and I've loved it ever since. I'm a pretty loyal listener. While I'm getting ready in the morning, I often recommend your podcast to others and have suggested your LEVEL UP and SPEAK UP courses too. Although I have no experience with them, I believe in the work that you're doing. Keep going.” First of all, thank you for that.
She goes on to say, “I myself am just really struggling right now with female friendships, namely finding friends who prioritize friendships to the same level that I do. I want to be able to go deep with my friends, but I feel like everyone I meet keeps it at surface level. My husband's a recovering alcoholic, so I know the importance of keeping my people close because I may have to quickly and unexpectedly lean into my village for help. But I find that I'm the one who has to constantly reach out and coordinate coffee, check ins, et cetera. And yet I'm juggling three kids, a C-suite job, a board chair role for a growing nonprofit, volunteering at the school, etc.
While my friends seemingly are juggling less as stay at home moms or other career moms. I feel like my friends don't have the same level of commitment to the friendships that I do. I also have an au pair in my household, so I know that I'm privileged in my ability to carve out time for myself. I can't tell you how many therapy sessions I've spent talking about friendship over the last year. I don't want to hear that it's a stage in life. My kids are 9, 7 and 2. I want to find people who value a deeper level of friendship and commitment, but I'm lost as to where to find them and how to navigate and communicate my needs. Would love to hear a podcast on this topic.” Amanda, thank you so much for writing in.
This is such a relatable problem and one that is on the rise. So much so that a lot more ink is being spilled or writing is happening and being published around this problem. Two pieces that really stood out to me recently I would highly recommend and I'll link to in today's show notes are this piece in Slate called, I'm Starting To Think You Guys Don't Really Want A Village. It was a fascinating take by Claire Haber-Harris, all about, you know, the whole concept of it takes a village to raise a child runs contrary to America's hyper individualist culture and how that's leaving so many parents isolated.
I actually did an episode back on episode 479 called America's Parents Are Not Okay, all about the recent advisory that the US Surgeon General released called, Parents Under Pressure, all about the declining mental health of parents, um, particularly how isolation is on the rise among families and how bad that is for all of us. We could take this in the angle around women in friendships in particular, but I actually did a great episode on making female friendships as an adult way back when I co-hosted The Stuff Mom Never Told You podcast with my lovely friend Bridget Todd. It looks like that was released back in May of 2017 and the title is called, Can We Be Friends? It's still available on iHeartRadio. I'll link to it in today's show notes.
But it gets into the more gendered nuances that you were talking about in your email. But besides the parental angle and the feminist angle, like how uniquely difficult it is to make female friends, I also just think this is a universal problem that requires all of us, right across the gender spectrum, with or without kids, to really be more intentional around friendships. This recent piece, the last thing I'll, I'll point you to before I dive into my own take on this, is a wonderful article that came out in the Atlantic recently called Americans Need To Party More. And it gets into how so many of us say that we want more, more socializing time, but then nobody hosts, which is the root of the problem here. And this is where I deeply relate to you because I feel like I'm a hyper productive individual. And also I'm the only one that seems to organize play dates, organize hangout sessions. Kind of feels like I'm doing a lot of the social and emotional labor to keep my friendships alive. And I've recently navigated this myself, so I can deeply relate to how you have to manage your own mentality around this.
So here's my take. Okay, I've got a couple of pieces to today's Boss Tip episode that I want to break down. The first is to deeply reflect on what do I crave from my friendships that's currently lacking. You mentioned that you want to go deeper with people and others are keeping it at surface level. What does that mean exactly what does going deeper mean? Is it intimacy? Is it being seen? Is it tackling tougher topics in conversation? Is it relying on each other in a deeper way? Is it just higher frequency of hanging out? Kind of define what it is that you're craving and what you're longing for, because clearly it's not happening right now.
So try to get more granular in articulating to yourself first what it is that you're looking for. Some of us might be looking for more intimacy in our friendships, more spontaneity. That's what I want in my friendships. Like, not to have to schedule six weeks out in advance every time we get together. More adventure, more fun, more laughter, more. More feeling alive. Like, what is it that we're craving for? One thing that my family is really intentional about this year, especially as we've become a family of four, is casual family hangouts. And by that, we've created a ritual that we call F*** It Fridays.
Every Friday night, we take. We get pizza or takeout of some kind. Nothing fancy, just like a cava or a sweet green or a pizza from a local pizzeria. And the rules are there's no tidying up the house. There's no, like, overproduction of the meal. And if we're not feeling totally exhausted by the end of the week, which is a big if, we invite friends over and we say the friends that we're specifically looking for are friends who have kids our age. So oftentimes it's like, looks like school parents from friends who are in Max's class. And we say, come on over, bring some beer, bring us some lemonade, bring some seltzers, or bring a salad and come eat pizza with us, and let's hang out and let the kids just destroy the house. And so F*** It Fridays has become this casual family to family gathering that feels so easy to pull off. And it gives us the thing that we're craving, which is more like parental hangout time with kids who can hang out with our kids so that we can actually have some adult conversation. So think about, what is it that you're missing, what is it that you're craving? And try to get more specific so that you can start to design the appropriate solution to meet that unmet need.
The second thing to think about is to prioritize experiences over status updates. So a lot of times with adult friendships, when I meet up with my girlfriends for dinner or coffee, it's just what's going on in your life. Here's what's going on in my life. It feels like you kind of are doing a meeting almost where you just dump on all the stuff that's going on lately and you don't really go beyond that. And it's not by like, it's through no fault of our own. It's of course a natural human thing to do, but the fulfillment you get from that kind of a conversation is just different. And maybe it feels more surface level. To use your language, Amanda, compared to designing adventures and inviting your friends to go on them with you.
Here's what I mean by that. I have a running tab of new things going on in my city of Denver, Colorado that I want to go check out. So I'm going to that exhibit on Friday afternoon, who wants to join me? I'd like to check out this awesome new cocktail bar because they've got, you know, the margaritas that I'm craving lately. Who's in? Or I'm interested in heading to my first ever reformer pilates class, which I'm side note, rapidly becoming a pilates girl myself over here. I'm like, in love with the new fitness regimen that I've got going on. I carve out time to go make that happen, who wants to join me? Who wants to come along with me?
So create an experience that you would like to do on your own, even if no one takes you up on it, and invite others to join with you. I think it's also more enticing for people to say yes to that, if that's up their alley, than it is to say when can we get together and have coffee and just debrief on our lives together? So experiences over status updates.
The third thing I would recommend I already alluded to a little bit when describing our Friday ritual at our house, which is to lower the bar for hosting. If your home can become a safe place to host casual get togethers where your house is not immaculate, where we're not producing like a three course gourmet meal, we're keeping it simple. It actually opens up two possibilities. One, more spontaneity in friendships where you can impromptu invite people over at the drop of a hat without too much premeditation, and two, it lowers the bar for others to reciprocate. If you can show other people that you are comfortable having folks over when there's a pile of laundry visible and the dishes are in the sink, and you're using paper plates, or compostable plates, whatever aligns with your value, like, that makes it okay for others to do the same. I think in our Instagram, like, perfect social media obsessed culture, the concept of hosting has become so overproduced, we have to lower the bar, especially when we're in the season of having littles in our household, because it helps make it okay for others to do the same.
Another way to think about creating more space for friendships in your very busy lives is to think about casting a wide net. So I have a few different text message groups. One that I call like, my mom squad, of like fellow toddler mom friends. One that's all my local family members in the Denver, Colorado area. Another group is just parents from Max's class who we get along with and whose peers are, you know, playmates for him. And then you can think about other groups of friends that you have, my activisty friends, others that I want to hang out with on a regular basis.
And then as you plan experiences, or as you offer to host in a casual, impromptu kind of way, send out a text message to those groups to say, hey, this is happening, who wants to join us? Because what you're doing in that moment is you're increasing your odds that people can show you that they're willing to show up for you and let them either show up for you or not, right? Don't feel like you're inviting a single family out or you're inviting a single friend out. So if they decline, it feels like some sort of rejection. It allows you to kind of take the pressure off yourself and them in a way by saying, here's something that is happening, who wants to join us? And in that way, as the sort of overachieving, over functioning person that you might be, you are allowing them to show you how much they are willing to invest in the friendship.
Now, unfortunately, that means some people will show you that they're not willing to invest in the friendship. But the more that you do this, you're going to see who is willing to meet you halfway. And those are the friendships to invest in further, including inviting people you haven't hung out with for a while, right? Give your longtime friends the opportunity to show you that they're ready and willing to invest in the friendship. It can feel very vulnerable. But what you're doing here is you're not invested in the outcome of deepening that friendship. You're invested in the mechanisms of making the opportunity available and then allowing other people to show you who they really are. And if they continue to not show up, you gotta widen the net further, right? And create opportunities for new people to opt in too.
If you are someone who finds yourself constantly pouring into your friendships and you're just not feeling like that person is meeting you halfway, you're the only one who schedules the coffee dates or the hangouts or sends invitations out. I want you to catch and release resentment. For a few months while I was on maternity leave, I didn't have a lot going on work wise. So I found myself constantly planning family outings for the weekends or you know, escaping bedtime, on occasion to go to a yoga class, or meet up with friends for lunch or coffee. And it was really something that I had a lot of energy around. So I was constantly inviting my friends and fellow families out to see if they wanted to hang out with us.
And I was really dismayed by how few people took me up on those invitations because people are over scheduled and busy and I was really frustrated that I never felt like the invites were coming our way. And I just, I got really in my head about this. I talked to my husband Brad about it constantly and I thought for a minute there, my deepest sort of self doubt and paranoia took over. And I thought, do people not want to hang out with me? Like do people not want to hang out with my toddler because he's high energy kid? Are people like rejecting these invitations because there's something fundamentally flawed about myself or how I'm approaching this? And I talked myself off that ledge because the more I talk to my friends about it, no, that is absolutely not the case. And we have to remind ourselves that it's just not about you, it's about them.
They, like most people, are completely over scheduled and they're not happy about it. They're feeling isolated, they're feeling social isolation. But they're so underwater, especially if they're in the season of life that involves caretaking in addition to working, that they're just not capable of planning and organizing and investing in friendships and outings with friends. So de-center yourself from that resentment and acknowledge it's about them, it's not about you. Acknowledge also that even if they don't express it, people appreciate the fact that you're taking initiative. They do, because it's not something that everyone knows how to do or do well. But in the rare occasion that other people do take initiative and do invite you out, it's really important that you try to say yes whenever you can, because that gives them the confidence that if they invite you out again, you're going to show up for them too.
It's a frustrating thing, but the fact of the matter is we condition others on how we will be treated. So if you've created a dynamic with your friends where you're the one who always organizes get togethers, they're going to start to rely on you for that, whether they are conscious of it or not. So when you start to feel burnt out, when you start to feel resentful, stop organizing events. Stop inviting people out. Give yourself a break. Because there's no sort of victory and there's no metal from martyring yourself in pursuit of deeper friendships. We have to give ourselves and others space to show up for you in return. So we have to let that resentment go and release it, knowing that what you're pouring into your friendships is important, but that you also have to give your friends some space to show up for you as well.
Okay, that was a lot more that I had to say about this than I realized. I'd love to hear what you made of today's conversation. Let's keep the convo going as always in the Bossed Up Courage Community on Facebook or in the Bossed Up Group on LinkedIn.
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And you can find a fully written out blog post with links to all the resources I mentioned bossedup.org/episode497, that's bossedup.org/episode497. And until next time, let's keep bossin’ in pursuit of our purpose and together let's lift as we climb.
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