Friend.

a litany and supplication

My mom often espouses something her mom used to espouse, “if you have one good friend in a lifetime, that’s more than most.” While the quip is not as practical as “starve a fever, feed a cold,” it certainly has a nice ring to it. There’s something in there, a nugget inside a nugget, that feels true. If nothing else it’s a reminder that friendship, the kind with genuine depth and richness, is a rarity. It’s something not everyone “gets.” Possibly in their lifetime.

The scholar Daniel Cox at the American Enterprise Institute has coined the term “friendship recession.” Apparently we are in the midst of one as a society right now. Media, think tanks, and journalists have spent a great many resources to dig up the who, what, when, where, why of this recession (some findings are here, here, and here). Data from surveys would indicate that people have fewer friends than in generations past. And that’s a bad thing.

A phenomenon as messily human as this can’t have a totally nameable cause. However the smart people do have some good guesses. They speculate that it’s because we are more mobile than ever, we worship at the altar of work more than any previous time period, and technology/social media has replaced in-person connection.

This is particularly endemic among men. In 2021, 15% of men claimed they did not have a single friend. Read that again. 15% of men, roughly 24.3 million American men, do not have a single friend. That’s a 5x increase since a similar survey was conducted in 1990. At that time 22% of men reported they would not contact a friend with a big problem. That number is now 45%. Nearly half of men do not have a friend they could or would turn to with a problem.

Though they are generally fairing better then men, women aren’t exempt from this recession. Nearly half of women reported losing friendships during the pandemic. One hypothesis is that women’s connection points, broadly speaking, center around face-to-face activities. Those activities were not happening for the better part of the last 3 years. Friendships fell to the wayside.

Shit also got weird during the pandemic.

The consequences of friendlessness are grave. Lacking a friendship network limits access to opportunities - professional and personal. It stunts access to resources. It is severely detrimental to health, with one expert claiming that loneliness is the physical equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day. It’s correlated to higher rates of depression, anxiety, mental health issues, high blood pressure, heart disease, and memory problems.

Society as a whole suffers when we are without friends. All things considered, people with friends make better citizens. Daniel Cox sums this up well:

Friendship predicts community involvement and civic participation. Sixty percent of Americans with at least six close friends say they have attended a local event or community meeting at least a few times in the past 12 months compared to only 33 percent of those with no close friends. Whether it’s going to the library, eating at a restaurant, or spending time at a bar, Americans with larger friend groups do all these things more often. Having more close friends also increases one's likelihood of talking to strangers. Seventy percent of Americans with at least six close friends report having had a conversation with a stranger at least a few times in the last 12 months. Americans with more close friends volunteer in their communities more often too. 

Simply put: we are better off as a society, as individuals, and as a species when people have friends.

Researching for this essay reminded me of something: I am bursting with friendships.  A real friend glutton. My treasure trove of friendships is truly an embarrassment of riches. I have more than one deep friendship. I’ve surpassed my grandmother’s quota. In fact I consider several friends to be soulmates. And that’s not hyperbole. I call them soulfriends because there’s a feeling that we came from the same batch of primordial stew eons ago.

There’s MV who is as close to being family without technically being related to me. She’s known me a literal 34 years, 6 months, 2 weeks, and 4 days (but who’s counting). I’ve experienced more life with her than just about anybody. There’s JB who is as wise as he is filthy. I’ve laughed more with him than any human on earth. I’ve known JA(W) since we were painfully awkward 15 year olds. We bring out the weirdest parts of each other to the point where I wonder just how we manage to operate in society. There’s SS(W) who knows my guts and wraps them up in more love than I knew was possible. Being with her feels like home. JM can take one look at me and know every single thought in my head. She always makes me feel like things will be okay. VW(N) makes me want to inhale the world with her and do dumb shit. And sometimes we actually do. And JS is the creative collaborator I’ve always wanted and needed. No conversation with her is under 3 hours. Nor should it be.

This is my litany of soulfriends. My people. I claim them. They claim me. There’s no contract. There’s no blood oath. There’s only the repeated choosing of one another.

Lots more people fill up my heart with friendship. JH and our penis gricio. SS and our Swiss chocolate shenanigans. SH, RP, WM (aka the Bang Gang) and our endless shit-talk. Markis Polissing with SB(D) and KP that can light up my entire day. AS and our kikis. The list goes on and on. Different groupings of friends round out my social life and my calendar. My networks extend pretty far and pretty deep if I were to sit down and graph them out. It’s a constellation of webbing and spheres with shiny connection points dotting the canvas.

I say not a single word of this as a brag. I promise. The truth is that meeting friends is entirely circumstantial. Having a dazzling personality or a great sense of humor or amazing talent does not make one meet people. Being in the same space at the same time does. A neighborhood, a classroom, a rehearsal hall, and a gym were the places that I met my soulfriends. It was no credit to me. It was credit to being somewhere at a specific time. That’s the beauty of it. Meeting people is not a set of skills. Just existing in the world is enough to get the ball rolling.

The next part does require some work. It isn’t difficult but it might be intimidating. It’s the ask. “Do you want to grab a coffee after class?” “I’ve been dying to see that movie, we should see it.” “My partner and I are making enchiladas on Friday, you should come over.” The ask requires an acorn of vulnerability. Once you ask a first time with someone, you never have to ask a first time with them again. And like most things it gets easier with practice.

The third part is showing up, literally and figuratively. Once contact is made and the ask is asked, friendships don’t just sprout and grow like an air plant. They require a little more maintenance, although they should be easy like caring for a pothos. Drive to see people. Keep appointments. Remember birthdays. Check in occasionally. Plan trips. It’s all a part of the upkeep necessary for meaningful connection. The return on investment for this effort is overwhelmingly huge.

That’s why my friendships are the thing I’m most proud of. More than any one thing in my life, they make me beam with a sense of achievement. While meeting friends was happenstance, I’ve put in heavy lifting to maintain them. They are a monument, a shrine, my magnum opus. A solid portion of my life’s work is the coven of friendship I’ve built. I’ve worked to be present and thoughtful and empathetic to the people who’ve gifted me friendship. I’m not perfect at it and I probably never will be.

But I show up.

Imperfectly.

Repeatedly.

It’s heartbreaking to think about our friendship recession. Young people today are so profoundly affected by this epidemic loneliness. Because of the world we’ve handed them, they will grow up with many obstacles between them and meaningful connection. What gives me hope, for the young and everyone else, is that the cure is known and easy. In fact I would argue that the cure is already within us. Our very nature is one designed for connection and meaningfulness with others. All we need to do is wrestle with the things that get in the way of that nature - the phones, the headlines, the workism, the busyness, the excuses - and put out the ask. Then follow through. Just a little. Repeatedly.

I can’t help but think if we all do that often enough, we might be able to tame this recession and quell the tides of loneliness. Together.

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