You Will Find Your People

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 You Will Find Your People
How to Make Meaningful
Friendships as an Adult

LANE MOORE

Abrams Image, New York

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 Editor: Samantha Weiner
Designer: Zach Bokhour
Managing Editor: Glenn Ramirez
Production Manager: Anet Sirna-­Bruder
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022948254
ISBN: 978–1-­4197–6256–7
eISBN: 978–1-­64700–714–0
Text copyright © 2023 Lane Moore
Cover © 2023 Abrams
Published in 2023 by Abrams Image, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion
of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission
from the publisher.
Printed and bound in the United States
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Many names and identifying details have been changed.
Abrams Image books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums
and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to
specification. For details, contact [email protected] or the address below.
Abrams Image® is a registered trademark of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

NOT FOR RES A LE

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 This book is for anyone who ­hasn’t found their people yet, in
the ways they’ve always hoped for. May this be a guide for
you to figure out who you are, and who you need, so you can
finally have the chosen family we all deserve.

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 This book is dedicated to Lights, who despite
being eight pounds and a dog, taught me what
real friendship looks like.

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 Contents

How to Make Friends 1

Figuring Out What Kinds of Friendships You Want 13

On Keeping People at a Distance So You Don’t Get Hurt 33

Yes, Animals Can Be Your Best Friends 51

Friends Who Are Good on Paper 54

Learning Your (and Your Friends’) Attachment Style 71

How to Identify and Ask for What You Need 89

What to Do If You’re in Love with Your Friend 103

How to Adjust Your Friendship Levels: From Casual Friends

to Close Friends and Back Again 114

Staying Friends with Exes: An Essential Guide 128

Friendships Are Relationships: Treating Friendships

the Way We Treat Romantic Relationships 138

Being Friends With Your Coworkers, Roommates,

and Family Members: How to Navigate Them All 147

How to Fight with Your Friends: When It’s Healthy and When
It’s a Warning Sign 158

Friend Breakups: How to Know When to Leave, How to Do It,

and How to Cope with Friendship Breakup Grief 163

How Marriage and Kids Can Impact Your Friendship 173

The Frustrating Realization of the Part You Played in

Choosing the Wrong Friends 182

What to Do When You Finally Find Your People:

How to Be a Good Friend 186

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 How To Make Friends
“Ilana: ‘Dude, I would follow you into hell, brother!
Abbi: I would take you on my shoulders, like, I’d strap
you up, and I’d be like let’s go to hell.’ ”—Broad City

I really thought I’d have friends by now. Don’t get me wrong,

I have people I talk to who I really like. I have people I laugh
with and see once every six months, people who text me and
say we should do something soon, and we might even make
plans, but then we each hope the other will cancel because
we’re both tired. I have those, yes. But I really thought I’d have
friends by now, in the way I understood friendship to mean as
a child.
My earliest memories from childhood are of watching,
in awe, the depictions of tight-­knit friend groups in TV and
movies. I’d watch them excitedly on-­screen, as though it was
a fortune teller showing me a glimpse into my future great-­
friend-­having life. I always assumed that even if I ­didn’t have
the friendships that I saw on TV at that very moment, once
I became an adult, they would surely materialize. And maybe
you did too.
We all hoped we’d find them in early childhood: soulmate
best friends born next door to you, just months apart. And if

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 You Will Find Your People

not then, we’d find them in middle school, or in high school.

And then we’ll know them for the rest of our lives. And if
that ­doesn’t work out, everyone always says you get to reinvent
yourself in college and find your chosen people there. Yeah!
But then we get to high school. And then to college. Or
we don’t go to college. Or we kept to ourselves in college.
Or we experienced trauma during that time. Or the friend-
ships we’d found d­ idn’t turn out the way we’d hoped. And even
when they did, even in the best-­case scenarios, people change,
people leave. We might not keep in touch. We might move,
they might move. And those friendships become crystallized
in our memory, revived only by an occasional Google search
to see that Wow, Alison still works at Hot Topic? And she has a
KID? We might still talk to them in our heads, hoping they
will get the messages, but knowing they won’t. And being
mostly OK with that.
No one tells you that the ages of eighteen to twenty-two
are pretty much prime friendship real estate. That’s it. You’re
around the largest group of people your age that you’ll likely
ever be around in your life, who are all very eager to create
their forever friend groups. That’s your shot. So you’d better
have a “normal” college experience and the good fortune to be
ready and able to meet your friend group exactly at that time,
or else you’ll get lost in the over-­twenty-­two hellscape that
is “How the hell do I make a friend now?”
It can often feel like a cruel game of musical chairs that
started years ago, and we ­didn’t even know it had started, let
alone that it was (seemingly) about to end.
In elementary school I learned most of what I knew about
friendships from TV, and TV had assured me that everyone
got between one and six best friends. They were guaranteed,

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 How To Make Friends

and maybe I just had to wait a little longer until the cruel pol-
itics of high school subsided to find them. And I knew exactly
what to look for when that happened. The types of best friends
everyone in pop culture seems to get:

• Your steadfast, biggest-­fan best friend who is always there to

be extremely silly with you and remind you how incredible
you are. They are kind and empathetic and the one person
who always shows up with soup if you experience even the
slightest disappointment.
• The coworker you don’t ­really see outside of work, but when
you’re at work, you leave thoughtful snacks on each other’s
desks.
• The “wild” friend who is more adventurous and reckless
than you are and pushes you to expand your definition
of yourself, or if you’re the wild friend, the more reserved
friend who you’re constantly encouraging to push the limits
of who they think they can be.
• The “wow I ­didn’t expect this friendship to blossom the way
it did and yet here we are” friend you ­didn’t see coming, and
it was the best surprise of your whole life.

And a bunch of other ancillary friends we’re told will be fun to

hang out with for a while at least, lighting up your teens and
twenties like a well-­ornamented “these are my PEOPLE!”
tree, shedding leaves painlessly as needed. No painful friend
breakups, no falling-­outs, no heartbreak, just brief cameos that
drift away with ease and everyone is still whole afterwards.
I needed all these types of friends, because society told
me I did, so I clung to the people I met who even remotely fit
these descriptions like hard-­won girl scout badges, no matter

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 You Will Find Your People

how unhealthy the dynamic was, as proof I could do it. I could

be just like everyone else in this one way, since I c­ ouldn’t be
like everyone else who had perfect families. (Please see my
first book: How to Be Alone.) That was very much out of my
hands. But friendships? I could do that. Contort myself to
make a bunch of people like me and never leave? Can’t wait!
There’s no way you could go wrong when that is your very
upsetting view of friendship!
Perhaps this was a self-­fulfilling prophecy: Because this is
what I thought friendship was, it always devolved into night-
mare territory. As close as I’d get to having a best friend, the
relationships were always short-­lived. No matter how prom-
ising the beginning was, something would invariably throw a
wrench into the intimacy I’d craved so deeply and needed like
air. My junior high best friend decided we were both acting “too
into each other” (we were into each other), so she ended the
friendship. My high school best friend’s family moved far away,
and I grieved the loss of her like a death. Replace, repeat, and
never stop trying and then grieving, trying and then grieving.
If you’ve survived a Greek myth–esque series of relational
traumas, or even just too many relational disappointments for
your liking, you know that trying to figure out how to make
a friend when you’ve been hurt so many times, or never r­ eally
felt loved or accepted in a lasting way, or never had a model of
healthy friendship, can feel impossible.
My definition of healthy friendship is personal to me, as
it is to us all. So there may be stories I tell where someone did
something to me that broke my heart, that you w ­ ouldn’t think
twice about, no big deal, or where I react to someone in a way
that feels foreign to you. Because we are all a unique combina-
tion of needs, and past hurts, and what we did or ­didn’t get as

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 How To Make Friends

children, which directly informs what we need now, and what

we’re able to tolerate, for better or worse.
You may find that when I say, “I need someone who is very
consistent with me,” and you struggle to be consistent with
people, you feel bad for being that way. Please don’t, because
that’s not the point here, nor is it, r­ eally, with any friendship.
Most friendships aren’t comprised of one person who was bad
and one who was good, one who was wrong and one who
was right. They’re comprised of people who are either a good
match for each other or they are not. Above all, your friend-
ships should allow you to feel safe and to feel seen, and do
whatever is required to make you feel that way, and if a per-
son can’t or won’t do that for you, you are absolutely allowed
to walk away. Without judgment, without an indictment that
they’re bad, but resolute in the knowledge that you deserve to
have whatever you need to have.
My childhood had zero consistency when it came to love
and safety. I never knew what was going to happen from one
day to the next, so it’s extremely important, crucial even, for
me to have people in my life who do everything they say they
will do. Because of the pain I have around not having that
foundation as a child, having people in my life who show me
that reliability is crucial; it’s what I need, and it’s valid. It’s also
valid for someone to not be able to provide any consistency
for themselves or anyone else, perhaps because of their own
experiences. But we will probably not be forming a tight bond
with each other any time soon, as it would be hell for us both:
I’d constantly be disappointed, and they’d constantly feel dis-
appointing. No thank you.
Friendships require so much timing, luck, communication,
and puzzle-­piece compatibility that any two people who make

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 You Will Find Your People

it to the promised land of true friendship are almost heroic. I’m

sure some friendships coast and get there, drifting like a bottle
thrown into the ocean and finally reaching land. But I think,
more often, friendships are little ships set out to sea, with two
people on board who’ve never been in a boat like this, and have
only passive knowledge of sailing, trying to steer it and keep it
afloat, and have fun along the way. And then one day you see
the shore, and you decide, together, to row and steer, taking
turns in whatever way feels best for you both, until you get
to that shore and you’re there, finally. And then you’ll go out
into different oceans, of course, over the course of your lives
together. But now you know how to divide up tasks, how to
best work together, and you’re not as worried someone is going
to jump ship and hop into another boat that seems easier, or
more fun. You’ve made a choice to be in this one, to take care
of it, to take it where it deserves to go. That takes so much trust
and intimacy and again, above all, choosing each other.
But we don’t teach people how to do this, how to create
friendships, how to nurture them, how to choose better, and
then when and how to end them if they’re not working. And
because of that, so many of us are just fumbling around, hop-
ing one day we’ll stumble into the friendships of our dreams
because we want them, because we deserve them.
How do you find a healthy friendship when it’s something
you’ve never experienced yet? And even if you were finally
offered it, how do you recognize it and find the courage to
accept it? How are those of us who have been wounded or
traumatized supposed to find healthy friendships if we were
shown at a formative age that we ­didn’t deserve them?
We don’t know the answer, but god, we fight for it. We
want to connect so much that we keep putting money in the

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friendship slot machine, hoping for a different outcome, no

matter how much we continue to lose. Because we know if
we win, we win big. We’ll get friends who will let us fall apart
around them, who we can be ourselves with, and who will
accept all parts of us, no matter how messy and fractured some
of those parts might be.
As heavy as it is, I believe that it is worth carrying the
baggage of our past, taking it with us to each new person,
even though we worry they’re going to see it and ask why
there’s so much stuff. And sometimes, we pick up even more
baggage with every person we meet, things they give to us that
we ­didn’t want, ­didn’t need, but they are ours now. And some-
times we have so many bags that it seems too burdensome to
try again, too heavy a weight to carry.
But we do try again. We learn to pack better, we learn
where to bury things, where to set things free, what we can
throw away, what we can sew back together.
One of the biggest things everyone seems to stress about
in their day-­to-­day life is their friendships:

Are they being a jerk?

Am I the jerk?
I said this to them, was that too much?
They said this, what did they mean by that?
Is this toxic?
Are they mad at me?
Am I mad at them?
How do I make this better? Is it possible?

After years of searching and waiting and hoping and

being disappointed, I wanted to know if it’s possible to have

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 You Will Find Your People

the friends we dream of. We hear stories like that all the time,
that someone has incredible friends, just incredible. And we
believe it, because if very bad things can exist, very good things
can exist just as well.
So why c­ ouldn’t that happen to you? Or to me?
I used to think I was the only one struggling with this,
that everyone else had their friendships fully sorted, and that
I was the only kid who ­wasn’t picked for kickball, wondering
why I h ­ adn’t gotten it right yet.
But I know from meeting so many people who tell me
they’re on the same path, that I’m not the only one out there
who has struggled to find their people. I’m not the only one
who is doing the heavy work to figure out who they are, what
they want, and how to spot the roadblocks in front of them
that they truly can’t wait to knock out of the way, with explo-
sives if need be. I’m not the only one with harmful patterns
they are so exhausted, and honestly even bored, by. I’m not the
only one who is so unbelievably tired of complaining about
frustrating friends, and genuinely ecstatic at the idea of having
friendships that just work.
I know that often when life has been its most challenging,
its most painful, its most hopeless, that is when something
­really good happens. And I also know, and hopefully you do
too, that as I’ve done the (grueling, it is in fact often grueling)
work on myself, as each friendship ends, I was in a better place
to be able to choose a better friend the next time. (And then
sometimes you unknowingly slide backwards into your old
patterns, like way too far backwards, and you’re like wait, how
did my Friendship GPS break so badly?!) It’s all a refinement
process. The more you know about yourself and your patterns,
the better equipped you are to home in on what you truly

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want and need from your friends, and to know how to spot it.
So why can’t we find the courage to start taking greater leaps
forward, now that we know better?
But even once you know better, it can still feel like it’s
impossible to make friends with anyone after you’re out of
high school or college. Without the built-in system of “a
bunch of people in a building who you have to talk to some-
times,” the entire world can feel like an awkward bar you just
want to leave.
And even if you ask someone how to do it, most people
just tell you, “Join a club!” or “Join a gym!” But if you’re like me
and you have no idea what kind of club you would join (a club
for people obsessed with watching the same TV show over
and over again? Those people are at home watching the same
TV show over and over again) and either you already belong
to a gym and you go there to exercise quietly and then leave,
or you just really, really don’t want to join a gym, here are some
places to start:

1. Message someone you constantly interact with online. If

you’re on social media or in any groups online, odds are
you have someone who always replies to you, sends you
messages, or likes all your posts. There are a lot of subtle
interactions that could easily turn into “dude, we should
be friends maybe?” messages. So why not try?
2. Write to a mutual friend who you’ve always felt like you’d
get along with. You already have your friend in common,
so it’s worth it to see if you’d get along when it’s just the
two of you. I once knew a guy who had really cool friends,
but honestly I was not that into the guy himself. One day,
I ran into some of his friends on the subway and it turns

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 You Will Find Your People

out they all thought I was really awesome and also didn’t
like that other guy. It was a beautiful moment.
3. Go to cool shows or restaurants alone. I can’t tell you
how often I’ve heard people tell me they came to my
comedy shows by themselves and met really cool people
they became friends with. And if the idea of this terrifies
you, it’s so helpful to see this less as “Oh no, I’m gonna
look like a loser who is alone” and more like “What if I
meet another cool person who is also there alone and we
bond, and because I went alone, I created space for that
to happen?”
4. Make plans outside of work with that coworker who
you think is cool. I once worked with a woman who was
basically my best friend in the office and then, one day, it
dawned on me: Who says she couldn’t be my best friend
in general? And lucky for me, she was just as hilarious and
fun outside of work, if not more so.
5. Reach out to someone you only see in drinking situations
to do something non-drinking during the day. Cool
Drunk Sara is also probably Cool Sober Sara Who Loves
Getting Tapas After Work. You won’t know until you try.
6. Invite your friends’ significant others to stuff. This can
be touchy depending on the situation, so obviously don’t
do this if you know it could pose a problem, but if you
think your friend’s girlfriend is really cool and there’s a
possible friendship there, go for it and see if you’re right.
7. Go to a dog park, dog or not. Dog or not, dog parks
are such great ways to meet other really friendly people
(well, mostly, sometimes there is someone there who is
such a jerk and you’re like, “Why are you bringing this
energy to such a holy place? Why?”) and worst case, you

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 How To Make Friends

get to play with dogs. But in general, dogs are such a

great icebreaker. When I’m with my dog, I meet multiple
people every day who are extremely kind and cool to chat
with. We might not become best friends just because our
dogs played together for ten minutes, but it can satisfy
that need for connection in a really beautiful way, and
then you get to just go home and hang out alone if need
be. Win-win.
8. Try putting more effort into the friendships you have.
It can be easy to think your current friends aren’t good
enough for you or not giving you the things you want
in the relationship and you should find new people,
and sometimes that’s true. But before you go off thinking
it’s not you, it’s them (which it might be!), try reaching
out, and communicating, and putting some more effort in
and see if that helps things.
9. Encourage yourself to make/keep plans with your friends,
even though sitting inside alone watching friendships on
TV seems way better. Sometimes you genuinely need to
recharge and reschedule, which I fully encourage, but I
know sometimes I need to remind myself to actually keep
plans and take a chance that this might be exactly what
I needed, even if solitude seems safer. And then I come
home feeling so happy that I took the risk and left my
cocoon for a bit.

Does all of this take more effort than sitting there waiting
for your dream friends to show up like UPS packages? Yes.
Is that scary because there might be rejection or disappoint-
ment? Yes. But often the only way for things to be different
is for us to start doing things differently, and putting all that

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we’re learning into practice. So many of us are working so hard

on ourselves; we’re going to therapy, we’re reading books on
attachment and trauma and connection (I mean, hi, you’re
right here, good job). Since I was a kid I have wanted to
untangle all of these knots, wound up like shitty headphones,
so I can just lay in the grass and listen to a song I ­really love.
And yes, it is frustrating to get those knots out, and yes, you
can want to give up, and you do give up sometimes. But once
we untangle them, bit by bit, that’s when we get to move on to
joy. And maybe we’ll remember how hard it was to untangle
the knots, but I think, more than anything, we will be more
preoccupied with how happy we are with what we have now
that we did the work.
Well, unless you’re pretty sure you don’t deserve friendship
and love. And in that case, let me gently affirm.
You deserve to have friendships in which the conversation
is easy, and you feel seen. You deserve to have those days where
you get in the car, and you pick that person up, or they pick
you up, and they got you a coffee exactly the way you like it, aw
thanks. You deserve to pick up ice cream on the way because oh
man that place looks so good, you wanna stop? And sing along to
whatever’s on the radio, one hand out the window. And that is
all it is. No asterisks, no fine print, just purely good.
You deserve to have friendships where there’s an equal give
and take. Friends who understand you, and you have FUN,
true, silly little kid fun, (even if, and especially if, you never got
to truly have fun as a kid, because you were already basically an
adult). Friends who allow and encourage you to have healthy
boundaries, as they work to set and enforce their own.
And then maybe what happens next isn’t tragic this time.
Maybe it’s just good, forever and ever. At last.

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 Figuring Out What Kinds of
Friendships You Want
“Romy: ‘I think you are, like, the funnest person I know.’
Michele: ‘Me too, with you!’ ”
—Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion

Sometimes I see people on the Internet say things like, “I see

you folks talk about your friends and they’re so bad and it
made me realize how grateful I am to have great friends from
when I was little. You all need to get better friends.” And I
want to scream, “We want to, bro, BUT WHERE?”
We can never say these things though. Lest we be per-
ceived as bitter or whiny or negative, we can’t speak about the
fact that many of us are rightly a little upset that we d
­ idn’t get
that. Because from the time we started to watch TV, or read
books, or watch movies, we have been told that everyone is
destined to have a friend they met in an adorable way when
they were six years old and, for better or worse (mostly better,
they tell us), you will know them until you die.
I can’t tell you how much I wanted that. And as the years
passed, and I became fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years old, and
beyond, and noticed . . . ​uh-­oh. I think I missed the deadline
and I’m not sure where the sign‑up sheet is. How do I, in the
least Karen way, speak to the manager of friendships? I won’t

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 You Will Find Your People

yell, but I have some questions. Where are mine? Did I not
spell my name correctly?
I wanted the thing that Drew Barrymore promised us in
one interview I read as a kid: a chosen family.
A chosen family involved enough people so if things
weren’t working out with one of them, you had another three
to five people you could go to, who would be there for you.
And the group dynamic would also make all your friendships
ultimately unshakeable, because if anything happened within
the group, if any discord occurred, there was always someone
there to say, “Hey, everyone! Stop fighting. Let’s all help you
see this clearly and repair it.” Even just writing that, I had a
wave of serotonin because, can you even imagine?
It will not surprise you to know that it did not occur
exactly like that for me. Nor did it for most of us, I imagine.
For the majority of the last ten years or so, many of us have
spent most of our friendships talking to each other through
text. So when I watch TV, I immediately zero in on inter-
actions where, if they were like real life usually is, the whole
scene would just be these people texting, but screenwriters
put them in the same room instead, with the thinking being
that just showing two people texting is not interesting to
show on TV, there’s no movement, no intimacy, and it’s bor-
ing to watch. And they’re right! All of those things are true,
yet that’s what we do in real life anyway.
There are so many examples of friendships in movies and tv
shows that are, in my experience, completely unrealistic, which
might rightly make you feel a little ripped off when you grow
up and realize, “Oh wow, it is very rarely like that?” Unrealistic
as they may be, here are several friendship tropes that I still
want to believe are possible, because that would rule:

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1. “Friends always do exactly what they say they’ll do!”

And if they ever let you down, it only happens once
and there’s a whole episode devoted to them realizing
they really hurt you, and then they surprise you with
approximately nineteen cakes and a trip to Italy. Instead
of doing simply nothing.
2. “Friends always know what you need and freely give it to
you, even if you never tell them!” Every one of your friends
will always go to the ends of the earth for you, fight for
you, and show up for you in exactly the way you need it,
even if you’re unable to articulate what you need. Sounds
convenient to me!
3. “Friends champion your dreams and actively help you
achieve them!” Even if you’re in entirely different career
fields, your friends still somehow introduce you to all the
right people to help you achieve your dreams, re-route
you when you’re frustrated, and generally make sure you’re
always doing everything you should be doing, like little
unpaid life coaches. That’s a thing that exists? Where?!
4. “Your friends constantly push you to be the best person
you can be!” Somehow they know what the ideal version
of you is and they help you to be that. Seriously, would
love to get a rush shipment on this one.
5. “Your best friend will be your total opposite in every way
and yet this will be very fun and easy somehow!” So my
best friend and I have only one thing in common and
it’s that we like each other? Hm, that sounds ripe for
arguments and differences in how we’ll give and receive
love? Right? No? OK, I believe you, never mind!
6. “They probably introduce you to your spouse, and it is
probably their hot brother!” Still waiting on this. My

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 You Will Find Your People

friends’ siblings do not casually look like Chris Evans

and/or are already married. A disappointment.
7. “If your friends live far away, you know it is only temporary
and you will live in the same city one day and you will have
one misunderstanding max and you’ll be fine.” You will
definitely never feel lonely at all, nor will you be unable
to stop wondering when you’ll live in the same city so you
can actually have friends who live nearby.
8. “You will never fight ever.” And if you do it will be once
in your life and bring you closer. And if you fight more
often than that, yours isn’t a healthy friendship. (While
this can be true to some degree, that can also be a recipe
for “things we never talk about that will one day result in
friendship divorce.”)
9. “You will meet all your friends when you’re little kids and
it’s always great and you die in matching graves!” I still
want this. I feel it might be too late, due to the fact that
I’m an adult and have no remaining childhood friends, but
I remain hopeful.
10. “As soon as I heard you two broke up, I raced over!” The
“You went through (insert anything uncomfortable at all)
and I immediately dropped any plans I had to physically
race over to you with gifts and/or support,” is the one that
kills me the most. We see this trope so often in the media
and I have literally never had that happen in my life. And
I have needed it so many times, for so many things more
dire than a simple, clean-cut, abuse-free breakup.

To be fair, the idea of most people being able to put together

an impromptu “I wanted to cheer you up, so everyone in our
friend group put together an elaborate $2,000+ surprise party

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 Figuring Out What Kinds of Friendships You Want

for you because you’re struggling at your new job!” feels laugh-
able.
I love New Girl dearly, and one of my favorite moments is
when Schmidt worries he has bad taste in things, so the group
buys him an extremely expensive chair and surprises him with
it at his house, as a group. Reagan, played by Megan Fox, says,
“Happy birthday, Schmidt!” and Nick says something along
the lines of, “It’s not his birthday. We just do things like this, I
don’t understand it either.” Taking that moment to recognize
that TV shows are actively showing people what friendship
looks like—­lavish gifts, everyone in the group always avail-
able at the exact same times, being down to help each other
through life’s most mundane inconveniences—­when that is
not most people’s experience whatsoever was ­really refreshing.
It seems so rare to see a television show acknowledge that
the closeness and consistency of these friendships isn’t always
what we get in real life, despite how much we may want them.
And we rightly want everything we’ve read about and
watched for years, all of the types of close-knit friends we’ve
come to love in fiction, we want that for ourselves so much.
I’ve boiled these down to four friendship archetypes that I
grew up aspiring to and continue to aspire to:

1. Casual Friends: These are people you see sometimes, and

you’re always happy to see them, but the relationship never
­really progresses past this—­and it’s fine because neither of
you need it to. Or, if you one day need it to, you’ll address
that when it comes. But for now, you’re more than happy
to run into them at a bar and be like “Ayyy, I’ve seen your
face and body before and I know your name! Look at US!”
(Note: I never ­really aspired to have casual friends, since I

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 You Will Find Your People

usually wanted those to be closer friends as well, because I

have no chill.)
2. Friends: This obviously can mean many things to many
people, but for the sake of this argument, let’s say this is
someone you’ve hung out with more than a few times
and shared some very real moments with, moments that
felt deeper to you than those shared with a casual friend.
Because that’s ­ really where these differences lie: how
close you feel to them, and how close they feel to you.
It’s all subjective, but this is that middle ground of “We
talk sometimes, I would help them if they needed me,
but I probably ­wouldn’t drop everything to take them to
a doctor’s appointment they were antsy about, and would
instead send supportive texts.”
3. The Friend Group: Oh, how I have longed for a group
of friends where we all get along and become a tight-­
knit family and all look very cool and are always available
at the same times. Each one with a distinct personality,
so you have a sort of tasting menu, a wine flight if you
will, of people you can go to at any moment to meet even
your most superficial needs. Need a friend to hack into
a security mainframe during your espionage? Great, call
up your hacker friend who’s great with gadgets, of course!
You’re getting married? Your world-class chef friend will
of course be making all of the food for free!
4. Best Friend: Again, could mean lots of things, but my
personal definition is someone who you can talk with
regularly and call at any time, about anything, and be any
way with. Totally guard-­down, open communication of
boundaries and feelings, you’re both down for all of it,
forever, you’re fully IN. Whatever they need, they’ve got

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you. You talk all the time, pretty constantly, and you’re
basically two halves of the same person. This can be one
person or a few, and long-­distance best friends still count.

I don’t know many people who have all of these at all times,
but let’s look at how we got the idea that these are the catego-
ries you must have in order to be a complete person, and the
pros and cons of each.

a. Casual Friends
Pros: Getting to feel like a cool mob boss everywhere you
go in town. “Yeah I know him, we go way back.” This is such
a state of being, I’m getting chills just thinking about it.
Cons: You might struggle with having too many casual
friends and end up feeling weirdly alone because no one
­really knows you, and you never r­eally feel fully seen and
part of any one community.

b. Friends
See “this entire book” for further definitions of pros and cons.

c. The Friend Group

Pros: Potentially multiple closets to pick from on any given
day. The ability to have multiple people to go to when
something is going on with you, or something is going on
with two of you. There’s a higher probability that one of
them will be able to show up for you and rally to make sure
you’re always taken care of, and always have backup. I’m
drooling as I write this.
Cons: Where do I begin? Shared calendars to schedule
outings, unless you live in a Sex and the City episode where

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they seemingly just knew which hot restaurant to show

up at every single day, at the same time, and all before the
invention of a group chat. There’s also the danger of peo-
ple pairing off, depending on the number of people in the
friend group, and being the odd one out. Or not being as
close with some, as you are with others. Or people taking
sides in a fight. There is truly so much potential for this
to become a mess, and it can be just a ton of scheduling
and work, but I still want it. It just seems so rare that I
often don’t even think of it as a possibility for myself. Not
because I w­ ouldn’t love a friend group, not even because
a friend group seems like so much more work, which it
absolutely does. But because having one just seems like
winning the lottery, even at its hardest. Ah, but she is
elusive.

d. The Best Friend

Pros: You get to have the friend you are closer to than
anyone else. You tell them everything first, you want to
do everything together, your penultimate plus-­one. Your
emergency contact, no question. The One.

Let’s take a second here to ­really go into what it means to have

a Best Friend, and the ease, or lack thereof, in finding said
Best Friend.
Trying to find The One can be challenging as hell. Since
I was a kid, I treated any friendship like it could be The One,
and would invest everything I had into it, especially if it
seemed like the other person was doing the same. I was always
on the lookout for this, in the same way we’re taught to always
be on the lookout for romantic relationships. And it’s fairly

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similar to one in that the feeling has to be mutual, and you

need to know it means the same thing to both of you. I know
a lot of people have no issue with calling twenty people their
best friend. But I had long seen it as a fairly cut and dry thing:
“There is my best friend, who is my other half, and then there’s
the rest of my friends, who are also pretty good too. But they’re
not THE BEST! That’s just Sheila, and Sheila only.” (Please
note: I do not currently know any Sheilas. Maybe that’s the
problem. Must meet more Sheilas.)
Instead of “dating around” for friends, the way other
people might, I would just find one person I had a connec-
tion with and ride that wave until it crashed. And I either
drowned or realized they knew how to surf and I ­didn’t. I
have always gone all in with anyone I’ve ever gotten close
to. And this is a beautiful thing that is not always in my best
interest. I think it’s lovely to be invested and hopeful and
devoted and go all in, but just like water, it can either nourish
you or kill you.
This was something that always made me feel different
from other people, who seemed to treat friendships like they
were hair ties on their wrists that had somehow fallen off.
You probably have a million of them at home, they’re cheap,
replaceable, no big deal. To me, friendships were very expen-
sive earrings I’d saved up for, so if I lost one, or *gasp* both,
how would I ever replace them? So I would check my ears
multiple times a day, grateful and protective of this valuable
thing that was so hard won, and so very precious.
One of my favorite quotes, from actress/writer Jen
Richards, puts it so well: “I rarely meet men in real life as
extraordinary as ones on film, and rarely see women on film as
extraordinary as ones I know in real life.”

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 You Will Find Your People

Similarly, I have rarely experienced a friend group in real

life as wonderful as the ones I’ve seen on film and rarely seen
friends on-­screen ebb and flow in how much they’re able to
meet your needs, as the people I’ve known in real life. The hard
thing is, TV and movies began as a form of escapism, but we
don’t look to either for purely that anymore, and we haven’t
for a long time. We look to them to know how to act, to know
how to connect, to know what friendships should look like.
So when we look around and our Diana Barry (Anne
Shirley’s best friend) h­ asn’t materialized, and our core friend
group of four people who all know each other and all repre-
sent distinct qualities and personalities that magically work
together, forming a mini coven that gets lunch together every
day at three p.m, and no one ever needs a shared Google
Calendar, ­hasn’t found us yet, we feel like we’ve failed.
I wanted my One Person (more, if available), or at least
to know who my people were and how they worked, like a
friendship Swiss Army knife. I want to have my regular thing
I always order, if that order was a person. I want to know that
if I am having a problem at work, I call this person. If I am
having a struggle with my health, I call this person. If I am
having a problem with anything at all, I call this person. I
want a toolbox, and I want to know and trust my tools. I want
to know exactly what kind of wrench I need for each home
repair, and I want them to be there when I reach for them.
And I know they’re people, I know. But I want the certainty I’d
assumed I would have by now. To be able to dial a number, and
know they’ll pick up. To be able to text someone something
and have them know exactly what I need at that moment. To
have someone do everything in their power to prop me up,
just as much as I do them. Someone to walk through life with.

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And the shame of not being able to achieve that yet sets
in and creeps through any previous cracks we already had from
the shame that came before. “Because I don’t deserve it,” we
think. “That makes sense.” We talk so openly, so freely, about
body shame, as we rightly should, but we don’t talk about the
shame that comes from constantly seeing other people having
loving, consistent, reliable friendships as though everyone has
that and if you don’t, that’s super weird, what’s wrong with
you? That relational shame.
What does it say about you that you ­couldn’t easily find
four to five people who all understand you constantly, make
you feel seen, anticipate every possible need, and try at all
costs to protect you from experiencing pain? And if someone
caused you to feel pain, why didn’t they swoop in and hold
you while you cried for days, which is always what happens
to everyone of course. Why ­couldn’t you find that, so easily,
at the local corner store, like everyone else on earth did, you
genuine freak?
You ­couldn’t find people who were basically trauma thera-
pists, with deep wells of empathy and compassion, who always
understood how race, gender, and class have affected you per-
sonally? WHY??? Fix that.
But the trouble is, this is one part of life we can’t simply
fix by going out and choosing to, because finding friends—­
real, true friends—­takes extreme luck and privilege, it just does.
And I use the word privilege because it’s something a lot of
people just aren’t lucky enough to come by, but we talk about it
like everyone gets this. And the truth is, you’re more likely to
get it if you had a great childhood and loving parents. And sep-
arating it from those facts and putting it squarely on the shoul-
ders of worthiness, renders it an indictment of your character.

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 You Will Find Your People

To admit publicly that you don’t ­really have friends, that

you haven’t found your people yet, that you’ve had a lot of the
wrong people in your life, is so visceral that I can feel it when I
talk about it. I can feel the judgment, the “we don’t dare speak
of that” formality of the rules we’re asked to follow.
There is, of course, no set rulebook but I know so many of
us have gotten similar messages about what friendship means,
depending on your culture, your community, and your gender.
The message I saw in media was that friendships took
on one of two categories: popular ladies with frenemies, or a
group of scrappy weirdos who accepted each other in the ways
the world ­didn’t.
As someone who d ­ idn’t have the foundation of a very
tight-­knit family, I dreamed of a world where someone would
hurt me, minorly, or gravely, and the offender would “have
us to deal with.” I wanted backup. Not just me, alone, in the
world, realizing that I had to be my own backup.
These thoughts were raging inside of me, all while looking
for fictional characters to identify with in popular media and
coming up short. Veronica Mars, who lost all of her old friends
because of trauma, still had her incredible dad and her friend
Wallace, whom she saw every day, and they were always by
her side, no matter what. Yet, the people around her seemed to
imply that this was not enough, this was something unfortu-
nate, a consolation prize, which makes sense, because in high
school you can’t have just one friend. But it can be hard to watch
someone who has so much more than you have being painted as
someone who has nothing. So then you have, what? Less than
nothing?
What if even the biggest loners you see represented in the
world still have their people? Still have people to call if things

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get bad? Still have someone they see every day, who always
picks up when they call, and always chooses them, rallies for
them, cheers them up, cheers them on?
And, of course, how we define friendship for men and
women is radically different. Many media depictions show
that friendship for men is watching the game(?), cracking
open a cold one(?), no hugs unless they’re basically smacking
each other on the back in a way that might leave a bruise(?),
complaining about how your wife is on your nuts(?), and back-
ing you up in a bar fight. I think I listed them all and god,
that’s depressing.
Is it any better for women though? Yes, but not by much.
The female friendships we often see seem to fall into two cat-
egories: 1. Very empowering deep friendships that never have
any problems ever, or 2. Friendships that are full of manipu-
lation and competition but also love. In those cases, we have
actively woven together toxic behavior with love and said,
“Wow that’s so wonderfully human! That’s love right there.”
And while I love depictions of how sticky and messy female
friendships can be, I don’t love that we’ve been told that it’s
normal for female friendships to be passive aggressive com-
petitive sports. Or that we’ve been shown that “the hot one”
has to have “the ugly one” who worships her and keeps her
humble. That there is only one hot/cool/kind friend and the
other one is an old pile of socks with a few jokes. Good god
we have set up a horrific ropes course to hell with these tropes.
There are of course so many beautiful exceptions in pop
culture. Particularly, Anne Shirley and Diana Barry’s lifelong,
deeply devoted, Platonic Soulmates friendship in Anne of
Green Gables. (Though, their friendship is arguably two people
who are totally in love with each other, and I will forever stand

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 You Will Find Your People

by this correct assumption, but that’s for another book.) But if

such a Platonic Soulmate exists, where do you find that devo-
tion that sees you through adolescence, into adulthood, into
marriages and kids and moving and new careers? Where do
you find that magical, poetic friendship where you both grow
on parallel tracks, even if they’re not the same tracks exactly,
into people who still connect deeply if not more so, not only
as the people they once were but also as the people they’re
constantly becoming?
I’m not even the person I was last year or a few months
ago, which is true for so many of us who are actively work-
ing to unlearn and reprogram things we were told, things we
told ourselves, things we allowed ourselves to accept. To have
someone who grows with you and changes with you, and you
don’t lose touch is very rare. It’s far more normal, albeit very
painful most of the time, to outgrow each other as we grow
and heal and change.
We talk about how “we just grew apart” as though it’s
casual, and while it is in many ways because it’s not malicious
and it’s not abusive, god, is it heartbreaking. That your paths
were just not meant to continue to cross. They verged briefly,
and that was that. We don’t ­really show that in the media! Oh
god, can you imagine?
What if all of the sudden Rachel and Monica from Friends
just started talking way less, until they ­didn’t talk at all? The
TV show would FIX THAT. They would address it like a four-­
alarm fire had gone off in that impossibly large rent-­controlled
West Village apartment. It just isn’t done (rare exceptions of
course exist, such as on Insecure and And Just Like That, though
it’s worth noting the latter likely never would’ve had this plot­
line if Kim Cattrall h ­ adn’t left the show precisely because a

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 Figuring Out What Kinds of Friendships You Want

sort-­of friendship fallout happened off-camera). And because

we rarely see people talk about friendship breakups, we’ve
internalized that it is better to remain in a friendship that isn’t
working, lest we commit the cardinal sin of ending it.
If faced with a potential friend breakup, many of us will
do whatever it takes to mend it, try to fit the square peg into
the now very round hole. We’ve been taught to do anything
for the ones we love, even if it’s not working anymore. “It takes
work,” people will say, and they’re right. Love, friendships, all
of it does. But this is still a dangerous thing to tell people with
no further explanation.
Because so many of us, myself included, have internalized
that as, “Well, this relationship is killing me, but you know
what? I’m gonna make fixing it my full-­time job, even though
I think relationships are a collaboration between two people
making it work, but whatever! I believe this is what love is, so
I’m gonna do it!”
We try to make something that is just broken, that maybe
we ­didn’t even break, work. Because we’ve been sold this idea
that love is all that matters, so you should give everything
you’ve got to make something work. Even when it’s harm-
ful, even when the other person isn’t helping with that group
project, even when it’s possibly just run its course. And we
continue to worship at that altar, even though it’s covered in
broken glass that cuts us every time we kneel.
You don’t want to give up too soon either, so you hope
that “It’ll be worth it, this is just a rough patch.” And maybe it
is! But a rough patch usually ­doesn’t last for months, causing
years of pain.
It can feel like we only have two options: the first being
the easy friendship where we’ve known each other our whole

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 You Will Find Your People

lives and we’re always together and it’s always great, or the
one that isn’t quite what we want, but it’s the best we have
right now, so we have to constantly work on it, even if it’s
often painful. The first ­doesn’t seem accessible to many of us,
or realistic, but the second one seems like a grueling full-­time
job I want to quit before I even start. What are the benefits?
Well, you get to say you have a “best friend.” “That’s my GIRL
right there.” You can at least pretend. You can play house. You
can bring ice cream over, do face masks, braid each other’s hair,
and try to make it work, try to make it into what it’s supposed
to look like.
And I think many of us do that, or have at least tried
to. We’ve tried to be like the friends on TV, the people we
wish we were, connected like we think we should be. And we
found ourselves, or other people, falling short in the process.
Because maybe that d ­ oesn’t even work for us! Maybe we’re not
“face masks and ice cream and wearing robes while watching
romcoms” kinds of people. Maybe we’re not “let’s watch the
game with a cold one, bro” kinds of people. Maybe we’re not
built for these archetypes, and then where do we go? How do
we navigate this, how do we communicate what we want our
ideal friendships to look like if we’ve never seen them yet?
Never experienced them yet? And if you make a new friend as
an adult, how do you tell them you haven’t ­really had that yet?
It takes so much vulnerability, in some ways so much
more than in a romantic relationship, to say, “Hey, here’s what
I want our relationship to look like and feel like. Do you want
that too?” The anxiety of this concept is so intense. And I felt
it firsthand recently.
There’s a friend I’ve made over the last year named Nellie.
Nellie is, ugh, I can’t even begin to tell you. She’s gorgeous and

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talented and smart and warm and caring and kind, and we
started spending more and more time together. She’s always
made me feel truly taken care of, truly seen, truly supported.
So, naturally, our friendship made me anxious constantly, but
it was absolutely worth it.
One night we were hanging out and I wanted to pick up
some thing I got from a Free Group online (where people in
your neighborhood will give away things they don’t need any-
more as a r­ eally beautiful form of mutual aid that I truly love).
I wanted to walk the two miles to get there and she said “I’ll
come with you!” True best friend potential right there. Someone
who is so down for whatever because they get to be with you.
While we walked through the city at sunset, seeing the
orange sky and the empty streets, walking so fast, in that
giddy way where you feel like you have a sidekick, we talked
about Broad City. I don’t remember who brought it up ini-
tially, but I said we were both r­eally Abbis, even though I
seem like an Ilana.
Nellie said she wanted that kind of deep, “seeing you every
single day until we both die” best friendship so much, and we
hinted, through our referencing of this TV show we both love,
that we felt like that with each other. Potentially. Blink and
you’d miss it, but I knew what we meant. And I loved the idea
of it. And then I immediately went into planning mode.
My mind began to race: So what should we do now??? Do
we get tattoos together? Book a girls trip??? Swap half-­heart neck-
laces? But just as quickly as I thought that, I worried I was
misreading it, worried maybe I wanted that too much, that I
was too excited by it.
The more time I spent with Nellie the more I just adored
her so much and wanted to, I don’t know, make it official? But

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what even is that? The anxiety of what to do, how to do it, what
was appropriate, what was acceptable, and would I be rejected
if I brought up any of this, or said the wrong thing, caused me
to pull away a little bit. I still texted her, but I stopped going
to see her as often.
My overthinking had turned into, Wait, I always initiate
our hangs, am I bothering her? and I started to do it less, and
when she ­didn’t pick up that slack, I interpreted it as proof I
had been right. But deep down, I knew better. She came to my
shows and supported my work online, and any time I asked-
her advice on my drawings, she wrote back something beauti-
ful, thoughtful, and warm. I would check in with her and ask
about her life and get so excited when she would have new art
projects out, gush over her social media posts of her work, and
tell her excessively how talented she was and champion any
damn thing she wanted to do.
Finally, I started to realize, “Lane, you have to go see her
again. You miss her. She is your friend.” So I made plans to go
over to her neighborhood for the first time in months and she
took me to lunch.
As we talked, she again spoke of wishing for a deep
friendship (the kind we both so clearly wanted to have), and I
stood there like a 13-­year-­old in platonic love with their best
friend, wanting to say, “I mean, I think we have that. Could
have that. Do have that.” But I ­didn’t. It felt too terrifying, and
maybe a little forced to say, “Could I formally apply to be your
best friend?”
Because the truth is, after grade school, I don’t know how
that properly works. Do you just spend more and more time
together and it happens and then you just acknowledge that is
what happened and you’re like yay!?

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If you entered the workforce in the last twenty or so years,

it’s likely that you’ve been working much more than the typi-
cal forty hours your parents and their parents were expected to
work in order to “make it.” And somehow within that some-
times sixty-­to eighty-­hour work week, you’re still expected to
have rich friendships and lives, but how can you do that when
everyone is tired and busy? Each week we might only have so
many spare hours, only have so much energy that it can feel
less possible to devote it to one person who we hope recip-
rocates. “Life gets in the way” is seemingly truer all the time.
And “just hanging out and seeing what happens” becomes less
and less possible, so every friendship you set out to develop
takes time, planning, and effort, so you rightfully might be
hesitant to take a new one on.
As Nellie walked me to the subway, I asked if she wanted
to do something again soon. I’d often texted her some places
that looked cool in the city—­art installations, museum exhib-
its, best friend things. I wanted to see the world with her,
alongside her, maybe, if she wanted to also. She said she’d love
to, as soon as she finished up a project.
And again, the anxiety resurfaced. What if she ­didn’t
mean it, and work being hectic was a very polite way of saying
no? But more than that, what if I cared more than she did?
This comes up so often in friendships, where your schedules
just can’t connect, and it genuinely may be that they want to
see you more, but it’s just not the right timing yet. Like with
dating, if you’re meant to be close friends, they’ll make time
and you’ll make time, the scheduling will be easy, or at least
become easier. If it’s meant to be, it’ll happen.
There is so much about forming friendships that is akin
to romantic relationships, even though we love to separate

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them, as though friendship is easy and innate, and romantic

relationships are complex and daunting. But trying to get the
courage to slide someone a sheet of paper that says, “Do you
want to be my friend? Check yes or no” across the table is no
less terrifying than asking a romantic partner, “What are we?
Because I would like to be together.” It requires the same risk,
the same courage, the same hopefulness that it will work out
and we will be accepted.
There’s no cheat code for it, or I would’ve found one, trust
me. We just have to jump and hope they catch us.
As of writing this, Nellie and I are still friends. I support
her fiercely through the energy I emit when I stare lovingly
at her photos. I wish it was as seamless of a friends-­to-­best-­
friends pipeline as it is in the movies, but maybe right now
it’s exactly what it needs to be. Maybe we d ­ idn’t get to meet
each other when we were thirteen, maybe we’re both nervous
or only I am, or maybe this is just how our friendship begins.
And it takes years to develop, twists and turns leading us to
become even closer years from now when the timing is right.
And maybe we get to write our story together exactly as
the people we are. And maybe it’s a ­really, ­really good one.
And if not, we have to trust we’ll get another shot to be brave
again with someone else.

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 On Keeping People
at a Distance So You
Don’t Get Hurt Again
“I want your warm, but it will only make me colder
when it’s over.” —Fiona Apple, “Love Ridden”

When I was a kid around age nine or so, I remember that pen
pals were very much a normal thing that ­wasn’t loser-­y. Except
now that I think about it, maybe it kind of was? I highly doubt
the Hot Girls (subjective) in my high school were emailing
with some mountain girl from Montana and dreaming about
what her life must be like and if she was like Kirsten from
the American Girl dolls, but with more electricity and indoor
plumbing. If you were somewhat romantic, somewhat uncool,
somewhat queer, or just a very curious sort of person, pen pals
were marketed directly to you, like a targeted ad. (But sent to
you by your Girl Scouts troop leader or something? I honestly
don’t remember how it happened, but one day I just started
getting the addresses of young girls who wanted to write to
strangers. In retrospect, I bet this whole operation could’ve
done with some more screening.)
We were told it was educational to speak with someone
our own age who had a slightly different or very different life
than we did. Often the letters were handwritten, with stickers,

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photos, and little snapshots—­lovingly prepared scrapbooks

that peered into the parts of our life we were comfortable
sharing with an absolute stranger.
I never felt like my pen pal letters were that good. I’ve
always had messy handwriting, which I attribute to my hands
being unable to catch up with the speed with which my brain
processes things, so it just comes out as, “Here’s two legible
letters and a bunch of frustrated scribbles because I tried and
then tapped out.” But my pen pals (I must’ve had at least
three at different points in time) always went all out, with
the aforementioned stickers, delicate little doodles, and great
penmanship—­and even when it w ­ asn’t super legible, it was
so dreamy to see another girl’s handwriting, to feel chosen.
Being somebody’s someone, even if I knew it ­didn’t neces-
sarily mean as much to them, felt incredible. You’d discuss
your town, how many relatives you had, books you liked, and
that was that. It was very clean, very formal, and for better or
worse it was finite.
I’ve heard stories of pen pals who kept it up for years,
which sounds beautiful, but my experiences with pen pals
were fleeting. I’d get glimpses into their worlds, and one day,
whether intentional or not, my pen pal would just stop writ-
ing. Or they died? You just d­ idn’t know. But you c­ ouldn’t text
them or email them. (Well, you could, but 1. You ­didn’t have
their email and 2. That would ruin the mystique of what you
were doing and 3. Could possibly be creepy, because they
stopped writing, as was their right.) Pen pals just not writing
back truly was the original ghosting, and it cut like a very cute
but sharp knife.
Something about this potential for intimacy combined
with the safety of distance stuck with me as I navigated the

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 On Keeping People at a Distance So You Don’t Get Hurt Again

disappointments of my childhood and teenage years. And

each time I moved, I found myself becoming very good friends
with people after I’d left town, even if I was only sort of friends
with them when I lived in close proximity. I’m sure on some
level I felt like this was the best of both worlds: the belonging
and companionship and inside jokes and a place to put my
thoughts and feelings, without the danger of getting too close
and being disappointed by them, or worse.
I’d seen enough of that. So, I was ~Going Online~.
I had always loved parasocial relationships, long before
I knew that’s what they were. Parasocial relationships are
relationships with people you don’t ­really know but feel like
you know. These are most often relationships with celebrities
whose work you love, but I’d argue they can just as easily be
people you interact with on social media, support groups, any
kind of online community you have at your fingertips, but
it usually ­doesn’t go much further than that. You might not
know their full name or even where they live or what they
look like, but you ­really like talking to them here and there,
or reading the things they write. And these friendships can be
meaningful, even if they don’t meet the classic definition.
The beauty of relationships like this is that at any moment
you can post something in these groups or pages and have
an instant community, instant feedback, instant support. But
because you don’t have the “we talk every day” or the “we see
each other every Friday night for wings and manicures” (this
sounds like a very messy day and I do not know why that’s
where my brain went, but here we are) connection, it can be
easy to forget they exist and easy to still feel very alone.
Online-­only friendships feel more tenuous to me because
by all accounts, they are. Someone who ­doesn’t ­really know

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 You Will Find Your People

you will only know you by what you post, by what they read,
and how they read it on that particular day. So the poten-
tial for them to take something you said the wrong way and
decide they don’t like you anymore is very real. Those things
happen. And if you struggle with the fear in your real-­world
friendships that one day you’ll say something and someone
will misconstrue it and you’ll be punished, seeing that fear
realized online is just as heartbreaking. Even if you don’t fully
know the person. Because it will activate the part of you that
thinks it’s normal for things to be that tenuous, and that fear
can exacerbate those feelings in your real-­world friendships
once you find them.
Because yes, it is possible to have abandonment issues
with total strangers. I know it well.
That said, if you have parasocial friendships and you’re
able to put those fears aside and weather those storms if and
when they arise, it’s very easy to want to take things to the
next level. And that could look different for all of us: Maybe
it’s actually talking on the phone or texting instead of com-
menting on each other’s posts, just something that feels a little
more like “the real thing,” even if it’s long-distance.
My first long-­distance friendship was with Eve. And it’s
worth noting we met through a man when I was a teenager,
and I think there’s a reason for that.
Women are very often geared ­toward the idea that you
should pour everything you have into men: Get their atten-
tion; keep it; be surrounded by male friends. Because men are
“less complicated” and men thinking you’re cool is the greatest
currency you could have! “Women can’t be trusted, they’re so
dramatic, too catty, it’s always something with them, they’re
two-­faced and men just tell you if they have a problem with

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 On Keeping People at a Distance So You Don’t Get Hurt Again

you.” These internalized beliefs coupled with my deep and

flawed belief that romantic love would save me, far more than
friendship ever would or could, caused me to spend my teens
and early twenties pursuing dating websites and social media
as a way to meet male “friends”—­in retrospect, this meant men
who would get all the benefits of having me as their girlfriend,
but without any dates or need to physically show up or provide
any further investment or intimacy. They got the emotional
intimacy, the emotional labor, the hot girl who listened and
entertained them, all the things men get from women they
keep at a distance, while they did nothing in return except
exist. And we just hope one day it turns into more, that this is
our story and it’s just the beginning.
For all I know, it suited these male “friends” in the same
way it did me: getting to have a relationship without the scary
parts. One night during this time, while talking on the phone
with one such male “friend,” Kevin, who I’d seen exactly one
very flattering photo of online and developed a deep imme-
diate intimacy with (zero stars, do not recommend), he said,
“Hey, my friend Evie is here, and you actually remind me a lot
of her. I think you guys would like each other a lot, should I
put her on?” And I said, “Sure,” without hesitation, and I guess
she did, too, because the next thing I knew she was on the line.
Her name, I would find out later in the phone call, is actu-
ally Eve. So I was confused when I heard him call her Evie
when introducing her to me. Immediately my brain registered
this as, “Oh wow, he knows her so well they have nicknames
for each other. Her name is Eve and he called her EVIE? AND
they’re in the same room together hanging out? What a very
close friendship they clearly have, and I am obviously on the
outside of what is a deeply established bond. They must hold

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all the secrets to True Friendship, and I am simply auditioning

for a minor role.”
Eve would tell me years later that the only people who
called her Evie at that time had known her in middle school,
and one day Kevin overheard one of her very few middle school
friends call her Evie and decided to use that very intimate
nickname, which she felt was bizarre, a sort of forced intimacy
on his part she never ­really understood and chose to let go. But
at that point in my life, it felt like everyone but me was doing
life “right,” so to hear years later that actually their friendship
was full of weird frustrations, false indicators of intimacy where
there were actually none, and the “eh this will work for now”
elements—all ofwhich were actually much more relatable than
I could have known when we met. But back to our meet-­cute.
As I remember, my connection with Eve was instanta-
neous. We bonded over nineties movies, Nina Simone and
Amy Sedaris, and wearing a thick coat of armor over a life-
time of trauma and isolation that left us both simultaneously
open to anything and scared of everything. What was the
worst that could happen from talking to a cool girl who lives
far away for a few minutes? She’d disappoint me? Happened
before. It was worth it to roll the dice because what if this
time was different?
A few minutes turned into a few hours, walking around
my apartment, sharing everything the way you do when some-
thing about the connection feels special, feels different, feels
destined. I can only assume Kevin stood next to Eve most of
that night, eyes glazed over, having now been iced out of being
the very special boy or whatever and realizing that his role had
been relegated to being a means to an end. He had absolutely
wanted this phone call to be a testimonial: “See? You should

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 On Keeping People at a Distance So You Don’t Get Hurt Again

date me, I know cool women. I’m a good guy,” which Eve now
recalls he had her do with a few women at that time. And
instead, we were both like, “I’m good,” the way you respond
when someone tries to hand you a flyer on the subway.
I don’t even remember the end of our call. To me, we
spoke once and just never stopped. Our entire friendship has
just been one ­really long phone call I wanted to last forever.
But I do know we exchanged numbers, and I know she told
me, warned me even, in a nonchalant, no-­big-­deal way that I
probably ­wouldn’t know her for very long, because she ­doesn’t
trust anyone, and people are always assholes. I remember smil-
ing and saying, “OK, let’s see.”
The thing is, when most people hear you say things like
that, I’m sure they run. I’m sure they get upset: “How dare you
assume that of me? That hurts my feelings.” And I bet it does.
When you don’t know what it’s like to have to warn people to
be more careful with you, because you’ve been hurt so badly
before but you r­eally would love them to be different, to be
better, you hear that and you want to run. But I knew what it
was like to have to say that, how many times she’d probably
said it, hoping someone saw past it and proved her wrong. I
heard her say that, and I wanted to stay.
I was all in. Eve and I would watch movies together on
the phone (ten stars, recommend), I would read her writing
and I’d swoon, and she’d read mine and she loved it. I’d never
really shown my writing to anyone, so it felt like what I imag-
ined Fran Lebowitz being friends with Toni Morrison was like.
Someone this talented and wise and incredible thinks I’m a
great writer? Heaven.
When we first met, Eve had these magical friends, Margaret
and Zoe, and I can describe them to you as though they were

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characters in a movie I watched over and over again, because I

was vicariously living through what I perceived as Eve having
normal friends and normal experiences I d ­ idn’t fully relate to
yet. Margaret was an artist who had red hair and was very cool
and had a job doing something with pets, maybe? Photography?
I guess that part of the movie ­wasn’t as interesting to me as
her haircut, which I remember being very cool. And Zoe was a
manic pixie dream girl, as I begrudgingly acknowledged myself
to be on the rare occasion I left my house. But she actually left
her house and went to parties and gallery openings and did her
makeup every single day, always put together cool outfits, was
seemingly never too sad to put on eyeliner, etc.
I’d listen to Eve talk about Zoe’s cool New York City job
working at a fashion magazine and Margaret doing . . . ​again I
have no idea, and it was like my own private Sex and the City.
Now, was I twelve years old and incapable of actually going to
bars and having friends and a cool NYC job, so I had to watch
them do it on budget HBO? No, I was just out of high school,
fully able to do those things but deeply healing from some
traumas and feeling like my life was on pause, while others got
to keep living theirs. It was like watching another version of
me who w ­ asn’t a girl, interrupted.
For years, our friendship ebbed and flowed through great
times and worse times, and we were never in the same room
and rarely even on the same coast. And in that time, Eve
became extremely depressed, at which time her “people always
disappoint, people don’t stick around” beliefs became even
more founded. As her depression grew, Margaret and Zoe
no longer saw her as “fun,” so they left her behind. By that
time, Eve just had me and a few other long-­distance friends
to lean on. Both of us were definitely not in the majority of

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 On Keeping People at a Distance So You Don’t Get Hurt Again

what was normal at all. This was not the crew of girls you’d see
every weekend over margaritas. I had no idea what that type
of friendship was like, or when/if it was coming, with her or
anyone else.
This was an extension of a habit I had formed with my
pen pals: A lot of my most intimate friendships were with
people who lived far away. I can totally see now that subcon-
sciously the distance made them feel less threatening to me. If
I ­didn’t get too close to them, and better yet, physically could
not get close to them, I had much better odds of them not
hurting me—­safety at all costs.
Since we first spoke, Eve and I have been in the same
room three times over the course of many years, and she’s still
pretty much the closest thing I’ve got to “we’ve known each
other since we were kids.” It’s funny what “kids” means to peo-
ple at different ages in their lives. I’ll watch a kids movie now
abd see the thirteen-­year-­old girl say, “I’m practically an adult
now!” and I’ll be both frightened (side note: if you are a teen-
age girl please don’t let some twenty-­four-­year-­old man tell
you that you are an adult) and amused because I know I was
a child until I was twenty-one at least, and maybe even until
twenty-­five, which is when your brain is fully formed.
Distance or not, traditional or not, having the baseline
safety of someone, somewhere out there, who even briefly sat-
isfied that need to be seen, to be supported, made it much
easier for us to talk on the phone about our day and r­eally
jump ahead to the type of intimacy you have when you’re five
years in.
Eve is now my oldest friend. But was it that simple? Did
I cross “I made a friend” off a list and move on? Not at all. The
friendship ebbed and flowed, and sometimes we wouldn’t talk

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for years. We often talk about “my oldest friend” in terms of

years—“We’ve known each other since we were twelve!”—and
the expectation is you knew each other that whole time, that
you saw each other through it all. But sometimes that’s not as
easy to maintain, especially with distance, though you wish
it were.
We’d talk, and then stop talking for a while, or she’d push
me away, and in that space between we still hoped for recon-
nection, but in the meantime, I would start reconnecting with
friends from my past who already kind of knew me and who
I remembered being pretty cool, maybe? The bar was beneath
the earth’s core at the time, so I just needed bodies to fill the
space, like a club owner bringing in people from the street to
fill his floundering DJ night. Until I met Seth.
Seth and I met when we were doing improv together
and he was a man in comedy, so I was naturally suspicious.
One night, while we were working the box office for no pay
in exchange for classes, Seth told me he thought I was an
incredible comedian and everyone else there was an asshole. I
assumed it was a line, he was just another guy in comedy who
­didn’t see the women there as peers, only as people who were
dying to sleep with them if they gave us the slightest compli-
ment. He told me he was forming his own improv team and he
wanted me on it. Again, suspicious. After asking around and
finding out the coach was a woman I ­really liked and the team
had some ­really cool people, I joined. Thank goodness I did.
Seth became one of my favorite people to do scenes with. He
was silly and fun and truly respected me. I quickly realized he
­wasn’t hitting on me before, he was treating me the way most
men probably treat other men: “Hey, you’re awesome. Let’s
work together.” Just basic respect and adoration. No strings.

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 On Keeping People at a Distance So You Don’t Get Hurt Again

Since he was wonderful and there were so many good

things about him, you won’t be surprised to know that we only
became friends after I moved away. That time in my life was so
full of trauma and just the worst luck, it was nearly impossible
for me to trust anyone. I kept worrying, What if I’m making
the wrong decisions again? But sometimes life allows you to
form the kinds of connections that are just close enough to
what you want, while also being exactly what you currently
need. Seth and I reconnected on a more personal level when
I told him I was moving and he said, “Aw man, that sucks! I
always ­really liked working with you. Do you have a ride to
the airport yet?” When I told him I ­didn’t, he scoffed, “No one
has offered you a ride to the airport? These fuckin’ people. I’m
taking you to the airport.”
Seth picked me up as he said he would and got us snacks
and drove me to the airport. Such a simple thing was light-
years beyond anything I’d experienced before and created a
bond that I continued via texts and phone calls once I got to
NYC. Seth was a very curious sort of person (me too, respect)
who d ­ idn’t ­really have friends. He talked to me and maybe one
other person on a regular basis, and when I asked him if he
ever got lonely, he replied, “No. Because I had a great family.”
And the difference between us hit me like a ton of bricks.
Look, I’m sure there are people reading this who had that
great family and still need friends, of course. But it was a
huge moment for me, not necessarily because that was why
I needed friends, but it was surely why I needed them so
badly. So badly that I’d routinely settle for scraps and crumbs,
neglect and abuse, whatever, as long as you’ll allow me to sit
with you, thank you so much! And after hearing Seth say
that, knowing that he got it, I, in the smallest possible way,

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began to forgive myself for being so “needy,” aka someone

who needed something we literally all need: community.
That said, I can’t explain to you why Seth and I still never
felt like close friends in my mind, except to say it boiled down
to a few things:

1. He lived so far away, and while I’d unknowingly needed

that distance for many reasons, it was a catch-­22 because
those friendships can largely feel like you hallucinated this
person in a time of crisis, the way Tom Hanks started to
befriend a volleyball in that movie I did not see.
2. Seth had a wealth of empathy and kindness and support
but came from such a safe, loving, consistent background
and I d­ idn’t, so I never felt fully seen in that way, which
kept me from getting any closer than we were.

I have often struggled with being able to fully connect to

people who haven’t been through anything close to what I’ve
been through, which, to be fair, always seemed like very few
people (of course, I know from writing How to Be Alone that
it’s not so few; there are so many of us, we just rarely meet for
whatever reason. I personally assume the reason is we’re all
pretty terrified of human beings). And not because surviving
trauma makes you better or worse, but because trauma can
make you feel like you’re weird, like you’re unlike anyone else,
and like no one could possibly relate to you or see you and
give you what you need.
If someone says, “Ugh my dad’s being the worst right
now” and you know it’s because their dad is just being a lit-
tle overprotective from a place of love while your version of
“being the worst” involves near-­death experiences, how the

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 On Keeping People at a Distance So You Don’t Get Hurt Again

hell can you get close to that person? And often people do not
­really consider these potential differences before they speak
(I’m sure many people don’t care about this, but I do). In a
new friendship it can be so important to know what someone
else has experienced before you assume that your experience
is monolithic. If I had a friend whose dad was dying of cancer,
I don’t think it would be too much trouble to not complain
about how my very healthy dad was calling me too much to
tell me he loves me and it was annoying me? I think that’s a
pretty easy lift. And having to explain all of those nuances to a
friend who’s already in your life and risking rejection or them
not understanding that, or them calling you dramatic or some
other shade of “Ugh why can’t you just be like me and be very
lucky?” is often not worth the energy expended.
To Seth’s credit, though, he never did that. He has the
most empathy I’ve ever encountered from someone who had,
by their own admission, “A great family and a wonderful
childhood.” In my experience, it seems that empathy is often
earned, often derived from lived experience, and many times is
born from not having empathy given to you in similar circum-
stances. Empathy is the currency of people who’ve been there,
and wish things had gone differently. And yet many times,
there are people who’ve been to hell and back and have some-
how still returned with very little empathy for others who
struggle in that way or, in Seth’s case, have actively developed
it because he cared enough to do so.
Most people I’ve met have some baseline empathy, so there
is a spectrum. Many people’s empathy baseline is based pri-
marily on their own personal experiences, because that’s where
empathy originates. “I’ve been through this, so I know how it
feels.” To cultivate further empathy, broader empathy, requires

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opening your eyes to other peoples’ experiences. People who’ve

had their eyes opened to the unfairness or “bad” in the world,
often do not think of empathy as something that’s optional. It
is innate, required. So if you haven’t, it is very much a choice
to say, “this has been my experience in the world, but it is not
the only experience and I am interested in seeing the world
outside myself, doing the work, increasing my own awareness,
and then reading and learning about things that might make
me uncomfortable. Because it is even more uncomfortable to
live them.”
People who opt out of doing this further work may still
be empathetic to things they’ve experienced, their own socio-
economic class, religion, race, etc. But true empathy is larger
than your own experience. So if you’re willing to turn a blind
eye, it might not be because you don’t empathize with anyone,
it could be that you don’t want to broaden your experience
to encompass anyone else’s pain. When you love someone,
expanding that empathy for your loved one who may be going
through something you don’t understand, should come with
the territory. But many times, it does not.
It can be so hard to try and develop a sense of commu-
nity if we can’t acknowledge how much we’re impacted by the
ways each of us is able to walk through the world. And if
we’re going to be friends with someone who walks through
the world with greater ease, it is imperative they bring with
them greater empathy for us as well.
When I asked Seth how it was possible that he had so
much empathy for situations he had no experience with, he
told me it was because he chose to actively cultivate it, it was a
choice he made to care enough to have it, and it blew me away.
It echoed every sense I’d had that he was extraordinary.

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Though he was far away, I clung to moments every few

years when Seth would come to visit NYC and we would play
like excited little kids. I always know I feel good about some-
one when my little kid self can come hang out, and by that I
mean, when I’m free to be goofy and unfiltered and not worry
if I’m accidentally doing something wrong, or if I’m being
judged.
Finding someone with whom you can just drop all that—­
the overwhelming exhaustion of trying to be fine and perfect
and normal, as defined by very antiquated standards—­was
extremely liberating. And I had that with him, until my
social battery would run out and so would his and we would
say OK, bye and part ways and it was totally fine, no one was
mad.
Each visit with Seth ended the same way, though, with
him saying maybe he would one day move here and we could
hang out all the time, and me loving that idea but knowing
it probably ­wouldn’t happen. And even if it did, would it be
as great? Would I be able to show up in person for this if we
lived close by? Would he? And each time he would head back
home, I was once again ejected from this elevated place where
I was loved and seen and safe and able to fully be myself, back
into a world where I never r­eally felt that with anyone, and
had no idea how to find more people in my city who might
fit that bill.
NYC was once again me versus the world instead of us
versus the world. And while I knew all those feelings and this
friendship didn’t actually go anywhere, the fact that he just got
on a plane and could always come back and visit and that he
was very far away somehow made me feel like it didn’t count.
I lacked the object permanence to be able to know that just

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because something disappeared from view doesn’t mean it

stopped existing in the world.
And here’s the thing: In the big picture, long-­distance
friends absolutely do count. They do. And we don’t see that
reflected enough in the world, so it’s important for me to say
to you they absolutely count. It is equally important, however,
to say that it is also completely valid to sometimes feel like it’s
still not enough, or feel like it “doesn’t count.” Not because it’s
nothing, because it’s so, so much. Long-­distance friends may be
so much more than you’ve had before, while also still not being
nearly enough for the kind of friendship you’ve always wanted.
It is completely possible to love your long-­distance friend-
ship and still wish it was a local friendship. To wish those
people lived closer, not as a passing thing you text each other
sometimes—“Aww, I wish I was there”—­but in a deep, very real
way, and it’s hard not to wonder why you don’t get to have it all.
I still regard Eve and Seth and many of my other long-­
distance friends as some of my most intimate, my most kin-
dred. Perhaps in part because the only way we’ve lasted this
long is our ability to nurture the friendship even in distance,
even after long periods of time when we don’t talk as much.
We’re always able to pick the ball back up and play just like
we always did.
I know Eve and Seth are out there, rooting for me, even if
we’ve only been in the same room together a few short times.
Even if our friendship is often them sending me jokes and
cool photos from the sixties, or telling me they’re coming to
NYC and they’re going to come by my show while they’re in
town to see me. I know that these are deep, wonderful con-
nections that I hold extremely dear, and it is absolutely OK if
you hold long-­distance friends in the same very high regard.

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 On Keeping People at a Distance So You Don’t Get Hurt Again

And it is also absolutely OK to say to yourself, “These

long-­distance friendships are beautiful, they are, AND I also
still want a friend who lives close by, a friend who drops by
with soup, a friend who can come with me to the hospital,
a friend to go to the movies with last minute. These normal
things, I deserve to have them. I do not have to settle only for
friendships that are not fully what I need, fully what I want.”
It’s wonderful to be able to share some parts of your life
with someone in this way, but in a long-­distance friendship
you’re often just getting the pieces of their life. You can joke
and watch movies and analyze each other’s lives, but you miss
out on the shared experiences of doing that over dinner, or
coffee, or staying out ‘til 3 a.m. and so much happened. You
miss out on memories you were both there for, and it ­wasn’t
just a story you gave them the highlight reel of later.
And then comes the challenging part: finding the cour-
age to cultivate in-­person, local friendships. Someone who
hugs you when you need it, and not just through the phone.
Someone who can be in the same room with you, and you get
to see their facial cues and nonverbal cues, and they get to see
yours. Being able to be all the messy parts of yourself that you
usually can hide with distance, in the same room, fully loved
and held this time.
To know that this is possible. And allow it to be so.
For me, it was so important to finally realize why I was
exclusively forming connections with people who were physi-
cally, and oftentimes emotionally, at a distance as an insurance
plan designed to keep me safe. Putting up those walls keep out
the bad, yes, but they can also keep out the good. So if you’ve
noticed you tend to pick the equivalent of “you w ­ ouldn’t know
her, she lives in another state” friendships, reflect on why you

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 You Will Find Your People

are choosing them. Maybe it’s just because no one in your area
is like you, or you don’t have access to finding people who are.
That’s extremely true for many of us. But if it’s not just that,
ask those deeper questions of yourself.
Do you feel people ­wouldn’t like you if they ­really knew
you, or vice versa? Do you feel like you don’t deserve to have
friendships the way other people have them? Do these distant
friendships check a box for you, so that you can tell people you
have friends, and avoid dealing with any intimacy issues you
might have? It’s completely valid and understandable if any
of these resonate, and you’re definitely not alone. But it’s only
once you examine these patterns that you’re able to address
the root causes of these choices. If it’s any of the above, then
affirming your worthiness is your mission.
You deserve to have everything you want, even if it feels
scary, even if you’ve been hurt. And especially because it feels
so scary, especially because you’ve been hurt. I’m rooting for
you most of all.

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 Yes, Animals Can
Be Your (Best) Friends
“A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more
than he loves himself.” —­Josh Billings

When I first got my dog, Lights, she was a foster-­fail, which

is a term for a dog who you agree to foster for a little while
until they find their forever home, only to quickly realize you
are their forever home. This is such a perfect comparison for
when we become casual friends with someone and don’t think
too much about it, and then much to our delight, they become
the lifelong friends we weren’t expecting.
When I found Lights, I had a complicated mixture of peo-
ple in my life who were “potentially my friends I think?” and
“friends, but I’m frustrated with them” and “very good friends
but I’m still unsure how to utilize them if I need something
or I’m going through something hard,” and I had no idea this
little dog would become a beautiful bridge to the type of deep,
meaningful, reliable connection I’d wanted so badly, but w ­ asn’t
sure how to get.
In the years since getting a dog, I’ve heard other people say
that they were similarly afraid of, or had a hard time connecting

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with people, and they too found with animals the wonderful
companionship that had often eluded them with humans.
There are lower stakes with animals. They’re innately lov-
ing, and the potential for them to suddenly leave you because
they met someone who they think is cooler than you is slim,
due to the fact that they live with you.
Adopting this deeply loving, affectionate dog who ­wasn’t
afraid to show how much she cared about me, and truly appre-
ciated everything I did for her, was my first experience with
consistency, my first experience with reciprocity. Every day I
assumed I would come home and she would be in a mood, or
suddenly hate me, or want to go hang out with someone else,
because my abandonment issues were formidable. But every
day she was so excited to see me, every day she loved me just
the same, if not even more.
When I accidentally stepped on her tiny foot, and apol-
ogized a million times, I assumed she would hate me or hold
it over me for months—now I would surely be punished. But
she never did. An apology was enough because she knew me
and she knew I ­didn’t mean to hurt her, because of how I’d
always treated her before. Because I had shown her consis-
tency. She still loved me, and we both moved on. Well, she
moved on. I still felt bad for weeks, but you get it.
Every time I gave her dog massages, or pets, or cuddles,
or comforted her when she felt bad, it was reciprocated and
appreciated so deeply. When I was sick, just as I’d cared for
her, she would run to cuddle with me to heal me as fast as she
could. There was no resentment or score keeping, but there
was an understanding that she had my back, and I had hers,
always. If I had it to give, she’d get it. And if she had it to give,
I’d get it. I can’t tell you how revolutionary that felt to me.

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 Yes, Animals Can Be Your (Best) Friends

And it made me realize that yes, there can be friends

who just keep loving you, who are steady and consistent, even
if you don’t have energy for them all the time, or you don’t
see them as often as you’d like. When you come back they
will still be there. There can be friends who will see you mess
up and accept a genuine apology and a promise to do better
because they know you and they know your heart, and people
make mistakes. There can be friends who show up for you just
as much as you show up for them. And it feels so much better
than not knowing where you stand, or worrying what small
misstep would break this delicate thing.
Even now, I’ll have moments when Lights r­ eally loves one
of my friends a lot and I’ll wonder if one day she’ll love them
more than me and leave me and I’ll be alone. Similarly, those
fears might still be there years into a friendship, but having
a dog has taught me to weather those feelings and see them
as just that: my feelings. They are mine to deal with, mine
to observe, and watch them pass by. They aren’t necessarily
based on facts, or even based on who I am in the present. They
might just be, and usually are, remnants of past hurts that
come up every now and again, unhealed parts of me asking to
be soothed. And I soothe them by reminding myself of what
is real. And what is real is that those feelings always pass, and
this is truly just a tiny animal who wants me to love her, and
who wants to love me back.
And if that exists in a dog, then it must exist in people
too. And you deserve to find them as much as they deserve to
find you.

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 Friends Who Are
Good on Paper
“I hang around for another round, until something
stops me.”
—­The Cardigans, “Hanging Around”

When How to Be Alone came out, I started making friends

with people who had read it and found me because of it. They
were in the unique position of having read about where I’d
come from, what I needed and wanted in a friendship, and
had presumably had the conversation with themselves about
whether they had it to give me, and decided yes, they did, and
yes, they would. The same way that if I finally met Fiona Apple,
I’d be extra nice to her because I know she’s been through a
lot and doesn’t feel comfortable around most people. And yes,
I’ve thought about how I would be Fiona Apple’s friend many
times, I think that’s clear.
It seemed like the dream: to be able to hand people a guide
to your past hurts, your needs, and your want for connections,
so you don’t have to go through it every time, like a friendship
intake. I thought it would be like skipping a million steps with
someone. They’d already read the “job requirements” and they
were applying knowing they’d be great at it. But somehow,

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 Friends Who Are Good on Paper

that forethought is not always what happened, and I was again

left questioning why.
Years later, I would read that Fiona Apple had the same
hope when she released her first album. She thought every-
one would understand her, and people would want to be her
friend, but it didn’t exactly turn out that way. And I realized
what she might have meant by this when I became friends
with Rosemary.
Rosemary and I met because we had mutual friends and
she said she really related to my first book, which seemed like
a good enough foundation to me. I liked her for so many rea-
sons. She was fearless and eternally confident. She knew she
was entitled to whatever she wanted in life and didn’t hesitate
for a second to ask for it, which, as someone who struggles
with both, was intoxicating to watch. And the more we hung
out, the more I felt like “Wow, this is what it feels like to walk
through the world feeling free and safe and like you can do
and have anything? This feels amazing!”
It took me a long while to realize a lot of that came so eas-
ily to Rosemary because her parents were insanely rich. Like
a lot of very wealthy people, she never mentioned it, so I was
thinking we were both just two artists trying to make it in
the big city. I assumed she was fearless and didn’t care what
anyone else thought or felt, because she was brave, and I was
constantly afraid and worried about other people’s feelings
because I wasn’t brave. The level of incorrect thinking here
would prove to haunt me.
I’ve seen this so many times in my past friendships,
where on paper there’s so much about this friendship that
is exciting and checks a lot of boxes, but something about it

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 You Will Find Your People

never feels quite right and I’m not sure why: the Good On
Paper friend.
If you’ve never had a good-­on-­paper friend or don’t know
what one is, first of all congratulations! Second of all, I bet
you have and just ­didn’t know it. Here are some telltale signs
they’re a good-­on-­paper friend:

1. You have enough in common that you should get along

great, but you don’t r­eally. Maybe you have mutual
friends, or work in similar fields, but something about it
never quite feels right.
2. You misunderstand each other a lot. Many times, being
“good on paper” is ­really about thinking you’re on the same
wavelength, but something about your dynamic keeps you
bumping up against each other and you don’t understand
why.
3. They’re the type of person you’d want to be friends with.
It’s like seeing something at a thrift store that you love
on the hanger but not on you. It’s a beautiful piece but it
­doesn’t feel good when you put it on. And you want to be
the person who feels good in it. But you’re just not.
4. The ways you give and receive love don’t match up. We
put so much emphasis on liking someone, but just because
you like someone ­doesn’t mean they can give what you need
to feel loved, and vice versa. Maybe someone’s number one
thing they need to feel loved is consistency—you doing
everything you say you will do—but unfortunately you
have a hard time doing what you say you’ll do, even when
you love someone. So you can both care for each other, but
what you need and what they can give doesn’t match up.

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 Friends Who Are Good on Paper

5. You’re not sure if you’re friends or if you kind of hate

them. Are their jokes playful or are they kind of a horrible
person? Or are they kind of a horrible person in a fun way
I can live with? I guess time will tell!
6. You’ve known them a long time. Just because you’ve
known someone forever d ­oesn’t mean what you have
is good, no more than having something in your fridge
forever makes it good. Check the expiration date.
7. You feel like their sidekick, not an equal. Some people
want to be the sidekick in theory, but if it’s starting to
feel less like you’re a team and more like you’re the side
character in someone else’s story, that could be a good sign
this isn’t working.
8. They’re nice to you but mean to everyone else. If you
know this one, you know. And I wish I ­didn’t know, but
I do.

So why do we tolerate a good-­on-­paper friend? Often, because

they’re better than nothing and we think we can work with it,
like an ugly couch we found on the side of the road that we tell
ourselves we can upcycle into something cool, like an HGTV
host. There’s this feeling many of us know very well: the feel-
ing that you should finally “settle” on one romantic partner to
be with, even if just for a while, so you can finally say you’re not
single anymore, and other people won’t ask you any further ques-
tions. They’ll just be happy they don’t have to “worry about you
anymore,” because you found someone, anyone, box checked.
This can absolutely happen with your friendships as well.
Rosemary was a perfect example of a good-­ on-­paper
friend. In theory, Rosemary was the type of friend I’d dreamed

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 You Will Find Your People

of: someone who saw me, supported me, and wanted to be my

friend. But sometimes the good-­on-­paper friend is someone
who wants to be your friend so much, but they aren’t able to
be the kind of friend you need. And so, you can either cling
to their good intentions or acknowledge that current proof is
worth far more than future potential. But it can take a while
to spot that, and it’s easy to get caught up in anything that
might be a sign that there’s real friendship potential and you
just need time to grow together.
Rosemary and I became closer and closer as time went on,
so when I found out that I needed to get surgery due to a recent
traumatic event and I was very scared, she seemed like a person I
could reach out to. When I finally got up the courage to tell her
how scared I was, she said, “Lane, I would love to come with you
to the hospital for your surgery, because years ago when I was in
the hospital, no one came to be with me and I wanted that so
badly.” I cried, thinking she understood, she got it, and finally
here was someone who said they wanted to help and would
actually do it. After meeting people in the past who’d said they
wanted to help, only to take and take and take, this time seemed
like someone who wanted to take every opportunity to do for
someone else what they wish someone had done for them. That
sounded like the way I thought, the way I did things, and even
though we were different in so many ways, I assumed our moti-
vations, our worldviews, were similar. Good on paper.
In the days before the surgery, Rosemary was so excited
to help. She told me she would bring me a ton of my favorite
snacks and asked what they were. I was allowed to receive
care. And it was finally starting now. She was going to come
to my house and we would go to the hospital together from
there.

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 Friends Who Are Good on Paper

And then showed up that morning and said, oops, she’d

forgotten the snacks.
I thought, Oh that’s fine! You’re HERE! For my sur-
gery. Goodness, bless you, you saint! Who on earth would even
do that??? She sat with me in the hospital and had brought
me a stuffed animal we named Tim Curry Tiger, and I don’t
remember why, except that it was a tiger and it was funny to
pretend Tim Curry had embodied him, and to do our respec-
tive Tim Curry impressions.
When it was time for surgery, Rosemary went to the wait-
ing room. And for a moment, I felt semi-­normal. This is what
friendship was supposed to be. I s­ houldn’t be this nervous or this
panicked that I was taking more than my fair share of friendship,
or wondering what I had to do to “make it up to her,” I reassured
myself. This kind of “Am I doing things correctly?” anxiety was
so common for me and is common for anyone who ­hasn’t had
many healthy connections just yet. The fear that the problem is
you and your lack of experience with love and friendship.
After some additional traumatic things at the hospital that
we will not go into (but just know it was not a chill day), they
released me and we were able to head home. Twenty minutes
after we got in the car, I was suddenly very aware that I had to
pee very badly, but I ­didn’t want to stop the car. I just wanted
to be home, and we’d be home in an hour or so, and trying to
find a public bathroom in Manhattan with the crutches I now
absolutely required to function ­wasn’t my idea of a great time.
Several minutes later, Rosemary said to me, frustrated, “Are
we going to be home soon? I have a story I need to write, and
this is taking a long time.” I immediately launched into, “Oh
my goodness, I hope so, yeah I’m sure, yes.” And told myself to
not stop to go to the bathroom, I needed to just hurry up and

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 You Will Find Your People

get home so my friend could work! (“See? I’m doing it wrong!”

echoed through my recently surgery-­d body.)
I was told months later by a nurse friend of mine that
a big part of my surgery, and maybe all surgery, is that they
are required to have you go to the bathroom after surgery.
Something about the anesthesia will cause a delayed reaction
in realizing you have to pee and may even result in not being
able to pee. You’re not supposed to leave the hospital until
you’re able to, but I did not know that, and they just told me
to go. So, that was cute and professional!
Not knowing any of this, I finally had to ask the car to
stop, and Rosemary angrily sighed, like I was being annoying.
I struggled to get out of the SUV by myself, on crutches, and
hobbled into a restaurant to use their bathroom. Thankfully,
they let me use it, but once I got in there and navigated get-
ting my clothes off in crutches and a cast, I ­couldn’t pee, and I
sobbed like I had failed. Because again, I d
­ idn’t know what was
happening was normal and not my fault. I hurried back into
the car, knowing I’d disappointed Rosemary with my human
body and my very long surgery.
When we finally got home, Rosemary raced ahead of me,
not to hold the door or anything, but instead asking, “Where’s
your office so I can finish this deadline for work?” I raced, on
crutches, to show her, while she left me alone in the living
room to fend for myself. For hours.
If I needed water, or a snack, or my medication or to go
to the bathroom, I had to get up and get it. Rosemary was
working and could not be bothered. When she left, I thanked
her two thousand times for being there for me, but something
was wrong, and I knew it.

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 Friends Who Are Good on Paper

In the days that followed, I w ­ asn’t taking my pain meds

and frequently collapsed on the floor from extreme pain. I’d
always struggled with feeling like my pain w ­ asn’t real. I can
handle anything, can survive anything, so Rosemary acting
like my pain was negligible and OK to ignore reinforced in
my mind that I must not need the medication at all. Several
times, my next-­door neighbor found me and helped me get
up. I retreated even more after this, unable to fully process
how painful that surgery day was for me.
I buried the suspicion that Rosemary h ­ adn’t behaved very
well that day, could’ve maybe done things a bit differently,
slightly better, as deep down as I could manage. She was my
friend and she was there for me, even if it ­wasn’t perfect. That
was friendship, sure.
A few days after the surgery, my friend Audrey offered to
come by to help as soon as she found out I’d had an operation.
I’d stopped telling people anything happened, internalizing
that it was no big deal. Audrey did not think it was “no big
deal” at all.
Audrey was a neighbor of mine in my previous apartment
and was always lovely and kind and warm, but I d ­ idn’t know
her very well, at least not yet, so I d
­ idn’t know what to expect.
I thought I knew Rosemary much better because we’d spent
so much more time together. She was the one who promised
to come through, made a show of coming through, told me
what I was getting, and then d ­ idn’t provide it. Audrey simply
said she’d come over and be there. And I cautiously accepted.
Audrey brought me a ton of food and slept over on the
couch, so if I needed anything, she’d be there. My dog loves her
so much she slept with Audrey on the couch all night. I like to

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 You Will Find Your People

imagine it was her way of saying, Thank you for loving my mom
as much as I do. And for doing things like this for her that I cannot
do, because I do not have opposable thumbs.
Even with this “wow this was very different from my expe-
rience with Rosemary” contrast, it still w ­ asn’t until months
later, when she offered to take me out for my birthday, that I
realized how right I was to feel concerned about my friend-
ship with Rosemary.
Ih­ adn’t had much, if any, experience with birthday din-
ners personally, though I’d attended many and knew the hell
of the split check where I got soup and everyone else got steak.
And this wasn’t going to be a group dinner, but that’s still
what I think of when I think of birthday dinners: Order as
much as possible, because you’ll all split the check and some-
one ordered lobster.
Two people had offered to take me for one this year,
Rosemary and Audrey. I assumed both of these birthday cel-
ebrations (wow, two whole people!!!) would be very similar,
but instead, it was like a children’s parable about two extremes.
Rosemary’s celebration was first. She took me to a restau-
rant that was pretty good but ­didn’t have much I could eat. I
often feel weirdly self-­conscious about my myriad food aller-
gies because Cool Girls eat steak and air and whiskey and
never have autoimmune issues they did not at all choose, and
she knew that. But still, maybe people make mistakes.
Rosemary offered to just get whatever I wanted and we’d
share it, which I’d never r­eally done, because the one thing I
have in common with Joey from Friends is “Lane ­doesn’t share
food,” which she might not have known, but I ­didn’t feel com-
fortable telling her, in a bid to be “normal” (see: matching what
anyone else wants to do).

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 Friends Who Are Good on Paper

I hate sharing food so much. It comes from not always hav-

ing enough food in the past, and also just deeply loving food. Just
give me my own food! I don’t want to have to count how many
bites I had, or how many poppers I already ate and how many
you had, so we divide it up fairly. It’s too much stress for me.
Rosemary asked me what else I wanted to do for my
birthday, anything at all! But she ­didn’t fully understand how,
when you come from extreme denial of your own wants, you
can become fully incapable of knowing what you want, and
what your options are.
Because I’m still new to feeling that I’m allowed to need
anything, and trusting that people who offer it really want to
offer it, I often feel like someone asking me what I need is like
they’re asking me to order from a menu I’ve never seen before.
What’s on the menu? If it turns out it’s a Thai restaurant and
I need a Yankee candle, then I wasted both of our time, and
I look like an idiot and now you’re mad because I asked for a
Yankee candle and you’re a Thai restaurant. Ugh, OK fine, well
then do you have any eye serums? No? Great, now I’m banned
for life from this strip mall.”
I’d spent so many years not having resources, or options,
or choices, that I made myself OK with that, made myself
smaller, so that reaching out and expanding still felt danger-
ous, even when it was finally safe.
I told her a very abridged version of this, and she said,
“Well, this dessert menu won’t do, so we are getting you des-
sert elsewhere if you want! I want you to have the best birth-
day ever and I want to give you that!!!” Sadly, still battling a
chronic case of “OMG you don’t HAVE to” (which certainly
­wasn’t helped by what happened with her months prior), I
pushed it aside and said, “Maybe later!”

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 You Will Find Your People

She had an idea. She took me to a bar (I don’t drink) that

only served chicken wings (I don’t eat meat) so we could hang
out (see also: I could drink water and watch her drink and
eat wings and zero desserts)! What an awesome tailor-­made
option for me! I made the most of it, and to be fair, I ­couldn’t
think of what I wanted to do, so who was I to complain that
this was wildly not it?
Later that night, Rosemary was kind of sloshed and we
walked to this vegan ice cream place and stood in line out-
side because I guess they were r­eally busy. They were closing
in twenty minutes, but surely, they would accommodate the
existing line. During that twenty minutes, Rosemary said,
“I wanted to give you the best birthday—­did I do it? Did I
give you the best birthday? I did it, right? I gave you the best
birthday! I did that! I DID THAT FOR YOU! Right? I did,
right?” And I kept wondering why I was spending my birth-
day watching her do what she wanted to do and appeasing
her need to know she was a Great Friend, which seemingly
eclipsed her desire to actually be one? No, that ­couldn’t be it.
I must be mistaken. She spent the rest of the twenty minutes
asking me if she looked fat and if she was hot or not. And I
spent the remainder of my birthday assuring her she was hot.
For bizarre reasons unknown to me and everyone else who
was waiting, the ice cream shop did not accommodate the
line. After twenty minutes, they took one more customer and
told the rest of us to get fucked. Rosemary sweetly told them,
“Please, it’s my friend’s birthday!” And I tried to wash away all
of the weird “Wait, did you want to be a good friend to me, or
just appear to be a good friend to me? Please tell me the latter
is totally incorrect so I can just have friends already” feelings I
was now flooded with, after ignoring them for so long.

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 Friends Who Are Good on Paper

And then I went home, without ice cream, without feeling

taken care of, feeling like I’d done a great job on my birthday
by making my friend feel good about herself, which I don’t
think is what a birthday is supposed to be about. But I ­didn’t
realize how accurate that was until I met up with Audrey later
that week, which I’ll get to in a moment.
A few weeks after my Birthday Nightmare, Rosemary told
me we were going to do Part 2 of my birthday, since “I told
you I’d get you ice cream and I’m gonna get you ice cream!!!”
We did not get ice cream. Instead, we met up at a museum
she’d wanted to go to, and I suddenly realized that Rosemary
was someone who, if I ever mentioned anything painful or frus-
trating, she would stop talking to me, look away, and only listen
to me again when I’d said something funny and light. As though
my pain disgusted her and I was failing at my purpose, which
was to entertain her. I would usually oblige, not fully conscious
this was happening, but on this day, I finally saw it for what it
was and I was furious. I was her pet monkey, her court jester.
We weren’t friends. I was the funny, weird girl, a stray she was
generously taking in.
We went to get lunch together, at another place that was
just fine, and she d
­ idn’t pay for the museum or the lunch, so
I have no idea how any of this was Birthday Part 2, but OK.
After garbage lunch, she suggested I come over to her house
because she had “some beautiful clothes I’m giving away that
you’d love.” We took a cab very far uptown to get them, after a
long, exhausting day of feeling like her quirky purse dog. But
maybe, just maybe, the clothes were great!
We got inside, and the clothes were . . . ​in tatters. Most
were from an old boyfriend who just wore stained navy-­blue
T‑shirts and beaten‑up khakis. And if I picked up any items

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she had in there that were remotely nice, she would TAKE
THEM BACK TO KEEP. Finally, she said, “Sorry I took
everything you wanted and just kept it. I do have one dress
you’d love though!” She brought the dress out. I was very, very
tired by that point, so I started to put it in my purse to try on
when I got home. She refused and said if I wanted to take it,
I had to try it on in front of her, now. Too tired to think about
how insane that was, I tried it on over my clothes. She said it
was, “SO cute!!!” followed by the reveal that she was going to
keep it for herself. I stared at her like she’d just told me she
keeps dead bodies in the closet. As I went to the front door,
the door to an escape from whatever this day had been, she
said, “OH! And I ­didn’t forget the ice cream. If you walk about
eight blocks there’s an ice cream place right there.”
What, on earth, was this? Not wanting to walk another
eight blocks to buy my own belated birthday ice cream, I just
got on the train home and thought, Hm, I feel like this friendship
is ­really bad? But how could that be? She wanted to be a great
friend to me, she wanted to care for me. On paper this was a
good friendship, so why w ­ asn’t it a good friendship in practice?
***
On the absolute other end was Audrey. Days after what-
ever Birthday Part 1 was, Audrey took me to one of my
favorite restaurants, where everything is amazing, and used
every second of our dinner together to make me feel loved
and supported and special. The dinner was in no way a cel-
ebration of what a good friend she was, what a kind charity
she was performing for an in-­need stray. It was an active
celebration, a celebration that I was born and that she got
to know me.

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I told Audrey what had happened with my surgery and

Rosemary—­tentatively, worried that I’d read it all wrong, that
I was being too fussy, no one’s perfect, it’s OK. Audrey was
livid at every part of it. Why h ­ adn’t she brought the snacks???
Why ­didn’t she blow off work or reschedule it??? Why did she
even come over if she was just going to use my apartment like
a workspace and not be there for me after surgery??? Why
even ask to take me out on my birthday if she ­wasn’t going to
do anything she said she’d do???
After a lifetime of asking myself these questions and
immediately shutting myself up, I let Audrey’s words in.
If you’ve never had true, good friends before, it is so easy to
take whatever scraps someone is offering. An approximation
of friendship. Hey, you think, at least it’s something. Because you
don’t yet know what friendship should look like, should feel
like. So when someone comes into your life, promising you
many of the things you’d wanted and not delivering on them,
you might think, That’s OK! No one’s perfect and hey, someone
verbally offering it is at least one step closer to getting everything
I want. But it is not.
If I hired you to work for me and I said I’d pay you
$50,000, and then just never did, is that better than an unpaid
internship, because at least I offered you payment? NO, IT’S
NOT. And if anything, it’s worse, because in the latter sce-
nario, at least I told you what you were getting, and you could
choose to be okay with that or not. But in the former scenario,
you were outright lied to, to get you to take a job you ­wouldn’t
have otherwise accepted.
It’s easy to see so many of these moments, these friend-
ships, as people who chipped away at my hope for finding the
friends I so deeply wanted and needed. But the closer I got

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to having the friends I wanted, the more I realized how use-

ful these moments of disappointment actually can be. They’re
when I learned what’s truly important to me in a friendship.
What I’ll no longer settle for. What I’ll no longer accept. And
what I can and should expect from others in the future.
And if you’re finally seeing the flaws in your good-­on-­
paper friends, and now striving for something more than that,
let me tell you this: You don’t want too many things. You want
what you damn well want, which everyone is allowed. There is
so much rhetoric I see, saying that you s­ houldn’t “expect you
from other people.” That people are limited, and they can’t
be expected to give you as much as you give them. But it is
so important to remember that you are very much allowed
to require you from other people if that’s what you need. If
you give a lot emotionally, you are absolutely allowed to hold
out for someone who can give the same amount of emotional
resonance, the same amount of empathy, when they are able.
And if someone sees those needs and knows they can’t provide
them, that’s OK, too, but you’re allowed to have them just the
same.
If someone offers to take you out for dinner and ice cream,
you damn well deserve someone who actually does that and
then pays before you even see the check.
If consistency is important to you, crucial even, you deserve
people who do what they said they would do. Because they know
you need it. You deserve someone who makes damn sure they
do the important things. Even if it’s hard for them, because
that’s what people do when they love you.
You deserve people who check all your boxes, just as much
as you check all of theirs. And it’s OK to hold out until you
find them. You will see this sentiment repeated throughout

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these pages, so please know that I am repeating it deliberately,

because I often need to remind myself that I deserve them, and
it’s OK to need them, and it’s OK to hold out for them, and
maybe you need those continuous reminders as well.
As much as the world wants us to settle to just say we have
friends, so we s­ houldn’t overanalyze it, or want any more, it’s
vital to know that you’re allowed to wholly disagree with that
idea. Let them say what they want. If you need more, or want
more, you can and should hold out for something that fits you
better.
It isn’t worth it to hold onto people who are kind of close
to what you want but are also kind of harmful to you. And
moreover, it ­doesn’t serve either one of you.
I don’t hate Rosemary, I ­really don’t. I have compassion for
whatever shaped her in this way, and maybe one day she’ll see
she had these patterns and heal, and we’ll reconnect (I love a
redemption story so much, and to a fault, like please stop hoping
they’ll magically change, trauma brain, that never ends well). And
it’s also OK if we don’t. Because sometimes people come into
our lives just to show us what we don’t want, and those people
have given us the gift of being a mirror. And that mirror shows
us who we ­really are and all that we’ve buried, all the needs
we’ve pushed underground because they seemed unsightly.
And if we’re lucky, another friend comes into the picture soon
after, to confirm that the needs we’ve buried can be met, can
rise from the earth like buds, to be watered, and nurtured by
the people around us, until we see that our needs were not
burdens, not unsightly flaws to be worked on, but instead, vital
parts of us that deserve to bloom.
Good-­on-­paper friends are so seductive because we want to
find our people so very much, so if someone walks up to us and

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says, “I’m your person! I’m here! I want to give you everything
you want!” it’s exhilarating and very tempting to believe them
outright. Why would someone lie about that? And the truth is,
I think most people don’t lie about it. I think most people who
do this absolutely want your friendship and want to be able to
give you what you need. But then as you get closer, you, or they,
might realize they don’t have what it takes, and they’re not as
suitable for the “position” as they thought they might be.
You only find out if a friendship works, if it has the poten-
tial to be real and true, by getting to know someone and see-
ing how they fit in your life and how you fit into theirs. By
showing up for people and allowing them to show up for you.
And then taking note of those moments when you ­didn’t get
what you needed, or are shrinking what you need in order to
accommodate their limitations of what they can give.
And above all, by listening to that little voice in your head,
or your heart, that says this friendship should work, you wish
it would work, and yet it just d­ oesn’t. And then forgiving your-
self for not seeing it sooner, because at least you’re finally see-
ing it now, and you can take what you’ve learned and do better
next time. And there is always a next time.

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 Learning Your (and Your
Friends’) Attachment Style
“It’s my responsibility as your best friend to make
sure you do exciting things, even when you don’t
want to.” —Sookie, Gilmore Girls

Look, I love the “they’re opposites, and they’re best friends”

trope as much as the next consummate TV watcher. But a lot
of times when TV characters are opposites, a big part of how
they are opposites is their attachment style. This means “we
experience love in different ways, and we give and receive love
in different ways.” While that can be great to watch, because
it’s fictional and you never doubt they love each other, even if
they struggle to show it at times, if someone in your own life
receives and gives love in a radically different way than you do,
that can be incredibly stressful.
But we don’t always show that in our depictions. We sim-
ply tell people opposites attract. Look at Rachel and Monica.
(I don’t want to reference Friends this much, but it’s one of the
biggest shows of all time about friendship. Even people who
have barely watched TV before have it as a template for what
friendship is “supposed” to look like, so here we are.) Carly
and Sam from iCarly, The Odd Couple, Jen and Judy from Dead
To Me, Mary and Rhoda from Mary Tyler Moore, Molly and

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Issa from Insecure, Nick and Schmidt from New Girl, Jess
and Nick from New Girl, Eleanor and Chidi from The Good
Place, Joan and Toni from Girlfriends, Luke and Lorelai from
Gilmore Girls, Mulder and Scully from The X-Files, Buffy and
Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Ryan and Seth
from The OC.
Opposites seemingly attract because there are learning
opportunities there. Two opposites can balance each other out
and open each other up to new things. This is the kind of
friendship many people have, where someone is strong in the
ways you are weak and vice versa, and you strengthen each
other. How lovely is that, if that was always the only difference
between you?
When we see opposite friends with potentially different
attachment styles, they often bend easily to meet the other
person’s needs, and usually over one special episode they’ll
address it and fix it in a clean thirty minutes. I’ve learned so
much about attachment theory through my own experiences
and research, and examining how it relates to all my relation-
ships, but especially my friendships, which often take a lot
longer than 30 minutes, commercials included.
Attachment theory is essentially an indicator of how eas-
ily you’re able to attach or get close to other people, based
on how easily and safely you were able to get close to people
as a child. So if you had emotionally available, safe parents,
you’re more likely to have a “secure attachment” and be able
to readily give and receive love without hesitation because you
know it to be a safe thing to do (AKA the system is rigged,
but I digress). But if your childhood was full of absent, unsafe,
unavailable, or unreliable caregivers, having the ability to get
close to people is often far more challenging.

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Usually, those people will split off into two categories of

insecure attachment styles: avoidant attachment styles, anx-
ious attachment styles, or a combination of the two.
People with avoidant attachment styles want love and
connection just as much as anyone else, and it’s possible they
fear it just as equally as anxious attachment styles do; how-
ever, they are much quicker to run and evade and find reasons
to “get to safety.” So if anxious attachments are always wor-
ried the avoidant is mad at them and going to leave them, the
avoidant attachment interprets that as needy and annoying
and uses it as a reason to leave them, since they already want to
leave everyone all the time anyway, and that’s a good enough
reason as any. This often begs the question: If avoidant people
want connection just as much, why do they often retreat when
it arrives? It’s because they start to feel suffocated. They want
closeness but once they actually start getting close to someone,
they quickly feel like they’re being trapped, so they can never
truly have that closeness without doing deep work to untangle
their correlation between “people who need things from them”
and “people who are trying to bleed them dry.”
Recently I realized that I, a person with an anxious attach-
ment style (though throughout my life, I’ve had every insecure
attachment style, and now have a partially secure attachment
style, please clap), have so often attracted avoidant attachment
friends. While these differing attachment style friends fit the
“we’re SO opposite” trope in a very delightful way, I was still
entering into a friendship with someone who hated vulnera-
bility and emotions, while I live for both, which would almost
be comical if it w­ asn’t so toxic.
Despite there being a mutual love and desire for your
friendships to work, having clearly incompatible attachment

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 You Will Find Your People

styles between you can often be a huge harbinger of what you

can and can’t expect from your friends.
And while some people might find they pick friends with
compatible attachment styles, but choose romantic partners
with incompatible attachment styles, or vice versa, I’m (not
at all) happy to report that I often pick people with avoidant
attachment styles as partners and friends. Please clap, and also
pray, for me.
The worst part of this is that it can be r­ eally hard to tell
what someone’s attachment style is when you’re just friends.
It’s so much easier to spot when you’re dating someone
because the intimacy is often more immediate, so you can
fairly quickly see where someone stands. But we tend to
“casually date” friends for a longer period of time without
outlining expectations and commitments as clearly. We don’t
want to get too close just yet, since we don’t know what the
other person is looking for and we don’t want to be needy. So
we “see where it goes,” not wanting to scare them off, or seem
too intense. Because of that, it’s possible, depending on the
level of intimacy or how often you see them or speak with
them, that you might not fully realize what a friend’s attach-
ment style is for years into the friendship. And if it turns out
to be greatly incompatible with your own, well, what do you
do now?
So many friendships require us to just wade farther and
farther into the ocean, not knowing what’s out there, how
deep or shallow the water gets, if there’s a sudden drop off,
or if it’s full of sharks—­which I guess in this case are “funda-
mental incompatibilities with how deeply we’re both willing
and able to connect with each other.” I can’t even imagine that
being a kind of Shark Week, too scary.

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These fundamentals can be worked through, yes, but the

work required by both parties is significant. Not only do you
both need enough self-­awareness to know how you connect
with people, what your needs are, and how much you can give,
but you also have to know whether or not you both have the
tools and willingness to work through any rough spots.
Friendships r­ eally are the biggest group project you’ll ever
be a part of, and it’s possible that most people address friend-
ships the same way they address group projects:

1. They opt out.

2. They copy someone else’s work.
3. They do all the work and resent everyone else for not
doing their part.

I have often found myself in category three—­in both child-

hood group projects and many of my friendships.
Undoing that pattern requires a few things, chief among
them, the ability to mitigate how much you give, to allow other
people to give just as much as you do, and trusting they will,
because you’ve finally chosen someone who is a good match
for you.
Part of the problem here is we’re told to find people who
feel like home to us. And if your “home” was full of unhealthy
patterns and toxic relationships, what will feel like home to
you is actually the last place you should be.
You will often feel very comfortable with people who “feel
like home” to you, but not in a good way. It’s part of the raw
deal you get when you ­didn’t have that perfectly emotionally
available, safe, loving family growing up: a whole lot of “just
do this!” advice that absolutely does not apply to you.

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So now, here you are, trying this idea on like a pair of

shoes every other kid at school has, but they look awful on you
and you’re just trying to find a way to make them work so you
can fit in. And it must be your fault somehow.
In more extreme scenarios, you think you have found that
“home” feeling and, oops, now it’s been a year and yeah, this
is abusive as hell. And you c­ ouldn’t see it, because it felt so
destined, so perfect, so meant to be, so “right.” Because, in a
sad way, it did feel “right.” You’d become so used to a very
unhealthy expression of “love,” whether it was enough for you
to actually feel loved, or not. As a result, your feeling of home
might actually be a warning sign, which is something it took
me my entire life to learn.
In those cases, that friendship i­sn’t destiny, or fate. Your
“it just felt right” isn’t a perfect friendship, it’s a trauma bond.
Your feeling of “I have to do whatever I can to make this
work, even to my own detriment” isn’t loyal friendship, it’s a
familiar dynamic, subconsciously keeping you tethered to this
person who may not be good for you. If you’d been able to
have healthier connections when your child brain was form-
ing, you’d think, Yeah this is too much work, pass or We actually
don’t have that much fun, no thanks. Friendship would mean
trying each other on and seeing if it fits, instead of forcing a
size 7 shoe onto your size 9 foot because you r­ eally want it to
work, and you’re already used to having to force painful shoes
on your body, so hell yes! A perfect fit.
If you’re in a friendship with someone who has a fairly
incompatible attachment style with yours, that d ­ oesn’t mean
it can’t work out, or that it’s definitely a trauma bond. But I’ve
noticed in my own experiences that many of my friendships
are greatly at odds with aspects of my anxious attachment style.

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This means, in the simplest terms, that I am often think-

ing, Are you mad at me? Am I doing this friendship correctly?
How can I subvert my needs to make you happy? I don’t want you
to think I have too many needs and then leave me. All that matters
is that you do not leave me, not whether I honestly like our friend-
ship, because if you like me, then I can feel safe. And my avoidant
attachment friends are often thinking, Please don’t need any-
thing more from me. Should I leave this friendship soon? It’s easier
to be alone. All that matters to me is that I can leave whenever
I want and never get too close, so I can feel safe. Neither one is
right nor wrong, but you can see how that friendship would be
extremely challenging to navigate for both parties.
But so many anxious attachments hurtle t­ oward avoidant
attachments, like a moth to a bright flame, because we became
anxious by having caregivers who c­ouldn’t or w ­ ouldn’t con-
sistently love and care for us, and now here’s this person who
can’t or won’t consistently love and care for us? Cha-­ching!
(That’s the sound of the cash register from hell.)
As soon as I learned about attachment styles, I looked at
every past romantic relationship through the lens of what I’d
learned, but I never looked at my past and present friendships
through the exact same lens until somewhat recently. And once
I did, I realized nearly every friend I’d ever had has avoidant
attachment to a ­really obvious degree, if not every single one.
I just ­didn’t know about that yet, so I always chalked it up to
“Ha ha opposites! We’re cute!” which is true for some, but it’s
such a crucial lens to see things through if you’re not getting
everything you want out of good-­on-­paper friendships (more
on these later.)
Your attachment styles will reveal the fundamentals that
make a friendship either ­really strong, or something that you

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might never truly feel safe if they remain unaddressed. And

then you can use that information to strengthen the friend-
ships that feel like they just need a little adjustment, together.
I want to highlight “together” with a million markers, because
in most of my friendships, I thought that if I did all their
homework for us both they’d love me. Wow, what an extra-­
credit-­doing dream! But the truth is, no matter how hard you
work, you can’t assume that your “help” will ensure that some-
one else is willing and able to do that work on themselves, or
that they’re ready to yet. The idea that “people can only meet
you as deeply as they’ve met themselves” is true.
You can’t tell someone, “I think you’re doing this, proba-
bly because of x trauma, so do this!” Even if your intent is to
be helpful, they have to get there on their own. That’s their
path to explore and discover. And sometimes you’re just fur-
ther along in understanding your own needs and wants than
your friend is right now. They may want your help in getting
there, or they may not. These are all just pieces of information
to notice. You can’t always see that until you start to see the
cracks in the relationship, which you can either brush off, or
let them continue to fracture until it’s in too many pieces to
ignore.
***
In many of my friendships with people who have avoidant
attachments, I’ve noticed there is a pattern of pushing and
pulling, and it doesn’t always begin the way you’d think. I’ve
noticed many times avoidant attachments will begin a friend-
ship with bold declarations of love, gifts, and promises that
have, at times, resembled lovebombing (which is usually when

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 Learning Your (and Your Friends’) Attachment Style

a romantic interest showers you with love, almost to an over-

whelming degree, as a way to get you into the relationship,
only for those gestures to stop fully once you’re in it).
Lovebombing is typically talked about as a manipulation
tactic in romantic relationships, but some friendships I’ve had
mirrored this exact practice in ways I’ve only noticed recently,
though not necessarily with malicious intentions. And the
hardest part of this is that unless you know for sure that some-
one’s intention is to manipulate you (would be a great cheat
sheet to have), most people who do these grand declarations
and showering of affection and then suddenly stop doing any-
thing they’d promised at all, aren’t doing it because this was
some big con. They may have simply felt really excited about
you, and genuinely wanted to keep doing them, but then later
realized they couldn’t.
Many avoidant attachments genuinely want to do the
things they promise, genuinely mean the things they say, and
then later scare themselves with how much they care for this
new person, or tell themselves this person probably doesn’t
want the things they promised anyway, so why does it matter?
The retreat into “I’m better off alone where I don’t have to stress
about getting close to someone” begins and shows up this way.
And even outside of attachment style, many people struggle
with follow-through due to their own mental health struggles
they wish they could magically fix, but they can’t. That does
happen. And in those cases, it’s important to remember “it’s
not you, it’s them,” but since you can’t know someone’s secret
reasons if they don’t tell you, and the avoidant attachment is
the least likely of all to tell you if and how they’re hurting, all
you know is they’ve made promises they’re not keeping and

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it feels disappointing. And you have every right to be upset

by that as it continues without explanation, or any signs this
will change one day, especially if you’re someone who needs
consistency from people.
Lack of consistency and an unwillingness to talk about
their emotions are hands down the biggest struggles I’ve had
with my avoidant attachment friends. Often I’ll find myself
sensing they’re upset about something and feeling like I have
to find the right words to pry it out of them, to make them
comfortable enough to tell me if they’re upset, chase them
when they run, and try not to feel hurt when they don’t give a
lot emotionally. And that push and pull begins.
Since I’ve had so many friendships where this pattern has
come up, and it sounds very stressful, you might wonder what
the upside of being friends with a conflicting attachment style
would be, and the answer is two things: 1. They remind you
of the toxic bonds you had with your caregivers, which feels
“comfortable” to you, and 2. Sometimes even though your
attachment styles are different, your love languages are spot
on, and this combination creates something powerful right
away. Many avoidant attachment friends I’ve known love to
cook and I am truly a slut for anyone who feeds me. They’ve
also loved to give gifts and I am similarly slutty for presents.
3. Sometimes you just really really like this person because a
person is not their attachment style.
The struggles tend to come from the trust you’re able to
find within the dynamic. As someone with an anxious attach-
ment, I often have a hard time trusting there aren’t any strings
attached to someone’s kindness, there isn’t some trap door that
I’m about to fall through because I “fell for it.” And when that
anxiety creeps in, the best thing you can do is to just continue

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to receive and give, trust and give it time, bit by bit. And bit
by bit might turn into watching The Bachelor together, having
backyard parties with their friends, going grocery shopping
together, and having Cheesecake and Fries nights, where you
just eat a whole cheesecake and waffle fries together in comfy
clothes and continue to hope for the best. And reminding
yourself that when those insecurities come up, you might need
reassurance, and hopefully they’ll be open to providing it.
It’s likely that if you’re in a friendship like this right now,
you already see a few warning signs that this friendship is going
to be challenging, though I hesitate to call them that because
they aren’t always extreme in any way. Sometimes warning signs
don’t foretell doom exactly, as much as they tell you there are
dynamics at play that need to be addressed, need to be clearly
spoken about, and a mutual plan needs to be devised to make
sure everyone feels good in this relationship despite them. But
if you’re not the type to bring that up, or aren’t sure how to do
it, or you worry if you bring it up they’ll leave (anxious attach-
ment) that dynamic festers, creating a rot that, if unaddressed,
could kill the whole plant from the roots up.
And even if you do talk to them about what you need,
and they hear you, and promise to work on it, they ultimately
might not be able to give it to you. Not because they don’t want
to, not because they don’t care, but because they are wired dif-
ferently than you are. It’s so much easier to think someone isn’t
meeting your needs because they don’t care about you at all,
they are just a bad person, who doesn’t really care, end of story,
than to realize someone wants to meet your needs but cannot.
It’s brutal to hear that someone is unable to give you
certain things that are so important to you, not because they
don’t want to, but because their brain struggles to do that, or

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because their past told them the only way for them to survive
was to keep that part of themselves guarded; because of their
own unhealed parts. How do you hold all the parts of that, the
part that loves and accepts them with all their current limita-
tions, but also might need a bit more from them, because of
your own past, and your own unhealed parts? How do you ask
for something that might be hard, or even painful, for them to
give, and are you a bad person if you do that? You don’t know,
so you just try to work through it.
In the best cases, if both people can bend and find some-
thing in the middle that works for them, that can be the way
forward and it is so beautiful when it’s able to happen. But
even with the best communication, an avoidant person might
never understand why an anxious person need so much reas-
surance when they pull away, and can’t openly set boundaries
or voice what they need, what they want and need, even if you
explain to them that anxious attachments often can’t do this
because they feel like if they need anything, the other person
won’t like them and they’ll leave, so we turn ourselves into
a tshirt canon of giving. And anxious attachments may not
be able to understand how avoidant attachments are able to
so freely be themselves, take it or leave it, and set boundaries
whenever they need to, even if you know it’s because avoidant
attachments aren’t as afraid of having someone leave, they’re
far more afraid of being trapped, so what’s the worst that could
happen if they set a boundary and the person doesn’t like it?
They’re back to being alone, which feels so much safer to them
anyway, win-win!
It can be hard for both of you to see that their attachment
style isn’t a choice, anymore than yours is. They can’t magically
be better at giving you what you need overnight, and you can’t

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magically stop needing what you need overnight. And in these

cases, the anxious attachment will often will buckle, and sub-
vert their own needs to accommodate, so they don’t lose their
avoidant friend, despite their mounting concerns.
And one such concern that comes up for me often is
friends who have a habit of frequently offering me something
wonderful and then simply never doing it. And I’m not talking
about people who occasionally forget and you just have to
remind them because they’re human and it happens, or people
who tell you “Oh I totally forgot! I’ll bring it Tuesday!” and
then bring it Tuesday. I’m talking about people who constantly
promise you something out of the blue, whether it’s giving
you a gift, or offering a big gesture, and you say “thank you
so much!” and you feel that glow, and they feel that glow, and
then they never do it, and you feel absolutely insane.
You feel like you can’t bring it up, because it feels weird to
be angry at someone for offering to do something lovely and
then not following through. And it feels awful to have to send
a “just circling back on this!” note to your friend who offered
to do something nice for you, like now it’s your job to make
sure they do it?! A nightmare. So now you’re mad, and you
feel like you can’t be mad, or shouldn’t be mad, and then you’re
mad about that too.
Let me tell you something I wish I knew then: it’s very
OK to be mad about that! Extremely OK, regardless of their
attachment style, regardless of their intentions. If this feels
awful to you, and it happens all the time, and they know it
bothers you, and you want more than apologies and a quick
fix right now (see: “I’ll do it Thursday and make it up to you!”
and then the pattern begins again the next time), and you
need to see long-term changes, or you don’t want to be friends

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anymore? Fair. And it is far better than the alternative, which

is to pretend it doesn’t bother you, because you feel silly for
being bothered by it. Which is what I often did.
You have to talk about it, even if that means they might
leave, or it gets awkward, or worse. Sometimes when I’ve been
able to muster the courage to bring up things like this to my
friends for the first time, or the fiftieth time, and I’d get so
nervous, and then they would listen, they would validate that
they had done that, did do that, struggled to not do that, and
it seemed so promising, and then . . . they’d just continued to
do it, sometimes even during the conversation itself.
There were so many times in my friendships where I
thought the answer was to just give them more chances,
ignore the building list of disappointments, and try to lessen
how much I needed to accommodate what they were able to
give. And I have since realized this is the absolute worst plan.
We tell people to fully love and accept someone with all
their flaws, to love and accept the things they cannot change, and
that is something I believed my whole life, and still believe, but
now with the very firm caveat of . . . unless it is causing you pain.
I never understood when people said you can’t love some-
one else if you don’t love yourself first. I was perfectly fine to
love other people fully, while giving myself scraps, perfectly
happy making sure other people’s needs were consistently met,
while mine were met “if they had time, no worries.” But now I
believe that phrase really means, “You have to choose yourself
first for it to really be a healthy love.” You have to make sure
your needs are being met and theirs are too. Your own needs
cannot and should not be an afterthought. And having total
love and acceptance of people you’re close to, while settling for
the bare minimum, or less, from them will kill you every time.

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So I’ll encourage you to ask yourself, “What do I need

from my friendships that is absolutely necessary to me to
receive, regardless of how much I like them or how much
we have in common? And which friendships do I have that
are not meeting these needs, and have I communicated those
needs before, and if I have, why am I OK with this person
not meeting those needs?”When you finally realize the other
person isn’t willing or able to meet your needs, no matter how
much you’ve tried to talk about it, the only thing you can do is
to distance yourself for the moment, or leave all together. And
amidst your grief, you may find you need to block them on
everything, and it will feel horrible.
Before social media, you could take a break from a friend-
ship, or stop being friends with someone and then not see
them until you wanted to. It was painful, yes, but there were
no extra steps you had to go through to part ways with them.
You ­didn’t have to drive to their house and draw an X on their
mailbox so that they knew you fully hated them. You could
just stop talking. Maybe you’d still see each other out and it
was awkward, or, god forbid, you went to school together and
you had to see them in the hallways. But you never had to
think, Do I block this person who I once loved and who meant
so much to me, on one, if not all, social media platforms? Is that
childish? Is it necessary? Is it heartbreaking? Is it cruel? Or just
a formality? Is it permanent or temporary? And then cope with
the act of actually doing it.
You know you’ve only done this because it just ­wasn’t work-
ing, and the pain is so great, and the grieving needs to begin,
and you need them digitally gone. At least for now. But any
time I’ve had to do this, I still worried I would ­really hurt her
by blocking them, despite telling myself this ­wasn’t designed

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to hurt them, and that ­wasn’t my intention. The fact was I

­couldn’t look at this person who I felt knew what I needed
and ­wouldn’t give it to me, c­ ouldn’t give it to me, at least not
now, possibly not ever. Reminding me, sharply, of people from
my childhood who knew what I needed and would not give it
to me either. And finally setting even this one boundary with
her, in any way, felt like death. The love was still there, those
feelings and those memories remained, but now that you’ve
faced how this friendship is impacting you, you can’t run from
it anymore. You can’t help what you need.
I think more than anything, many of my avoidant friends
and I would’ve been perfect coworkers, perfect casual friends,
perfect sometimes friends. But so often the good is so good
with them, that you hang out more, talk to each other more.
And the more they hold space in your heart that was reserved
for Best Friends, the more you realize what you’d needed
from them if that is to be the case. I can’t tell you how many
times I’ve had someone with an avoidant attachment tell me
I am one of their best friends, and I was very confused, my
first thought was, R ­ eally? I made the cut? and my second was,
But why is it that I don’t always feel that closeness, that safety,
with you?
I just always assumed that when you were best friends with
someone, you both got what you needed most of the time. No
one secretly felt drained and a little shortchanged, on an end-
less seesaw, seemingly out of their control and fully under the
control of the other person. When we see opposites attract
friendships on TV, they may be opposites on the surface, yes,
but I’ve noticed that when you look closer, they’re often a lot
more similar than it seems. And because both so equally bend
to meet the other where they’re at, because they have to, or the

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fictional friendship won’t work. In real life, however, it’s often

not that simple.
In many of my own friendships like this, we had taken a
very guarded person and a people-pleaser and tried to make
them best friends. And so OF COURSE the guarded one will
have an easier time feeling close to the other person, and of
course the people-pleaser will feel like Uh, I do not love this
personally? It’s a rough combination that requires a lot of
awareness on both sides, and the ability to be fully yourself
instead of contorting to who you think they want you to be.
So when these friends told me they felt extremely close to
me, I was surprised because what I was getting from them
felt more akin to what I’d have with a casual friend. And in
those moments, you feel so confused, and a little cheated.
They’re getting everything they want, and gushing about it,
while you’re feeling left out because they know your needs and
boundaries and don’t seem to be as mindful of them, or worry
if they cross them.
Ideally someone would tell you, “You’re one of my closest
friends, you’re like family to me!” and you would say, “Aw me
too!” but when your first instinct is to say “wait, really?’ that
may be a good indicator that this friendship isn’t necessarily
healthy.
Adult friendships should be about finally getting to know
someone as the person you truly are and the person they truly
are and all the people you’ll become over the course of your
friendship. It should not be about spending all your time try-
ing to make yourself smaller and lesser, or making yourself
chooseable, or what they want you to be, you did that enough
as a teenager. Adult friendships should be all the more mean-
ingful because you’re finally being chosen for all the parts of

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you, needs included, that are now safe to share. And if you
thought this friendship was going to be one of those, and it
isn’t, forgive yourself for not knowing that.
You don’t always know when you’re overestimating how
deep a friendship can go, or is meant to go, until you try. In
romantic relationships, we often assume that if a relationship
is ­really truly good, it’s meant to last for the rest of our lives,
it’s meant to be The One. And if it’s anything less than that,
it’s just bad. And we do this with friends a lot of the time as
well. “This is going so well, and it’s blossoming into some-
thing very close to what I want, so I’ll go along with it and
see what happens!” while not always seeing, or wanting to see,
the ways that the friendship might not be able to maintain
that particular dynamic. Maybe some of our friendships, even
the ones that are beautiful and meaningful in so many ways,
just ­weren’t built for longevity, the way you can’t ask a parasol
to withstand a hailstorm. A parasol may look very similar to
an umbrella, it may double as one in a light rain, but for the
most part, parasols are built for sunny days, shielding you just
enough from the heat and nothing more. Any more pressure
than that and it will fall apart, whether it wanted to or not,
whether you hoped it would or not.
Even so, you’re allowed to want a friendship to be able to
give you everything you need, even if they don’t understand
those needs because their needs are different. You’re allowed to
hold out for someone who can meet you where you’re at. And
to grieve all the broken parasols you lost along the way.

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Ask for What You Need
“You see it’s easy when I’m stomping on a beat, but no
one sees me when I crawl back underneath.”
—Paramore, “Fake Happy”

Years ago, before my band It Was Romance formed, I was

playing music with a guitarist and a drummer every week,
and my drummer got into a minor car wreck. My guitarist at
the time, Evan, immediately called me and said, “We have to
go help him! Let’s buy him drinks and food and show him
we’re there for him!” I, of course, was on board with helping
him, and he was also swiftly attended to by his family, his
partner, and a ton of friends who rallied. During that same
period, I was in a deep mental health crisis that was increas-
ingly apparent in rehearsals, but no one ever said, “We have
to help her.” At most I would hear, “If you need anything,
call me.”
I have always hated that phrase.
To me, it puts the onus on the person in pain to have the
emotional energy, time, feelings of worthiness, and knowledge
of what they need to ask for it—­which I, rarely, if ever, have
had all at the same time. In so many of my past friendships, I
have engaged in a challenging dynamic of figuring out what

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is OK to need and what is OK to ask for. Am I explaining

my needs and my attachment style clearly? Are my needs not
being met because this person is unwilling to or incapable of
meeting them, or are they capable of working with me to meet
my needs but I am just not communicating them clearly? And
if I’m not, how do I find the language to do that?
What is reasonable to expect from a friend, especially one
you see often, and how are you supposed to know the answer
if you ­didn’t get what you needed from your family or past
friends either? It’s possible you don’t even know the options,
and what if you need too much, and the fear of rejection keeps
you from seeking friendships that you dream of ?
It’s that menu you’ve never seen before all over again. I
know for some people it would be easy to answer. “I’d like you
to listen,” or “I want to pet a puppy,” but it’s not always easy to
get to the point where you know what you need and are able
to ask for it without fearing that someone will get angry at
you for asking for the wrong kinds of comfort. What are you
allowed to need? And it varies from person to person, so it
can feel scary to say, “Can you come over and braid my hair?”
if all they wanted to offer was to buy you a beer. Do people
in your life disappoint you because they’re not good people,
or do they disappoint you because you can’t ask for what you
need in a way where they can hear you? You don’t know the
answer, and then your resentment builds, both for their not
intuitively knowing what you need, and for yourself, for not
being able to articulate what you need and how to ask for it.
Similarly, do they wish they d ­ idn’t disappoint you and hate
that they did, but the things you need are outside the scope
of what they can offer you and they’re not sure how to handle
that? It’s heartbreaking work to do and exhausting to realize

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and navigate. And why can’t people just be like they are in the
movies, dammit? But let’s go back to the guitarist.
Evan and I got along extremely well, as long as it
­didn’t extend into any deep, emotional territory. We played
so well together, had so much fun, and genuinely adored
each other, but then there was an invisible threshold that
was crossed where his ability to care about me seemed to
end. The threshold seemed to be “whenever I talked about
anything deeper than polite topics you’d discuss at a water
cooler.” Because of that, I assumed maybe he wasn’t the
type of person to really be there for people if they needed
help, but I still kept hoping I was wrong, and he would
notice what I was going through, that someone would see
the signs. Whenever someone says, “She’s just doing that for
attention” or “It’s just a cry for help,” it’s like, yeah, so where is
my attention? Where is my help? I don’t know how either of
those terms became something that we use to demonize and
further neglect someone who is acting out of such desperation
because they feel they are not being heard in the first place.
I’d seen so many movies about musicians watching a
bandmate go through addiction or depression and helping
them through it. I remember reading Hayley Williams say
that talking to her guitarist, Taylor York, when she was fac-
ing depression and suicidal ideation is what kept her going
during that time. You’re supposed to be a family, always hav-
ing one another’s backs, and I wanted that so much. But my
experience here was very much “leave your issues at the door,”
even though I was writing songs that clearly displayed them
and clearly indicated, “Wow, this person r­ eally needs help, and
made this great pop song about it.” But all they seemingly
thought was, What a great pop song! Let’s play it!

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I told myself that maybe I ­hadn’t conveyed how bad things

were, even though I had expressly told them, and told myself
that maybe they just weren’t people who cared that much or
took care of people in that way. “No big deal!” Until my drum-
mer’s accident, when Evan immediately sprang into action
with “We must help him in the following ways.”
I was so heartbroken to know this existed, for this per-
son with a mildly bruised arm who had been vocal about how
minor the incident was, but not for someone who was fighting
a mental battle for their own life. After a few weeks of inter-
nalizing these feelings, I asked Evan outright why it had been
so easy for him to do that for our drummer, but every time I
came to him needing help, and feeling so alone, he would say
nothing.
I’ve been told that I tend to whisper when I need help, and
it takes everything in me to muster a whisper, so much so that
to me, it feels like shouting. But I know that unfortunately it
is often imperceptible to others. And since I assume they can
see me using all my courage and energy to finally shout what
I needed, over and over again, they must be ignoring me, fully
able to hear me and choosing not to—­when, in fact, it turns
out they never even heard me whisper.
I have such vivid memories of being a teenager and trying
to find a funny, casual way to tell people around me that I was
struggling, so they didn’t feel like I was burdening them, and
it was almost always too funny, so they never noticed, and the
worst part is I still do this! And I just hope they see through it,
and feel hopeless when they invariably do not.
In this case, Evan told me that it’s easy to know what
to offer when someone has a minor injury: Buy them a beer,
bring a casserole, done. But when someone is dealing with

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something more complex, more nuanced, something you can’t

easily see on an x-ray, it’s harder to know what they might
need, so you just do nothing.
I’ve seen this many times. When friends can’t see any vis-
ible injuries, they aren’t sure how to help you once you’re deal-
ing with something that we don’t talk about as a society that
often. And knowing that, hearing Evan say it, ­didn’t make the
experience any less isolating. I’d explained to him that, for me,
the cure is the same, it can still be buying me a beer or snacks
or just listening. To make someone feel cared for, to show up.
And it was so painful to tell him that and still not see him
do any of those things. And then a few months later, in the
final moments of our friendship, he told me that my struggles
felt like an annoyance to him; a knife in the gut, a worst fear
realized.
It seems like an extension of people asking someone how
their day is going. We all know that the correct response to that
question is “Good, you?” even if that is not the true response.
So much of puritanical culture is platitudes and politeness,
surface-­level interest and investment. “Oh no, someone broke
his arm! Send a card and call it a day! You can now say you
did something! You helped. What a great person you are. Yay,
you!”
But what if something deeper is happening? Something
messier, more emotional, less easy to solve with a grocery store
cake and a bear balloon you picked up on the way home? Well,
there’s a very simple solution here, and the answer is to do
nothing and imply the person should get a therapist because
you’re staying out of this one. “Figure it out, buddy. Best of
luck!” Never mind that it can take many tries to find a therapist
who is the right fit, it’s costly, and the fact that your friendships

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should be able to at least provide basic empathy and a safe

place for you to share what’s really going on with you.
Obviously, in many cases, all someone is equipped to do is
listen, but there’s still an active way to listen, an empathic way
to listen that feels heartier than dead silence, which can make
the other person feel like they should stop talking ASAP
because they’re weirding you out.
Years later, I ran into Evan at a coffee shop where I was
sitting and writing my first book. He was sitting right next to
me, and I was very nervous that it might be as awkward for
him as it was for me. But he was warm and older, and I was
very open to the idea of getting that rare thing in friendship
breakups, or breakups of any kind: closure. We did some polite
chatting and then he said, “Hey, I just wanted to tell you, I’ve
thought a lot about the way I treated you back then, and I’m
sorry. You r­eally needed someone, and I w ­ asn’t there for you
and then treated you poorly.” I remember it being simple, ear-
nest, and rare, because it does feel rare for someone who hurt
you to reflect and say, “Wow, I was at fault here and I regret
it.” Even if it took years, it’s never too late to hear someone say
they wish they’d done better by you. It was so deeply healing
and appreciated, and while it should be the bare minimum, for
so many of us, it’s a revelation.
We rarely speak of how painful it can be to try to find
someone who can be there for you, no matter what your
struggles are. And how right we are to be frustrated by the
moments in our lives when we weren’t fully supported or seen
by past or present friends.
Very often in depictions of friends in media, the prob-
lems people share are fairly common and simplistic: help with
a breakup, help with a routine fight between usually loving

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relatives, asking for a raise at work, the death of a loved one.

We have covered these bases, and typically we go no further
than that. But beyond those depictions, we’re only able to
observe the models of friendship that our peers and parents
and siblings are experiencing around us, and it’s hard to gauge
what’s ­really going on with them, because we’re still very much
on the outside looking in. So much of what we need to learn
about friendships is experienced, and we’re rarely taught how
to navigate them past “I like them and they like me, we are
friends, no other issues could possibly exist!”
That means we have largely taught people how to be
friends in these limited scenarios only, and have left an impres-
sion that there is no template for how to be a good friend in
any other scenarios—­or worse, we’ve communicated to people
that the more complicated, painful things in life are best kept
inside you, locked away from the people who are supposed to
be your backup.
And if you are someone who is struggling with mental
health challenges, then you may not be capable of reaching
out, or don’t know how to reach out, or don’t know whether it
is safe to reach out this time.
So when we hear things like, “They died by suicide. We
were so close, I wish they’d told me,” we wonder why, people
don’t reach out. We can’t create a culture where it’s not OK to
speak about anything “scary” or overwhelming, even to our-
selves, let alone someone else, and then wonder why we are
losing people to mental health issues. We cannot continue to
make islands of people because we don’t know how to do any
more than this, and then tell people who need more that they
should “take it somehwere else.”
We cannot continuously wonder, with each passing

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suicide, why the person “didn’t say anything,” when in some

cases, it’s likely they tried and weren’t heard and/or simply
felt they ­couldn’t try anymore.
I’ve seen some people say things like “Your friends are
not your therapist.” And sure, it is important to make sure
there is a reasonable expectation of emotional labor we can
expect from friends depending on their comfort level, which
you can only know by asking them what they can handle,
what is out of their depth, and what space they can hold for
you. So if they ask if you’re OK, they should be prepared
for you to say no, and be prepared to hold space for the rea-
son for that no. Again, it’s so crucial that both people are
feeling cared for and that no one is helping at the expense
of their own mental and emotional well-­being. But in the
wrong hands, the phrase “Your friends are not your ther-
apist” could send the wrong message to someone in need.
Similarly, it’s not necessarily “trauma-dumping” if you’re
asking someone to hold space for you and you’ve asked for
their boundaries: It’s sharing and reaching out for support. It
is more likely to be trauma-dumping if you’ve started talking
about personal traumas with someone you don’t know well, or
they weren’t given the space to say they didn’t feel comfortable
hearing about that, or didn’t have the energy at the moment.
You need to proceed with caution and thoughtfulness in these
cases, of course. And it’s always an option to preface talking
about these things with your friends by saying, “Hey, do you
have space/time to talk about _______” if you know it might
be hard for them.
But by and large, we do not need to reinforce, even acci-
dentally, the idea that friendships are not the place to go with
anything real and you should strictly save all that for your

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therapist, whom you may or may not have. Especially when

some of those people might very much want to help, but
they’re just not sure how to ask for it.
Everyone’s likely had at least one friend they were kind
of worried about and had no idea how to help them. But
depressed people are so often told that it’s their responsibility
to “reach out to someone.” That advice is, frankly, bullshit. The
reason it is bullshit is that so often when a depressed person
did reach out to someone in the past, that person reacted in a
harmful way (it’s important to emphasize that this is usually
because we live in a society that has largely failed to appro-
priately educate people on how to handle these situations,
rather than an indictment of that person specifically), thereby
causing the depressed person to think that reaching out to
people is bad. This is doubly true if that person was also raised
in a household where they frequently asked for help, only to
be dismissed, belittled, or ignored altogether. Rightly, they’re
going to cope by no longer reaching out.
So if you find yourself wondering whether you should
reach out to someone or not because they might need help,
but you’re not sure, that’s completely understandable. If
someone is ­really good at masking what’s truly going on, and
you genuinely had no idea, that’s out of your control. And
because we’re so socialized to ask, “How are you?” and reply,
“Good. You!” and move on, it’s encouraged to not talk about
what’s r­ eally going on, even if someone DOES want to know.
Which is why I always like saying, “How are you? And abso-
lutely be honest, how are you?” Because some people (myself
included) often need the reminder to break out of the cycle
of “Good! You?” and they need to know that, in this moment,
it’s safe to ­really be honest. Which, again, should mean you’re

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presently able to ­really hear that answer and show up for that
person. There’s nothing more painful than having someone
­say they really want to know if you’re OK, and you taking the
energy to tell them you’re not, and receiving a gut-wrenching
response. These reactions could include:

• Saying nothing at all.

• Changing the subject altogether, or making it about them.
• Telling them not to feel that way because “You’re great!”
or reminding them of all the reasons they shouldn’t feel
that way.

Again, these responses aren’t terrible because they’re malicious,

but they feel terrible to someone who almost didn’t reach out
at all, but they bravely did, and now you’re talking about your
new Jeep. All that said, I’m obviously not a doctor. But I am
a person with an entirely too lengthy history of dealing with
mental health struggles in myself and the people I love, so I can
tell you that all of those things are incredibly painful to hear.
And if you’re not sure what to look for in terms of “warn-
ing signs,” it can be as simple as seeing a friend feeling hope-
less, losing interest in things they usually love to do, ­really
struggling in a few areas of life, “joking” about wanting to give
up, or feeling like everything is just intolerable. So many of us
were taught to couch our true feelings in jokes or lighthearted
sentiments that it can just be a matter of checking in to make
sure the jokes are ­really just jokes, and trusting your gut when
you see warning signs, even if someone says they’re fine.
Of course, if you don’t handle things perfectly and your
friend does end up hurting themselves or getting worse, it is
never your fault. And even if you do all of the following things,

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your friend will probably still need to work through a lot. But
man, saying the right things instead of the wrong things can
make a hell of a difference.
So here are some things you can do when your friend
­really seems to be struggling:

1. Tell them you are so sorry they’re hurting this much.

Many people who are r­eally struggling with their mental
health feel like others do not understand the gravity of the
situation or the immense, unbearable amount of pain they
might be in. Tell them you hear them, you see it, and you
are sorry they’re going through this.
2. Go hang out with them.
When I was really struggling, I can’t tell you how many times
I just wanted someone to come over and sit next to me. We
didn’t even have to do anything. I just wanted them there.
So, go!
3. Bring them something small that shows you’re thinking of
them.
If you know they’re having a hard time, next time you see
them, bring them their favorite juice or a smoothie or a soda
or a key ring with something you know they love on it, based
on what makes them feel loved. Remind them there are still
good things in the world and you care.
4. If you have no idea what they’re going through, you don’t
need to pretend you do.
If you’ve had similar mental health struggles, that can
often be really helpful for someone to hear. But often
when someone’s going through something painful, peo-
ple are tempted to say, “I know what you mean!” when it
might not be similar at all. I would, in general, steer clear

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of “I know what you mean!” unless you’re damn sure the

situation and the emotions are exactly the same, which it
so rarely is.
5. Tell them you have no idea what to say.
Don’t know what to say? That’s OK! But saying, “I don’t
know what to say” is way better than fumbling for a joke
or making a quick subject change or not saying anything at
all, all of which can be hurtful. Maybe you don’t need to say
anything anyway. Maybe you just need to listen. And bring
cupcakes. Lots and lots of cupcakes.
6. Ask if they have a therapist, or a good support system.
Maybe they’ve already told their therapist about struggling
with this, but maybe not. Maybe their therapist sucks. Maybe
they’re working on it, but it’s still hard. Maybe they don’t
have a therapist and you can help them find one. Whatever
the case may be, ask! But also, make it clear you’re still there
to talk and not just passing them off to a therapist, or another
person who may not exist.

Some people might argue that it’s not “their job” to help some-
one in those instances, and to that I say this: Friendship is
entirely voluntary, and there is a sort of “terms and conditions”
that come with it, and you get to decide on those together,
of course. And yes, if the friendship is no longer serving you,
you can unsubscribe! You can move on. But when people have
made you, feel like they only like you when you’re happy (or
pretending to be), that they don’t want to engage with your
pain, it’s annoying to them, and they don’t know why you’re
bringing it to their ears, it’s absolutely OK to say, “Uh, it was
pretty reasonable to assume that someone who calls me a close
friend and says they love me would want to help me out in a

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time of need? But OK, guess this friendship is not for me!”
And yeah, sometimes it’s inconvenient! Or costly—mentally,
emotionally, physically, or financially. But that’s why you com-
municate, that’s why you get to say what you need, and ask
what they can give. Like all relationships, friendship is an
ongoing negotiation.
Assuming you are someone who cares and wants to
help, I think we need to stop leading with “I don’t think I’m
the right person to talk to about this” as our go-­to open-
ing statement. For so many reasons. For one, if you start by
saying what you can’t do, the other person could feel like
they are putting you out (which they probably already feared
when asking for help). Instead, lead with the positive. The
“right tools” can be anything, and it r­ eally depends what the
person says they need.
So, before you dive in with caveats, listen. Hear what
your friend is going through and assess what you could
personally offer to help, even if it seems negligible to you.
By saying, “I’m so sorry to hear that, I’d be happy to come
over with food or keep listening or make some calls for
you for additional resources, since that can be overwhelm-
ing. Is any of that helpful?” And even if they say no, you
have taken the initiative in a way that shows you absolutely
are there, you absolutely do care, and you are offering all
the ways you could possibly help. And sometimes some-
one might come to you needing help, and you’re in a place
where you need help, too. That happens so often with my
friends and I, and when it does, it’s OK to tell them that
you’re underwater right now too, and you wish you could
do more, but you love them and you hear them. And then
you can always try to do more for them when you feel

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better. Either way, an active response is still so much better

than “Ugh, that sucks, dude” and moving on.
The only way for us to move away from a culture that
stigmatizes mental health issues and perpetuates our inability
to deal with them is to reach out if it seems like someone is
struggling and you have the space to show up for them.
We have to support each other, and it has to be proactive.
It has to fly in the face of the limited, archaic things we’ve
been told about how involved it’s OK to be, or how much it’s
OK to need. We must start actively showing each other what
we can give, and practicing how we can receive.
So often it can seem like life would be so much easier if
people didn’t need each other, or if everyone could just ask for
what they need in a way we can hear, or if everyone could just
intuit what we need so we don’t have to say it. It’s so easy to
think we are islands, and anyone who gets stranded on another
island did something wrong, or they should reach out to the
other support systems they may or may not have, because we
shouldn’t have to take care of them. And that is all the more
reason we should choose the friendships we cultivate carefully,
so that if someone we’ve chosen, someone we love, is more
isolated than we knew and doesn’t have anyone but us, we will
see this as a gift, an opportunity to be the person who finally
shows up. To see their SOS and finally answer the call, before
they even have to make it.

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 What to Do if You’re in
Love with Your Friend
“HARRY: It only took three months.
SALLY: Twelve years and three months.”
—­When Harry Met Sally (1989)

Like anyone who appreciates fine cinema, I have been deeply

influenced by When Harry Met Sally. For many of us, this
movie was the blueprint for “Oh yeah, we were just friends
who never ever thought about having sex. Never! He was like
a brother to me! And then one day I was like oh wait am
I . . . ​in love???? With YOU? So weird!” which blows my mind
on every level, since I’ve imagined falling in love with pretty
much everyone I’ve ever met (because what if I ­didn’t think
about them being my soulmate, and then had to spend years
inside a montage realizing it? No way. I wanted to skip to the
good parts, thanks! Must consider all options, always).
​​The allure of the will they/won’t they friends like Ross and
Rachel from Friends, Nick and Jess from New Girl, Monica and
Chandler from Friends, Dana and Alice from The L Word, Robbie
and Julia in The Wedding Singer, Idgie and Ruth from Fried Green
Tomatoes, Cher and Josh in Clueless (remember when it was a
full goal to have a hot stepbrother to fall in love with? I’m still
chasing that high), and Luke and Lorelei in Gilmore Girls, was

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that they truly got to have it all: a close, deep friendship that saw
them through many life changes, a place to fall when romantic
relationships d ­ idn’t work out the way they’d hoped, a backup
plan, even if only subconsciously, of someone who always loved
them, whether it evolved physically or not. To hear pop culture
tell it, you were supposed to be someone’s best friend and then
ignore the romantic chemistry until it got too much for one or
both of you to handle, and then you either date and fall in love,
or you date and it’s a mess and you go back to being friends,
only to end up getting married a few years down the line once
you’ve both grown and/or it was the series finale.
So let’s explore this idea that being a woman with a hot
male best friend is extremely ideal. (This could also stand for
any gender attracted to anyone, but for some reason the media
­really loves only showing straight people who are friends who
secretly want to french. Wonder why that could be!) Despite
the promises of a million romantic comedies that make it
sound foolproof, the reality can be . . . ​less than that, in the fol-
lowing ways:

1. “He will give you guy advice!” I don’t know why we

have been told that having male friends means they can
universally explain the inner workings of men they have
never met, but the truth is people are complex and no one
makes sense a hundred percent of the time.
2. “Men are so much ‘less drama.’” The myth that “being
friends with girls always leads to drama” is well-packaged
sexism at its finest. Men get moody and weird and jealous
and competitive and selfish just as much as women do. We
can all be vulnerable, weird, petty people, and there is no
gendered cheat code for this.

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3. “Maybe if we start out as friends, one day we’ll end up

together!” There are so many movies about this, so many,
so why wouldn’t you want that? And while that is very
possible, and has happened to some people, (lightning
strikes sometimes!), that doesn’t mean it’s that clear cut
every single time.

The truth is there is no “this will definitely work out great”

configuration of this trope in the real world, but it’s still some-
thing so many of us dream of. Because if it works out, you get
so much good.
You get to start years into a relationship with them,
because they already know your past, and your exes, and you
know their exes, their past. You know how to be better for
each other because you know what didn’t work in your past
relationships. They already know your insecurities and all the
things that made you who you are. And so you don’t have to
relay painful memories for the first time when things come
up that make you anxious. You get the freedom of not hav-
ing to wait to be your true self around them because they’ve
known that beautiful weirdo for years already and they’re still
here, which is so powerful. And you don’t have to get nervous
about meeting their friends or their parents because you prob-
ably already know all those people and they love you and you
love them.
And because all of that sounds like the absolute dream,
even if we know we have a slim shot at realizing it, when it
seemingly comes to us, we have to at least try.
And it seemingly came to me when I met Logan.
In many relationships from my past, I would always choose
one friend to go to for anything I needed. And if I lost them,

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I felt like I died. I’ve read that this is super common with
survivors: You fixate on one person who feels safe, because you
can’t handle assessing the safety of multiple people. We talk
about the dangers of doing this with romantic partners, the
pitfalls of dating someone and then no longer talking to your
friends and just focusing on them. We tell people this is bad
because what if you break up? You won’t have any friends left
and you’ll have no one. And this is also extremely true for
friendships.
Logan became that friend. And because I am a Cool
Loner who lives mostly in my head, of course we met online.
I think Logan had followed me on Twitter, and I saw he a
comedy writer who’d liked a lot of my posts, and so I’d looked
up some of his stuff and thought he was funny: truly the basis
of most internet friendships. “You like a lot of my stuff, I like
your stuff, too, we are friends now!” I DM’d him and told him
we had some mutual friends, and we bantered a bit, before he
switched us over to an email with the subject line “the great
wild west of character limits.”
His emails were funny and personal, and he included ref-
erences that subtly let me know he’d looked me up online and
asked me questions about my band and my writing, and he
always ended his emails with “(1317 characters),” the number
of characters over Twitter’s rigorous limits.
It was that type of friendship where you’re not sure if
you’re becoming best friends or falling in love or both. But
you’re hoping for the former one first and foremost, and ide-
ally the second and third happen soon after, win-­win.
I’m sure most people would choose falling in love with
someone over platonic friendship, but for me? Hell no. Yes,
I’m a romantic and I’d often loved to have things end up that

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way, but at the same time, falling in love with someone I’d just
become friends with was more anxiety provoking because it
felt like that made it more delicate, more likely to end. But
if I just stayed friends with someone, it seemed more likely it
could last forever, or at least lay a firmer foundation for love
several years down the line. And I would much rather have a
lifelong, enduring friendship that involves occasional yearn-
ing than go all in on something that never should’ve been a
romance at all and now you just hate each other and dodge
each other on the street. To me, friendships have a better shot
long-term, even if they are with people you sometimes want
to make out with.
I had some reservations the first night Logan and I hung
out, mainly because I noticed his comedy ideas were playful
and silly “what if aliens hung out?” and mine were cathartic
and urgent “what if women got to talk about trauma and then
trauma stopped happening?” It frustrated me that so many
men are allowed to think of silly weird things, while many of
us are just trying to sort out the traumas of our lives so we have
the mental space to think of things like What if bread was your
best friend on the moon? But it was balanced by the fact that
he knew I loved Stevie Nicks, and he learned “Landslide” on
guitar so I could sing it while he played, and he was also aller-
gic to gluten and bought us some ­really good cookies. Make
music with me and provide snacks? I’m in.
Over the next few months, we became the best friends of
my dreams. We hung out almost every day (I don’t want to
brag, but it was also *in person*) and wrote funny sketches.
He brought me food when he came over, and we’d dogsit my
friends’ dogs together. It would’ve kept going on like this,
except for two things that happened quickly after take-­off:

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1) I was pretty sure we were in love with each other and not
talking about it, and we needed to talk about it, and 2) he got
a job in LA.
The first one came to a head at a friend’s karaoke party,
which I had asked Logan to go to with me. He chose sev-
eral songs for us to sing together: “Time After Time,” “God
Only Knows,” and some other song in the same vein as “you’re
everything to me and I definitely love you and these would
be a little weird to sing together if we were just platonic non-­
sexual pals.”
Everyone at the party looked at us in that way—­like we
were a cute couple, but nope, we were Best Friends.
It was at that party, and with those song choices, that I
realized I had to say something. Seeing people’s faces being
like Aw what a cute couple who is definitely frenching held a mir-
ror up to the reality that we were at that very sweet part of the
romantic comedy where you’re like “Do we love each other?”
This was Harry and Sally, except we were at the awkward part
when they have to either put it on the backburner and start
dating other people, or admit they like each other and finally
pursue that. So, at the end of the karaoke night, after we’d
both gone home, I called him on the phone. Even now, I can
remember the feeling vividly.
I was pacing around my room, not wanting to ruin things
but not wanting to deny them either. And I did this by saying
the following, “Hey! So, I want to say something, and if I’m
wrong it’s totally OK, but I feel like I’m not wrong, and I just
wanted to put it out there so we can talk about it, whatever it
is. And again, if I’m wrong, it’s totally OK.” He laughed and
said, “Sure, what’s up?” and I said, “It just feels like we kind
of like each other? Because it would greatly appear as though

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we’re into each other. And again, if I’m wrong, it’s cool. I just
notice it a lot and a lot of people noticed it tonight so I figured,
screw it. Let’s talk about it.”
He laughed and said, “Totally. I have thought about it a
lot! But here’s the thing: I always ruin everything with people.
My longest romantic relationship has been one month. One
month! I just tend to ruin things after that, or they get ruined.
And when that relationship ended, I was so upset, and I just
know I’d ruin things with you. And so, while I do have those
feelings, very much so, it’s not worth it to cross that line and
maybe lose someone who’s that important to me.” And I said
something appeasing like “Totally! For sure. I get it!” when
what I wanted to say was, “Oh my god, you love me??? I will
wait for you. Also, why are you treating me like a girlfriend if
I’m not your girlfriend? This is an issue we should fix. Again,
just in the meantime, until you go to therapy or get a brain
transplant and realize you’re brave enough to love again. Let
me know!”
But in my heart, I knew this meant I had to set some
boundaries. I c­ ouldn’t look at him like a boyfriend, he c­ ouldn’t
treat me like a girlfriend. This w ­ asn’t a best friendship “and
more” like in the movies. This was When Harry Met Sally, but
still in the first half, when Harry was twenty-­six and scared,
instead of the third act, when he’s thirty-­something and finally
ready. And before I could begin to parse what this new friend-
ship reality would look like and how to put those feelings away
even though they were, in the words of Sally Albright, “already
out there,” Logan got a job in LA. I was devastated.
I remember attending his going away party not long after
our “Do You Like Me?” phone call and sitting there, psychi-
cally introducing myself to everyone there as, Hi! I’m Lane.

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Logan told me if he was going to be with anyone it would be me,

I’m basically his girlfriend, we’re very in love. I’m his best friend.
I’m sure you can tell! But I was just his friend. One of many.
And seeing other women there, I wondered if he had that with
all of them too.
The evening had that weird, scattered energy of going to
a party with your Best Friend, where you don’t know any of
their other friends because you’ve created this bubble where
it’s only the two of you, and now they’re suddenly hosting the
party, and you’re seeing them as someone else’s friend for the
first time.
You arrived in the bubble because you wanted it to be just
the two of you, like best friends. Best friends who are falling in
love. Which is a great way to realize you have very little idea of
how this person acts when it’s not just the two of you, which is
probably a good thing to know about a person, especially one
you’re falling for. And now it’s no longer just you two. It’s now
you, at a party, where it is them plus everyone and you are also
there. And it ­shouldn’t feel awful, but it does.
When we parted ways that night, other people were there
too so we ­didn’t get the goodbye I’d wanted: both of us crying,
hugging each other like our lives depended on it, commemo-
rating all we had and all that was to come, even though we’d
soon be farther apart than we’d like. Instead, we got the good-
bye you give at a big party where other guests are still there:
“So good seeing you, have a good night!” I walked home and
I cried the whole way, wiping tears away, like I’d just lost my
best friend, or my boyfriend, or none of those things and I’d
somehow imagined it all. And nothing could replace all the
space that he’d created in my heart, which was now just an
empty room that echoed when I spoke.

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I suppose I could’ve kept the friendship with Logan long

distance, but it ­didn’t feel like I could at the time. I ­didn’t want
to take what was finally an in-­real-­life best friendship and
turn it into a long distance one, especially when I kind of loved
him, in whatever way, so deeply now. He never said, “Don’t
worry, Lane, we’ll still be best friends who are technically in
love with each other!” or “I’ll call you every night!” He was
just leaving, and it seemed implied that he was still technically
there if I needed anything, but what we had when he lived
nearby was gone.
In the weeks that followed I was grieving more than I
knew, and I let myself fall into a pit of self-­destruction and
exhaustion and mourning, in an attempt to ease how much
pain I was in and gain any relief from it at all.
When I met Logan and we just clicked, I’d stopped focus-
ing on building anything more with other friends because he
was surely The One. It’s a lot like betting everything you have
on that one slot machine, and if you win that’s a huge win, but
if you don’t win, you just lost everything. And maybe it’s better
to bet on a few machines but leave most of your money in your
pockets, in savings, in your own self-­worth and self-­esteem,
which I ­didn’t yet know how to do.
If you make one person your everything, you’re more
likely to do anything to make it work: ignoring things you’re
not getting, things you ­really should be talking about, just to
make sure you don’t lose it all.
On top of that, by putting all your resources and energy
and time into one person, your other friends not only lose
that time with you, but they aren’t looped in anymore to tell
you, “Hey, this friendship with Logan sounds a bit toxic, since
you’re both in love, or at the very least, you’re now very much

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in love with him and waiting for a time when you can be
together. I’d assess this a bit, I think!” We talk about abusers
isolating you from your friends and family to gain more con-
trol over you and your decision making, and I don’t want to
brag, but I can do that all by myself !
In the most ideal of situations, we’d be able to be in a
place with ourselves where we’re enough as we are, and anyone
can come or go, and we’ll be OK. But when we’re not in that
place yet, because it’s such a healthy, healed place that can be
hard to get to, and take years or lifetimes to achieve, someone
coming or going can shift our entire mindset. The loss can
feel catastrophic. Because we’re now relying on other people
to feel good, to feel connected, to feel included, to feel safe, to
feel worthy. And if they’re gone, even if they still care about
us, somewhere out there, we can feel completely unmoored, at
times without a way to get back on land.
Where do you go now? You just start over? It takes so long
to form deep, true bonds. But as hard as it is to realize this, you
can’t stay with someone just because you’ve put in this much
time with them already. This “sunken cost fallacy” is something
I’ve realized applies so much to friendships and relationships
of all kinds: the idea that you’ve already sunk so much time
into them you have to stay in them and keep working on it,
or you’ll lose what you “invested.” But the truth is that when
you put more time into something that isn’t working, you’re
not getting that time back at all, you’re just losing more of
it. I think we often cling to this solution because it feels less
scary and time consuming than trying to find a new person or
having the patience to wait for that new person to come along.
Either way, if you’re in love with your friend and you know
you need more boundaries, the most important thing you can

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do is be honest with yourself, and with the other person, and

set boundaries for yourself around it.
For me, it was great that I spoke openly about the will
they/won’t they happening in my friendship with Logan. And
it was great that he acknowledged it, but I wish I’d set big-
ger, better boundaries around it instead of thinking I should
probably set them and then allowing myself to be swept away
by Oh my god, he admitted it, he totally loves me! while I silently
remained his hypothetical girlfriend, waiting around for
whenever he was emotionally ready to turn it from a hypo-
thetical love to a real one that existed openly in the world.
And let me tell you, setting new boundaries with someone
you’re in love with and want to still be friends with can be
extremely challenging and painful, which is why you might
have to take a break until you’re able to recalibrate and actually
interact as just friends. And maybe in that break you’ll realize
you were never “just friends,” and it only worked when you
operated at a “wow there’s tension here, and we’re slightly dat-
ing without being open about it, in a way that ­doesn’t always
feel good for me, but oh well” level. Whatever the case, setting
boundaries is like hitting a reset button on whatever you were
doing before, so you can hopefully keep the love you shared
and release the painful parts of things left unsaid. Your friend-
ship might look a little different than before, and that’s a good
thing if what you had before ­wasn’t working.
And if you’re meant to be together, finally having a friend-
ship full of healthy boundaries will only help any romantic
relationship you may have in the future. But in the meantime,
let the “what if ” go, and bet all your chips on yourself.

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 How to Adjust Your
Friendship Levels: From
Casual Friends to Close
Friends and Back Again
“I get so lonely I forget what I’m worth. We get so
lonely we pretend that it’s worse.”
—SZA, “Drew Barrymore”

“And we’ve been friends ever since.”

I’ve been obsessed with the idea that you can meet some-
one, immediately know it’s great, and then you are friends
“ever since” from the moment I heard it. Just pure and sim-
ple “They were cool, I was cool, and it just worked.” The idea
of finding instant friendships that just worked is intoxicating.
Now, there’s making casual friends, and then there’s making
deep, meaningful friendships where you talk a lot and it’s easy
and great. One isn’t better than the other, but I’ve often strug-
gled to be good at or satisfied by the first one. I think part of
that is how I’m wired, but another part of that is how we’re
socialized to value the latter so much more.
Years ago, I was on an airplane and noticed a woman in a
beautiful green coat in the row behind me. After we landed,
there was a horrible snowstorm that made everything hec-
tic, transportation-­wise. I immediately called a cab to be
ready for when we got off the plane, thinking there would
be a battle to find one. The nice coat lady behind me (she

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would later tell me) heard me make that call and thought,
Wow, that person knows what she’s doing. I’m gonna follow
her! and waited with me at baggage claim before striking up
a conversation. Several conversations about our shared love
of Logan Echolls from Veronica Mars later, the two of us
split a cab to Brooklyn. She was visiting NYC, and we hung
out the whole time she was here, and we’ve been friends
ever since. We don’t talk all the time, or see each other all
the time, but I love that a chance meeting developed into
something more.
There is something so valuable and beautiful about friends
I briefly made on the plane or subway or walking in the park.
And they don’t always have to transition into close friends!
That’s still a form of friendship, one with great value in its
own right.
I’ve always had very good Stranger Luck, and for a long
time, I was making myself r­eally miserable by trying to take
some of these more casual friendships and move them to
another level, when we might not have been a good fit for a
deeper friendship but worked so beautifully as acquaintances.
But since “acquaintance” as a friendship tier is belittled, it can
feel insulting, or short-sighted to not “level it up.”
The truth is, having great Stranger Luck, and really mem-
orable interactions like this is meaningful, and every phase
and form of a friendship that feels good is good. Especially if
you can’t handle certain levels of friendship right now, or ever.
Some of my favorite people are people I’ve only talked to for
ten minutes, or met for a day. Those little moments when you
connect with a stranger, for five minutes or five hours, meant
so much to me, even if we never spoke again. And perhaps
those relationships, as fleeting as they were, were meant to be

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exactly that. There are so many examples of friendships like

this, that served their purpose at that time, and maybe aren’t
meant to be lifelong, and that’s OK.
There’s a group of women I met last summer when I was
on tour and I was hanging out at the hotel pool alone before
my show. One of them offered to take hot pool photos of me,
and I nervously and then gladly accepted. They bought me one
of the fancy drinks they all had, and we hung out in the pool
for hours talking about everything, just everything, in that
“girls you meet in the bar bathroom at 2 a.m.” way that feels
like a drug. And now we all like each other’s social media posts
devoutly, and every time I see them in my feed, I remember
the very cool way we met. I didn’t try to turn it into very close
friendships, though maybe one day it will end up that way. But
we should be able to see these friendships as beautiful just as
they are, just for that moment in time.
Similarly, it would be great if all your friends from high
school and college, or from your old jobs, were still compatible
with you throughout the rest of your life, but for many of us,
that isn’t the case. And you don’t have to keep them in your life
forever, or try to remain just as close as you were, if that doesn’t
make sense to you anymore.
There can be friends you catch up with sometimes, or you
reconnect with one day and it feels great, even if you don’t
become best friends again. Think of them as second-­ tier
friends, which can sound harsh, think of it less as “second-­tier,
wow an insult” and more like the second line of a friendship
army. Maybe not someone you call when you’re in an emer-
gency, but someone you call to have fun. And over time and
many life changes, maybe those friendships don’t need to be
kept up with as much, or someone wants more and you don’t,

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or you get to an age when you realize you want to know, like,
three people, who you’re very close with, with no additional
tiers at all.
Maybe things that worked for you years ago just do not
work for you now. Maybe in high school, you loved friends
who gossiped and now you think that’s r­ eally boring and not
your thing. Or in your early twenties, you used to love friends
who hated everyone, and now you want to be around people
who love people more than they love to hate people. Just as
much as you’re going to grow and change, it makes sense that
your wants and expectations of your friendships will grow
and change as well. So, if you used to love having thirty casual
friends and now you want three very close friends because
you just don’t have the energy for anything else, that is com-
pletely OK.
I know we love to think there’s a magic number of friends
you should have or maintain all the time, but not everyone
has their set best friend or set friend group, and even if they
do, they still might continuously shift. The social pressure of
having a certain amount of, or type of friends is very much
there, but that’s just an external pressure that only gets ­really
bad when you start to internalize it, when you start to believe
it yourself.
The truth is if you have even one person in this world
who feels like a good friend to you, you’ve won. But it’s still
so easy for that doubt to creep in, that fear that tells you you’ll
only be complete once you have whatever idea of friendship
perfection you have in mind. And then on other days, you’re
completely fine with the friends you currently have, and your
concerns lie more with figuring out how close friends you want
to be, and where this friendship is headed. Not in a bridezilla

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way where you’re looking for them to put a platonic ring on

it, but when you have that interest in a casual friend, or a new
friend, and you want to bravely explore what might be there,
there are several directions this could go:

1. Casual Friends/Acquaintances
2. Friends
3. The Friend Group
4. Best Friend

The way many people seem to navigate these is they have an

acquaintance who there seems to be a “spark” with, and they
hang out with them casually until they start to wonder if that
person is feeling as excited about this budding friendship as
they are, and then they might want to have The Talk. But we’ll
get to The Talk in a minute. First, we must rant about how
frustrating and overwhelming leveling up your friendships
can feel.
How do you know who to let into your inner circle? How
do you know how to do it? What words do you use? I can’t tell
you how many times I’ve had that spark with an acquaintance
or friend and tried to level them up, only to realize that we’re
not compatible beyond that initial spark, or that we’re much
better as casual friends.
This is a nightmare, because sometimes that other per-
son wants to stay Very Close Friends, and now you have to
awkwardly put some distance between the two of you in a
way where they don’t feel rejected and you can just go back
to Casual Friends, without anyone’s feelings getting hurt.
And hopefully without feeling any frustration at the situ-
ation yourself because damn it, it would’ve been so great if

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that could have been more, but sadly it cannot. No one’s at

fault, but now you’re in this weird middle place, trying to fig-
ure out how to pull back without expressly writing a formal
decree like:
Dear (person),
Thanks so much for auditioning to be my Friend. I ­really think
you’re better suited to the position of Casual Friend, which means
we shall now cease all consistent communications and, instead, see
each other at our mutual friend’s birthday party once a year, at
which time we will have a lovely twenty­to thirty minute con-
versation and then occasionally like each other’s social media posts.
Very cordially,
Your now Casual Friend
P.S.—This has already taken effect. Please do not text me about
it, it will just be awkward for us both. Seriously, I don’t hate you,
I’m not mad at you, it is what it is.
God I would love to stop writing this letter now, it feels mor-
tifying for us both.

This letter seems r­eally appealing if you, like me, don’t like
the alternative, which is usually The Sudden Drift. This is
when you realize you’re better off as casual friends and don’t
want to talk about it, so now you have to purposely make your
replies a little shorter, your response times a little longer, give
increasingly less, until they hopefully get the hint. It’s like soft
ghosting someone you were once, even fleetingly, so close to,
which can be interpreted as flakiness or rejection. So I never
­really want to do that, and it feels awful to have to.

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Because of this process of having to “level back down”

friends, I’ve often refrained from leveling anyone up at all; the
risk of that rejection on either end leaves me feeling like it’s
not worth it to even try. However, my friend once told me she
­doesn’t see it as a big deal, ­really. The way she sees it, people
in your life can and will move backward and forward through
those roles, and it’ll all take care of itself. It’s never personal,
and she’s right.
If anyone gets their feelings hurt in this process, they can
always ask what’s going on. But if you’re like me, good lord
you don’t want to ask that! You don’t want to say, “Hi, I feel
like I’ve been downgraded, can you confirm or deny this? And
if I have been moved, is there anything I can do to improve
my relational dynamic with you because I ­really miss what we
were?” particularly if you were close for a r­ eally long time, and
this new dynamic ­doesn’t feel as good to you.
It’s another dating parallel: If you’re friends with someone
for a few hangouts, or a few casual months and you drift apart,
it’s safe to say it’s not you, it’s them. You’re just not a good
fit, oh well, find someone who is! But if you’ve had a longer,
deeper connection, and that friend suddenly pulls away, it’s
completely fair to feel hurt by that and ask about it, whether
they have the self-­awareness or forthrightness to tell you what
actually happened. And r­eally, in both cases, it’s not you, it’s
them. But that ­doesn’t make the pain any less.
So if you’re ready to move between these categories, one
or both of you has to take that chance. Here’s how you level
up friendships:

1. Share a little more about yourself with each other. This can
be as personal as you want it to be, but often the things

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that bring us closer are shared experiences, shared dreams,

shared goals, shared fears. And you can only know you
share those things by, well, sharing them with each other.
2. Invite them to group outings and have them meet your
other friends, thereby bringing each other into your
worlds a little more. If this seems overwhelming to you,
don’t worry, more on that later.
3. Just keep getting to know them, in whatever way feels
comfortable for you both, and whatever the friendship is
meant to be will start to crystallize. Once it does, you’ll
either know exactly “what you are” or you’ll feel the need
to have The Talk.

The Talk
First of all, yes, the idea of having a formal relationship talk
with a friend sounds ridiculous. But sometimes you r­eally do
need to know if they’re as close to you as you are to them,
even if it seems cooler to “not label it.” How many times have
you told a romantic interest that you didn’t care if you labeled
things, when you actually kind of did care? My guess is too
many. Similarly, our friendships matter, and what we call them
matters, and the process of wading through those uncertainties
and how challenging it can be for many of us matters. Because
we care, because we want community, because we are human.
I’m a huge “caring is cool” person. What if you acknowl-
edged that yes, you want a close friendship, you want a Platonic
Soulmate? And what if that repelled people, sure, but only
the wrong people? And attracted other people who absolutely
wanted that kind of deep friendship as well but thought it

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wasn’t cool to say? And you got to be the brave one who said it,
a relief for you both, that made it okay for them to say it too?
It’s very human to want to make sure you’re not too
invested, or caring too much, or feeling like this is more valu-
able to you than it is to them. And if you’re feeling that, it’s
­really important to get clarity so you can stop constantly wor-
rying if they like you like you (but as friends).
The way to do that is personal to you, of course, but if you
need help with broaching this r­ eally tricky subject, here is how
I—someone who hates talking about this stuff and knows the
feeling of death by a thousand cuts that this kind of vulnera-
bility can resemble—do it.
In a perfect scenario, it’s clear that both of you want to
level this friendship up because you’re both reciprocating
and ­driv­ing the friendship forward. But if that’s not the case,
because of your respective insecurities or being socially awk-
ward, here’s what I’d advise.
You can start off by saying something flattering, like, “I
know you probably have a ton of close friends already, obvi-
ously, you’re great. I just feel like we’ve gotten ­really close
lately, and this friendship is ­really wonderful and important to
me. If you don’t feel that way, I’m still very grateful for what
we have either way. How do you feel about it?”
This acknowledges that yes, everyone has friends, and
you’re not trying to make it sound like you jumped off an
alien spaceship and this is the only friend you’ve ever met, but
this friendship r­eally means something to you. You want to
acknowledge how special that is to you, and maybe to them.
The right friends for you will hear that and think, “Oh my
goodness, I was thinking the same exact thing! This is ­really
awesome, and we’re becoming so close and it’s so great!” The

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wrong people will not be on the same page as you or will have
more neutral feelings about it. And at that point, it’s up to you
what to do with that information.
Good friendships are about two people mutually getting
what they need from each other and being able to communi-
cate openly to get to that point together.
This means that someone might see your relationship as
a more casual friendship but you want something more, and
it’s at this point that you need to ask yourself if you’d ­really be
comfortable being casual friends with someone you r­ eally want
to be close to. Just in the same way that sometimes you don’t
always want to be just friends with someone you’re falling in
love with. Taking a look at how you truly feel about this, with-
out judgment, is so important. If you’re not willing to accept
the depth of friendship they’re offering, and you keep hoping
they’ll change, you might be setting yourself up for heartbreak.
There are definitely people I don’t want to be casual
friends with after they’ve been my go-­to best friend for years.
I don’t want to have that shift; it feels too sad. But sometimes
I’ve stayed in it just the same, hoping it will shift back. Many
times, it has, and it was worth waiting, despite the periods of
my feeling awkward and a little forgotten, and keeping the
faith that we would be closer again once the timing was right.
But having that talk will, at the very least, clear up how
they’re feeling about you, so you don’t have to wonder or guess
or be nervous about it. It clears the air for you to know a bit
more about how to proceed in this situation.
But how do you know if you’ve properly assessed this
friendship (and now I sound like an insurance adjuster)?
Here’s how to tell if you’re comfortable with your friendship
level:

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 You Will Find Your People

1. How does this friendship feel to you?

2. Do you feel like you’re getting what you need out of this
friendship, or are you always wanting more?
3. Do you often feel like you’re giving more/less than they are?
4. Do you feel like you initiate plans more/less often than
they do?
5. Do you often wish you were closer/less close than they
seem to want to be?
6. Does something about your dynamic often feel strange
and you can’t put your finger on why?

If any of these are happening in a way that makes you feel

uncomfortable and r­eally bothers you, that might be a great
sign that you need to level your friendship up or down.
Leveling down can feel like a breakup, and sometimes it is
that simple, but sometimes it’s just a shifting of expectations—­
seeing it less as “I thought this person would be there for me
like a close friend, but it’s just casual to them” and more as
“This person is capable of less than what I need, but there are
ways they can show up for me. Because these are the ways they
can show up for me, I’m going to adjust my expectations of
what kind of friendship we have.”
It’s ­really a gift you give yourself and, consequently, the
other person as well. To be able to alter a dynamic so nei-
ther you nor they are constantly feeling disappointed or dis-
appointing is a huge relief. To be able to see clearly that life
changes, we change, and sometimes people can be closer to
us, or not as close, and to honor those feelings while also still
asking for what we truly need is ­really the best thing you can
do for your friendships.
I’ve stayed in so many friendships, hell, I’m in a few right

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now, where we used to be closer, but they hurt me and we’re not
as close now. Or I pulled away because I w ­ asn’t getting what I
needed and I d­ idn’t know how to directly ask for it, and they h
­ adn’t
gotten my “I don’t know how to ask for this directly” hints. Or
they’d pulled away and I’ve asked them why, told them I missed
them, but they remained distant, and it hurt to hear them tell me
nothing had changed and they’re just going through something.
Because even if I believe them and know they’re being honest
with me, it’s still painful to feel like I’m on hold. Did they hang
up? There’s no hold music at all?! Should I just be patient because
they haven’t technically hung up yet? Brutal.
And sometimes you r­ eally do just want to hang up, because
your friendship might have too much damage to hold out for
an answer.
But what if they eventually pick up? What if the friendship
comes back, just as you remember it? It’s a gamble. And the
stress of the waiting period is often just not worth it if think-
ing about it causes you any kind of regular pain. Especially
because while I stand by this being a rock-­solid comparison,
often people won’t even admit they’ve put you on hold or have
changed in any way. And in this case, there are usually one of
two truths to grapple with:

1. It really is just them, and it’s not forever. Sometimes

someone really isn’t in a place to be what they used to
be to you. And it could be as simple as being busier than
usual or going through a major life change, like getting
married, or having kids, or moving, or going through
illness or trauma, anything like that. And in this case, you
just have to hope that one day you’ll be able to have your
friend back the way you had them before. And manage

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your own feelings about that (hopefully temporary) loss.

But if you suspect it’s deeper than that, then it might be
this second answer.
2. They don’t want to continue this relationship with you,
and they don’t know how to, or don’t want to, tell you
that. This one is so tough, because it’s hard to know if this
is the reason they’re acting like this, since the whole point
is that they won’t clearly tell you. And as much as I would
love to reach through this book and listen to your personal
story about your friend who’s acting weird lately and tell
you for sure what they’re thinking, I can’t read their mind.
And neither can you.

So if you can’t bear waiting on hold while your friend navigates

whatever is going on with them, or wait to find out whether or
not it really is “just a weird time,” or if they’re ending things
with you in a passive way, you ­really only have one option: To
move on, as best you can.
If that means muting them, or even unfollowing them,
because it’s that painful, because just observing their lives in
a parasocial way when they used to be close to you feels like
a snake ate your stomach in one bite, do it. You can also, and
probably should, communicate that to them, if you’re worried
they will take these actions as personal or meant to hurt them,
when it’s absolutely not the case. If you’ve already communi-
cated what you need, and they’re not able to give it to you, and
so you need to set temporary boundaries online, but you’re
worried it might make things worse, or hurt them, it can be
as simple as sending something like, “Hey, I have to do the
following things right now while I’m processing this, but I’m
still here, and you can reach out any time.”

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The whole point here is you have to do what’s right for

you. Just as they are doing what is right for them. Everyone is
allowed to change and grow and be different, absolutely. In the
same vein, you are allowed to say, or simply feel, “What you
can give me is less than what I need from you right now, so
let’s change how we interact, and here’s how I need to do that
in a way that feels right to me.”
Being a good friend ­doesn’t mean simply going along for
the ride while the other person guides the friendship wherever
they want to take it. You are allowed to say that you’d like this
person to be X type of friend, and if they see it differently, they
are allowed to say so as well. And then it is absolutely within
your rights, and theirs, to either be OK with that difference or
to part ways, no harm, no foul.
But the point here is that you were not made to endure
your friendships. You were made to enjoy them. Adjust the
levels as necessary.

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 Staying Friends with Exes: An
Essential Guide
“Men don’t talk to people they’ve dated unless they
want sex, or they’re Winston.” —Nick Miller, New Girl

I always marvel at people who say they’re friends with all their
exes. All of them? What on earth does that even mean?
I understand it in a way, as I have a rich history of being
friends with people who I’ve always been kind of into, or
they’ve always been into me, or we almost dated but I ­wasn’t
ready, so now we’re just friends who have maybe frenched sev-
eral times. That I get.
How do you remain friends with exes? Which exes do you
remain friends with? When do you transition from partners/
hookups/people who have frenched to friends? And should it
take months, years, or tons of therapy and a dramatic mutual
blocking of each other on social media before it can happen?
How do you get through all the stickiness of whatever way it
ended and your feelings about it?
It is almost always going to be complicated for at least
one person, if not both, to navigate the mountain of feelings
related to being friends with people you have “history” with, so
when is it worth it, and when is it not?

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 Staying Friends with Exes: An Essential Guide

I ask myself these questions every time I try to be friends

with someone I found myself in that murky territory with,
even if it was just “they asked me out once and I almost said
yes but did not,” because for some reason, there is a chaos that
is created when that threshold is crossed even a little bit. Some
people can navigate this easily, and good for y’all! But even
the people who are the best at navigating this are bound to
have at least one partner who they want to stay friends with,
who is seriously struggling with that concept on their end.
Many times, the person who has the hardest time transi-
tioning is the one who definitely still has feelings, or both of
you still have feelings but for whatever reason have chosen to
just remain friends and lock those feelings in a chest in your
attic that neither of you ever talks about but you both defi-
nitely have a key to it. It’s there, on the key ring, occasionally
taunting you and reminding you that “maybe it’ll work this
time!” But no, you shant use The Key, you mustn’t. Oh no, I’ve
made this scenario even hotter, my apologies.
Often these situations don’t even begin with you actually
being exes. So many friendships step into this territory as soon
as attraction enters into the picture, whether you’re both on
the same page or not.
I had a friend named Elyse who I’d met doing her podcast
and right after we recorded the podcast episode, she emailed
me, extremely sweetly, and asked if I’d ever want to go on a
date some time. I definitely did . . . ​aaaaand then went through
a bunch of trauma and the timing just ­wasn’t right.
We started going on friend dates and it was so wonderful,
truly. Elyse would send a car to pick me up, no destination
given to me personally, and I would be whisked away to a
cute Color Me Mine–type place to make mugs with her. She’d

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always pick up my favorite latte and bring one when she came
over. She just made me feel so loved and taken care of, the
way a best friend would. I knew there were romantic feelings
tangled up in it, but it also gave me the security of knowing
someone was already “in” whenever I was ready to also be in.
But she came into my life very clearly as a romantic inter-
est. Friendship was there, yes, but I also ­didn’t have to wade
through the “should we be more?” or the “does she like me
like me?” of it all either, which was, in some ways, the best of
both worlds. Sure, I had to decide if I wanted to date her or
not, but in that instance the ball was fully in my court, so the
threshold for rejection was nearly zero, exactly as people with
anxiety like it.
I d
­ idn’t end up dating her at that time. I thought I
might want to, might be able to, but I opted to set very clear
friendship-­only boundaries while I was still navigating the
stickiness of the trauma. I could’ve started to date some-
one while I was in a crisis, but I knew I w ­ asn’t in the best
place to make decisions while I was in survival mode, and
more than anything, I knew I ­really needed a friend in a
huge way. And while yes, it could’ve been super dreamy and
romantic to have a love interest swoop in to save me, the
situation seemed ripe for codependency and me “needing”
her to take care of me, and it seemed way too hard to find
equal, healthy footing when I needed a nurse and a therapist
way more than I needed a partner.
After months of a truly romantic and wonderful friend-
ship, full of sweet moments such as Elyse buying a bunch of
copies of my first book to give to people who c­ ouldn’t afford
them or getting me deeply thoughtful presents and even help-
ing me move, Elyse met someone she started dating. I was

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happy for her, until I was a little bit sad. I don’t know what
happened, but one day when we were in a coffee shop, all of
my “maybe I don’t know” feelings finally crystallized into “Uh-­
oh, I think I like you?” feelings . . . ​just as soon as she informed
me she’d met someone. I laughed at first—­of course this is
when I got feelings clarity. But maybe it would be fleeting,
and her new love interest would give me time to see if my
feelings for her increased or if she was just unattainable now
and looked extremely good that day in a cable knit sweater.
So, I let it go.
Elyse quickly fell in love with this woman who lived
across the country, and they moved in together in a big house
in the city. Elyse was now not only in love, which changed the
dynamic of our friendship (it had to, of course, it had to), but
now she was also moving away. Two gut punches. I’d had my
chance and I ­didn’t take it. I repeated that refrain in my mind
for months after this, chastising myself for seemingly only
wanting her as soon as I c­ ouldn’t have her. Surely, I’d messed
up and Elyse was my soulmate and now she was definitely
going to marry someone else, and I was going to die of yearn-
ing within the next twenty-­four hours.
The kind of yearning I had for Elyse ­wasn’t often for
Elyse specifically but rather a cute form of self-­harm in which
I would tell myself that she was my soulmate and I blew it.
She became my source of comparison for every romantic rela-
tionship I had: “Elyse never would’ve treated me this way.”
She also became my source of comparison for every platonic
friendship I had: “Elyse never would’ve treated me this way.”
Both are probably unfair comparisons because she was
never r­ eally just my friend or just my girlfriend but a blurred
definition of both. In some ways, I think for most of my life

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that was exactly what I wanted from both my romantic and

platonic relationships. But I clung to Elyse, as evidence that
what I wanted in either partnership definitely existed, I’d seen
glimpses of it, and I’d messed it up. Because I felt so conflicted
about this, remaining friends with Elyse was like remaining
friends with an ex: There were unresolved feelings, unfulfilled
promises, and things left unsaid (by me) for the greater good
of us both. Even though I knew, deep down, she was not my
ex. I had to find a way to let go of these misplaced feelings;
that w­ asn’t as much the loss of a person as it was the loss of
that type of deeply devoted kinship.
In a more clear-­cut “staying friends with an ex” sense, I
have quite a few. If it were up to me, I would stay friends with
anyone I’ve ever cried with, anyone I’ve ever meant something
to, or who has meant something to me.
I think so many of us want the “let’s stay friends” ending
because we do not want to grieve any more than we already
have. If you stay friends with your ex, it feels like the door is still
open, for better or worse. On one hand, the door is still open
for you to get back together one day, but on the other hand,
the door is also open for a very murky friendship that is loaded
with good and bad memories from the past, and good and bad
possibilities of the future. Always in limbo, always kind of won-
dering. Especially when that person still feels like, or once felt
like, the person you will end up with one day once you figure
your shit out . . . ​or when they do.
A great example of this is Nick and Jess from New Girl, a
show I have seen every episode of approximately 876 times. If
you haven’t ever seen the show and need to go watch it so you
can experience the complex magic of Nick and Jess, go ahead,
and then come back to this chapter.

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Nick and Jess are first introduced as a classic “will they/

won’t they” pairing. Nick is a pessimist who had a rough child-
hood due to a real mixed bag of a great mom who relied on
him a bit too much and a con artist grifter father who came
and went from their lives, leaving his family with very little
stability. Jess is an eternal optimist who had a great childhood,
despite her parents’ divorce and what seemed like pretty nor-
mal “I ­didn’t fit in” experiences. Naturally, at first, they clash
constantly, resulting in increasingly heated disagreements that
lead to, you guessed it, sexy, sexy chemistry.
The chemistry builds over season one, bringing them
together in season two when they finally take the leap and get
together. They’re mostly great together, but they have some fun-
damental issues with how they want their futures to look, leading
to their eventual breakup in season three. But of course, because
Nick and Jess are seen as Meant To Be, and we believe this to
be true, and the yearning is still present, albeit respectful (the
hottest combination), we know this is not the end of their story.
We see Nick and Jess navigate the rocky initial breakup
moments (see: the extremely sweet moment when Nick refills
Jess’s tissues for her while she’s crying in her room of their
shared apartment) and their occasionally still being into each
other for a while, until it looks like they’re moving past it,
finally. Of course, as soon as Nick ­really starts to mature and
enters into a serious relationship with Raegan, it is probably no
coincidence that that’s when Jess realizes she still has feelings
for him, so much so that she can’t be around him anymore.
Their friendship has become untenable, despite how much it
means to her. And at the very least, she can’t live with someone
she is still in love with, despite wanting to root for him, like a
good friend would do.

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Because it’s TV, of course Nick increasingly realizes he

and Raegan aren’t great together largely because she just isn’t
Jess, and they break up. He realizes, through the help of his
best friend Schmidt, that the real reason they ­didn’t work is
because he still is, always was, and always will be in love with
Jess. After the appropriate amount of hijinks, they reunite, and
we know this time it’s forever because we’re optimists and,
well, we only have so many episodes left in the series.
That allure of “someday, maybe” is one of the biggest barri-
ers I’ve found to remaining friends with exes because who’s to
say when it’s ­really over? Is it r­ eally over, never going to happen
ever, and you’re just going to be close friends who tried and it
­didn’t work once one of you is married? Maybe, maybe not.
The alternative seems to be only that the feelings you
shared have been so obliterated by their (or your) actions, or
your incompatibility that you would never ever go back to that
relationship, ever. In which case, why would you want to be
friends with someone who hurt you, or who is so much dif-
ferent than you are that you had to leave? Sure, you can be
“friends” in the way that for a few months or even a year after
the breakup you still text, hoping to make that smooth land-
ing into genuine friendship, but this almost always fades out.
Eventually, one of you starts dating someone else, or one or
both of you realize you need space to grieve or separate. And
then you’ll become the kinds of friends who might still inter-
act online, or still see each other around, but you’ve moved on,
unable to turn the boil of a relationship you had to the light
simmer of a friendship without compromising everything that
worked about it to begin with. The recipe is different, and it
might not be as good.
The truth is, many exes will tell you they still want to be

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 Staying Friends with Exes: An Essential Guide

friends because they want to keep knowing you, yes. But oth-
ers will want to “keep being friends with you” so they can tell
people “I’m still friends with all my exes” and maintain the
image of being a kind and trustworthy person. A wolf in “I’m
still friends with all my exes” clothing.
The key to being friends with your exes is, without a single
doubt in my mind: very clear boundaries and communication
on both sides.
But if you had real, true feelings for someone, the potential
for “staying friends” can get very messy without clearly com-
municated expectations and boundaries. To assume anything
less than this is to assume you both know how the other is
grieving, what the other is expecting, or what the other needs
during this sticky, complex process. It assumes you both know
what your new friendship will look like. Is flirting allowed? Is
bringing up other people allowed? And if so, when? Most of
us don’t want to talk about any of this, especially when we’re
still hurting, and in many cases, still hoping.
We’ve all been told that truly romantic moments happen
when no one has to communicate what they want, what they’re
secretly hoping for, they just wait and pine and one day they
dump their lackluster partner and swoop you up in their arms,
and you kiss, and you marry, and finally, your friendship was all
part of the grand love story you two were always destined to
write.
And if it’s not that, if your relationship was a bump in the
road, a life lesson, a period of mutual growth and love, but just
not meant for forever, then what does the transition look like?
Who are you now that you’re just friends? How close are you?
And how are you close? Do you become close in a way that
your new partners feel threatened by, worrying that they’re

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just a pit stop on the grand romantic journey of you two get-
ting back together? Because that w ­ ouldn’t be fun for someone
else, and it w
­ ouldn’t be good for either of you.
Nick and Jess worked best as friends when they were
(mostly) able to let each other go, were (mostly) able to move
on and be extremely into other people, even if there were still
inklings that there was something there, that a porchlight was
still on. But I think for it to be a truly healthy friendship, you
have to dim that light as much as humanly possible and truly
let any romantic expectation go. So, you know, I would not
advise continuing to live across the hall from the ex you con-
stantly turn to with each romantic upset.
Assuming your ex-­turned-­friend is your soulmate and one
day you’ll work it out and be back together is harmful in so
many ways that aren’t always easily seen. In my case, it kept
me from truly giving anyone else a shot. We’d never have the
connection I had with my ex, they’d never make me laugh the
way my ex did, we’d never feel as meant-to-be as my ex and I
did. And that belief turned into a deep truth, mostly because I
continued to reinforce it.
There is no way someone you just met can compete with
years of groundwork laid. These things take time, friendships
take time, intimacy takes time. And one thing you have in
spades when you’ve dated someone, and are now Just Friends,
is hours logged. You have history. And compared to most
new connections, something from the past—­even something
toxic—­feels far more comfortable.
The truth is, I don’t think I’m someone who is able to be
close friends with their exes. Every time I’ve ever tried to be
friends with an ex in a real day-­to-­day consistent way there
was always something off. I’m still friendly with some people

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 Staying Friends with Exes: An Essential Guide

I dated briefly, and I was able to let go enough to not pine for
them, and then they met someone else, and I was happy to see
them in the street, but we ­didn’t talk with any consistency or
any intimacy any longer.
If you’re still in love with someone, you both need distance
before you can be friends, even if they’re saying they want to
be friends. And if things ended poorly and you left someone
who still wanted to be with you, you s­ houldn’t take advantage
of that just because you still want to be friends with them.
You might just need to give them the space to move on, even
though you’ll miss them while they do.
While I can’t tell you there’s one right way to be friends
with an ex, one way that always works, I highly recommend
the following. Know what you need. Know what you want.
Ask what they need. Ask what they want. Be as honest as you
can. Because anything less is just another heartbreak waiting
to happen. And we should strive to spare each other and, more
importantly, ourselves, from heartbreak as often as we are able.

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 Friendships Are Relationships:
Treating Friendships the
Way We Treat Romantic
Relationships
“I found out what the secret to life is: Friends.
Best friends.”
— Ninny Threadgood, Fried Green Tomatoes

There seems to be this idea that friendships are easy, as though

healthy friendships are just the accessories everyone comes
with when they’re born. But romantic relationships are often
the ones that are harder and take work and communication
and effort.
We never hear close friends say things like, “Yeah we’ve
been best friends for six years. It’s hard, sometimes! It defi-
nitely takes work, but it’s worth it. You have to choose each
other every day.” That would sound so horrible, ­wouldn’t it?
You’d hear that and think, Wow, you two guys should maybe
stop being friends because that sounds COLD. But when we
hear someone who’s been married a long time say it, we nod
and smile and think, Wow, they’re ­really choosing each other.
So sweet. But I think we should start viewing friendships as
relationships, because that statement is equally true for our
friends.
It IS hard sometimes. It DOES take work, and hopefully,
it is work worth doing.

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If we started viewing friendships as relationships, we

­ ouldn’t feel like failures when we have to work on them,
w
when we hit bumps in the road, when we both change indi-
vidually and our relationship to each other changes as well.
We would see it as a progression, as something we’re both
working on together, as two people who get to keep choosing
each other, or not.
In romantic relationships, people tend to think that some-
thing is only a success if it lasts forever, and we have the same
expectation with our friendships. If a friendship ends, we
never say, “We just wanted different things.” It can feel like
once you’re friends, you have to strap in and stay on the ride
forever, or else you’ve failed. But I have friends who were my
favorites and we’re not friends anymore, and I will always hold
them in my heart with neon lights around them. Do I wish
they’d lasted longer? Yes! But if they ­didn’t end in an emo-
tional shoot-­out in a saloon, I still hold them in my head as a
great success, because I think the most successful relationships
aren’t necessarily the ones that last the longest but the ones
that made you the happiest.
So much of our conditioning, particularly for women, is
set up for us to think that our job is to have a great fam-
ily (super easy, everyone just gets that, sure!), find some great
friends (again, easy! Just learn to socialize, have a little fun,
don’t think about it too much!), and then look for a part-
ner. Your friends and family will be there while you look for
romantic love, but don’t worry, they’re just the movie previews.
The feature film is surely the person you will marry who will
be everything to you and you will see your friends sometimes
to complain about how he’s “on your dick” about something.
(That sounded more like a cliche of a husband, but I prefer to

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 You Will Find Your People

think of it this way here because it is more fun.) Then you go

back home to him, your One True Love, your cup having been
refilled with understanding and assurances from your friends.
This is madness.
What if we put more weight behind all of our connections
and allowed them to be richer, more conscious, healthy, and
full? Think of how much freer we would be to make decisions
about the types of people we have in our lives.
If you have a great friend group, you won’t be in a rush
to “settle” with the wrong romantic partner, because you’ve
been able to develop that intimacy, that bond, that kind of
love and companionship with your friends, so now you’re not
seeking one romantic partner to be the only community you
might have. And you have people in your life who are there to
support you in this choice not to settle, even when society is
screaming at you that you should.
I always wished we had more romantic comedies about
friendships because these two types of love are so very sim-
ilar. You meet someone in a cute way, you want it to be a
little more, and then it becomes more, and more and more
and more. And now you have a how we met story (I love a
good friendship how we met story). You have history, you
have a will they/won’t they (become friends), you have all
the makings of a great romantic comedy in which neither of
you have frenched. Or you did once but have not since, etc,
no judgment.
In just the same ways that it’s hard to find a soulmate, it
can absolutely be just as hard to find a ­really great friend. And
that beginning of a relationship when you’re both playing a
weird game of chicken to figure out if this has legs or if you’re
just trying each other on? Good god that exists in friendships.

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 Friendships Are Relationships

So, let’s explore the will they/won’t they part of friendship,

shall we?

Things You Might Experience During the

“What Are We?” Stage of Friendship

1. Reading way too much into everything they say. “Is this
turning into a thing?” is something I say virtually every
twenty minutes while reading texts from someone I have
a crush on and also a new friend I am r­ eally excited about.
Are they just bored and I’m a fun new text friend, or are
we also mutually mentally planning a friendship road trip
for three to four months from now, or maybe next week
because I’m around?
2. Trying to figure out how to say goodbye in a casual way
usually turns into you half-­hugging them and running
away. Running away at the end of the first few friendship
hangs with someone is one of my favorite pastimes/coping
mechanisms. Mostly the latter.
3. Being so nervous about making plans for the next time
you see them that you just leave before it can happen.
Because what if I ask them what they’re doing next
weekend, and they say, “Um, I have my own life, next week
is too soon and I saw this as more of an every three months
friendship,” but they’re too polite to say it outright, and
then I have to figure that out from their tone and body
language cues. No, thank you, bye.
4. Not wanting to assume that everyone who is passively
nice to you wants to be real friends with you, so you
assume no one ever wants to be real friends with you.
This has been my plan since I was thirteen and I’ve been

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 You Will Find Your People

happily unsure of my personal connections ever since ( JK,

this plan is terrible).
5. The more you like someone, the more terrified and
nervous you become. My friends are always trying to tell
me to “calm down” and “stop breathing into that paper
bag every night when you think that this new friendship
might actually be something cool because that means it
could end and then where will you be,” but I don’t listen.
6. One time you tried asking a stranger you felt you had a
cool vibe with if they wanted to be real life friends and
then it turned into three fun texts and a mutual ghosting
and now you’ll never do that ever again. The last time I
made the first move in this way was six years ago. RIP.
7. Someone you hit it off with says they want to hang out
sometime and you debate in your head for two hours
whether it’s worth it. I mean, they could be great or they
could be mean or weird or I don’t like them as much, or
they don’t like me as much, and then we’re trying to make
it work when it just d ­ oesn’t . . . ​oh. They already walked
away, like twenty minutes ago. Hm.
8. Wanting to be Best Friends so badly that you start
romanticizing that future possibility to an inappropriate
degree. Basically falling in love with the idea of how close
you could be, cute things they could do, cute things you
could do, to the point where you’ve now written this
friendship rom-­com in your head without them and you
don’t even know their middle name yet.
9. Wanting to scream, “DO YOU WANT TO BE BEST
FRIENDS?” during conversation but having to hold it
in. Once I full-­blown like someone, it’s all I can do to not
shout this every twelve minutes.

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10. Being so terrified of first-­friend-­date silence that you

end up telling a ­really personal and upsetting story.
Probably about bowel movements or how your parents
died in a fire. Neither one goes super well with noodles.
But to be fair, some of my favorite friendships started off
with unintentional mutual trauma blurting that turned
into laughter and a solid bond, so it could go either way.

There is just as much of a pressure to be chill in the

beginning—­if it happens, it happens. But for people who tend
to be more introverted, or anxious, going with the flow can
feel awful and therefore could stop friendships before they
even start.
Just like with romantic relationships, we bring our bag-
gage with us to every single friendship we embark on, trying
to size it up for how we might get hurt this time. If you don’t
do this, count your blessings because the possible disasters
are many. But I think for most of us, even when we’re feeling
brave and hopeful, we want to know the ending. We want to
know where this goes.
In some cases, we may even seek out reasons why it would
never work. They are extroverted, you’re more introverted.
They’re a Gemini and you’re someone who has seen a lot
of Gemini slander in memes, and what if those memes are
right? It’s easy to look for the red flags in the beginning stages
because you’re not as invested yet, and most of us want to keep
ourselves from getting too invested in something that might
not work out, to spare ourselves possible pain.
And even if you are reaching for reasons why it wouldn’t
work, some of those reasons might have some truth to them,
especially if one of you is more extroverted than the other, or

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 You Will Find Your People

vice versa. That can be a very real and valid difference. If you’re
a planner and they text you the day of, “I’ll let you know what
my plans are in a few hours!” you might see that and think,
“Oh, you mean at 8 p.m. when it is currently 5 p.m., and by 8
p.m., god knows where my head will be at, but it will likely be
on a pillow on the couch while How Stella Got Her Groove
Back plays in the background? Yeah, good luck there.”
It can be wonderful to have friends who are more spon-
taneous than you are, but if you’re someone who feels social
occasionally and then needs days to recover and curl up inside
a little pile of blankets, they might not understand that. To
them, you haven’t hung out in weeks, but in your mind that’s
because they keep inviting you to get wasted in a warehouse,
when what you might want most lately is a cup of coffee and
to just talk with them.
People who only have so much social energy in them are
rightly picky and protective of it. If I spent my reserves of
social energy on a party I hated every second of, it can fully
consume my brain for days, in a way that someone who’s
extroversion refills every two seconds may not understand.
You might need to know how your night will go so you
can know if it sounds worth it, not because you’re a king and
you need to know if it’s worthy of your presence, but also now
that I think of it, that’s totally it. Similarly, if you’re already out
with friends and someone says, “We’re going to a really cool
bar after this. You should come with us!” And you want to glare
at them like, “Sir, have you ever tried to get an extroverted
introvert (a very introverted person who seems outgoing but
mostly wants to stay home, which some people would argue
is just a person and I will not debate that because I would
rather stay home) to a second location in the same night?”

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That makes sense to me! Or you had plans to meet up with

a friend and on your way to see them they said, “My friends
Dave and Penelope from work are coming too, hope that’s
OK!” which sends you into a panic spiral because this was not
the plan? Makes sense too!
It can be really hard to maintain a friendship when you
prefer small intimate gatherings and they like larger groups.
Sometimes when I say I’m feeling lonely, and someone sug-
gests I come hang out with them and 20 other people at a
club, I don’t know how to say, “Oh, I meant I want one or
two people to come over and preferably they would bring
chips because I do not have chips. .” This is really where it
pays to either befriend only other introverts, or at least very
understanding extroverts who won’t ever make you feel bad
for needing the alone time they rarely seem to need. And we
don’t want to be frustrated by these differences, but it makes
sense that we might be, and then worry we could never truly
be friends because of them.
It’s so tempting to run through all these scenarios in our
head, just like we would at the beginning of a romantic rela-
tionship. We ruminate on how things would probably never
work anyway because they’re more outgoing, or they’re more
anti-social, and all of the hypothetical reasons to cut and run.
In both romantic relationships and friendships, it’s natural to
want the reassurance that “This Is It, this will last, this will be
worth it, and this time we won’t get hurt like we did before.”
But unfortunately, none of us are that psychic (yet, I’m work-
ing on it.)
The best thing you can do is to be the best possible
friend you can be, communicate and listen, and sit with those
uncomfortable “how’s this going to end?!” feelings as they

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arise. Just stay in the present moment as much as you can, and
cross your fingers that you’ll one day get to tell your “How We
Met” friendship story, with all of the “I was so nervous!” parts
behind you, ultimately leading you to the place you always
hoped it would go.

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 Being Friends With Your
Coworkers, Roommates,
and Family Members:
How to Navigate Them All
“Office administrator Pamela Beesly-Halpert is
my best friend. I’d say I have gotten along with my
subordinates.” —Dwight Schrute

There are so many forms of friendships in our adult lives:

friends you grew up with or went to school with, work friends,
family members, neighbors, people you see at the gym who
you mostly ignore because you’re focused on getting through
yoga in one piece. In every situation, you seemingly have to be
friendly with all of them, but in very specific ways that aren’t
often well defined for us or, if they are, seem totally impossible
to achieve.
We see Gilmore Girls and assume we‘ll be best friends with
our kids or our parents. We see New Girl and assume we’ll be
best friends with our roommates. We see Parks and Recreation
and assume we have to be best friends with our coworkers.
We romanticize and idealize this seemingly wonderful
thing where we’re best, best friends with the people in the
spaces where we often spend the most time: our workplaces,
and our homes. And post-­college, we’re also told that we’re
most likely to meet our friends at work. Because where else
would you meet them? Yay, zero work-­life balance!

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But we never talk about how to navigate those friendships

despite them having the great potential to have zero bound-
aries in the places we need them the most: work, family, and
our home.
So, if we gravitate t­ oward being best friends with the peo-
ple we share these spaces with, what are those friendships and
what exactly do they mean to us? What do they look like? Are
they the same as our other friendships outside of those spaces?
While it would be great if all of these interactions were as
idyllic as they are in the movies, they rarely are. So let’s look at
the pros and cons to each of these, and how to navigate them
in a better way.

Pros and Cons of Being Friends

with Your Roommates
There’s a reason this is such a common TV trope, because you
get to live with your friends, for better or worse. You get to
have lazy brunches and dinners in your kitchen, and no one
has to check their schedule because you know when they’re
around.
The other side of this is of course that sometimes you
just want to be alone and pretend your roommates don’t exist.
Like if you woke up grumpy and don’t wanna chat early in
the morning and just wish to move around your home like
a sleepy ghost for a while without them feeling hurt by it.
And you might not always want them to join you in things
you’re doing, which can be tough to communicate. I once
had a roommate come into my room when my date and I
were watching a movie, and she, for real, got on my bed and
WATCHED THE MOVIE WITH US. The whole time. For
two hours. It was a nightmare. Should she have known better?

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Yes! And I still don’t know why she did not. We are not cur-
rently close.
You might also find that having friends as roommates
means you’re less likely to have passive aggressive “clean the
dishes, don’t just soak them!” notes everywhere, but sometimes
your friends are actually more passive-aggressive than they
would be with a stranger because having to remind your friend
to do those things feels extra annoying. Hopefully you’re living
with a friend who is able to communicate clearly and respect-
fully, but it can be really hard to do that.
Still, there is something to be said for having the right
people there when you really want someone to be there. For
instance, it’s great to ask your roommate your outfit looks great
before you go out. Absolutely marvelous. Cher in Clueless
said that nothing beats taking Polaroids of your outfit, but she
didn’t live with a best friend who has great taste and is brutally
honest when it comes to faux fur jackets you bought for two
dollars at a somewhat haunted thrift store. And when you get
back from a date, there’s no better feeling than walking in the
front door and seeing your friends sitting in the living room
waiting to hear all about it and you get to pretend you’re in a
romantic comedy. And if you bring your date home, you can
get a second opinion on them without making a whole to-do
about meeting the friends. To them, they’re just coming to
your apartment, and to you, your friends are silently judging
whether or not they’re good enough for you. Very subtle, very
effective.
Having friends who live where you live means you always
have someone to watch a movie with, or borrow clothes from,
or if you run out of milk, they have milk. All of this is great,
with one caveat which is the fine line between “we use each

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other’s stuff all the time anyway,” and “welllll, I used to feel
that way, and now I realize she mostly uses my stuff and I’m
acting like a CVS for someone who is supposed to be my best
friend and I don’t want to bring it up because we both live
here.” This is especially true if you’re not so much into the
mutual sharing and they really are, and you’ve told yourself to
just be “chill” about it, but you finally realized you have never
been and probably never will develop said chill.
Outside of the physical benefits of this, the emotional
benefits of living with your friends are many, namely that you
have someone to save you from yourself. All you’ve done for
two days is watch You’ve Got Mail on a loop and eat nachos?
They know, and they are intervening. Plus, you always have
someone to worry about you if you don’t come home. Ideally,
nothing ever actually happens to you and you’re always safe
and sound, but for those nights when you crash at a friend/
hookup’s place, there’s nothing sweeter than getting the “Hey,
are you OK? You didn’t come home last night and I’m wor-
ried” text. Even though you’re totally fine, this text feels like
a hug. Most of all, you live with your friend! You don’t have
to think about who you should text when you’re feeling bad
because you have a close friend in the next room who can
probably tell you’re sad, or at the very least, you can knock on
their door and give them a look that tells them you need every
hug. It’s a built-in support system.
That said, living with your friends also means you’re shar-
ing financial responsibilities with your friend, which can be
great if you’re both the same kind of financially responsible,
but if you’re not, welcome to hell, aka “one of us becoming the
person who has to make sure the other one actually pays their
share of the bills because the other one forgets and now there’s

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resentment and weirdness and someone keeping track of how

much you still owe.” A nightmare. And if you have a conflict
or issue with that person, not only does this affect your friend-
ship, it literally affects your living situation. So now you’re
stuck in that nightmare scenario of feeling weird in your own
home because of some drama happening between the two of
you, which is enough to make you justify selling your organs
just to be able to live alone and never feel this way again.
It’d be great if living with your friends was the way it was
on TV, but the truth is the highs are high and the lows are low,
which leads us to another scenario where that’s very much the
case: being friends with your coworkers.

Pros and Cons of Being Friends

With Your Coworkers
Ah, the dream of being friends with your coworkers. This is
such a complex thing, because if all goes well, you really do get
the best working environment. You’re excited to go to work
because all your friends are there, so it really feels like having
community at the place you’re in most of your day.
Having friends at work truly feels like you’re getting paid
to hang out with people you love, and it is one of the greatest,
rarest gifts. You can vent to them about your boss/coworkers
because they already know that Derrick In Accounting seems
to be a genuine haunted mystery of a person, and having this
running joke is really priceless.
Plus, there’s the practical rewards of your work friend-
ships potentially resulting in you getting promoted, or getting
a raise, because people really like you and want to work with
you. If you’re lucky enough to have that Parks and Recreation
dream where you really love these people and they love you,

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you’re able to be a united force that can make your workplace

better for you all.
But while all the perks are undeniably there, being friends
with your coworkers still might be very unachievable for some
of us, which we rarely talk about. Again, it’s another situation
of “that would be cool, but my workplace isn’t really like that.”
Your workplace may be really clique-y, or your coworkers are
just very different from you, or you have a lot of social anxiety,
partly because of the very real fear of what could happen if
these friendships don’t work out, or even if they do.
Not to mention, if you don’t work in an office, or are in
a more creative field, then you’re tasked with “networking”
by way of making friends in your industry. Since there’s no
one office where you’d meet them, it can be far more work
to seek those people out, and navigate if they’re just going to
be networking connections, or friends, and feeling out what
they want from the relationship as well. Are you making a
new friend, or did they only say they want to be friends as a
way to be polite? Either one is fine, but the stress of that can
sometimes make you want to scream, “It’s OK if you just see
us as networking friends, but then you don’t need to tell me
we’re going to be best friends to get that.” Because you can’t
know their intentions, and it can really hurt to get very excited
about a new friendship with a colleague that they may see as
something more transactional, despite what they’re saying.
Granted, most people genuinely don’t know what they’re
looking for yet, but sometimes you do meet someone in your
field who says, “OK we’re going to be friends” and you get
excited and start acting like a friend and oops, they just meant
“We will be people who network and get along, so why are
you texting me on Friday night asking me what my favorite

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Scream movie is?” and it’s disappointing. And then you have
to reassess where you’ve placed them in your life. Or they
said they want to be friends, really meant they wanted to be
friends, but “friends” to you means more than the effort or
energy they’re currently giving you, and now you have to find
a way to navigate that.
It’s kind of like a job application. They applied for the job
of Friend, or Best Friend, and there were qualifications for
that job that you needed them to meet, and they are not meet-
ing them. I almost wish you could send them a rejection letter
for the job they weren’t a good fit for. Something like:
Dear person,
Thank you so much for your interest in being my friend. As of
right now we are looking for certain qualities in the person who is
going to fill this position, and it is not your particular skill set. You
may, however, be a good fit for our networking friends position,
which we encourage you to apply for. Either way, thank you so
much for your interest in my company and I wish you the best of
luck in your search.
Sincerely,
I hate having to write this.

But the awkwardness of the “what are we?” aspect is just

the beginning of the potential pitfalls of becoming friends
with your coworkers. For starters, it’s so much easier to stay at
a terrible job because all your friends are there. The bonds of
a slogging through a bad job together are formidable, yes, but
it’s also very easy to stick it out in a place where none of you
are happy or feeling good about what you do, just because you
love one another and don’t want to lose the friendship.

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It can also be hard to know who to vent to, or what

alliances exist that you don’t know about. If you’ve ever
started at a new job and vented to someone about your boss/
coworker and then later noticed they’re best friends with
them and you’re like “ohhh whoops” you know this feeling
well. Similarly, if you have a falling out with a work friend, it
could be hard to know who to trust or befriend in the office
now, or feel like you can’t befriend anyone else because the
potential fallout is too stressful. If that work friendship falls
apart, or you were never able to make those work friends for
whatever reason, you might not have that support network,
which could directly impact your ability to get promoted, or
get brought onto other projects because now you’re not in
the “clique.” Maybe even through no fault of your own, and
it feels awful.
I wish this wasn’t true, and I hate it so much. It feels like
we rarely talk about how much being able to “fit in” at work
and have a group of tight-knit work friends gives you a leg up
at work. And if you’re misunderstood, or ostracized, or aren’t
sure how to navigate that, or just don’t want to do it, it could
have a direct financial impact on you, even though it shouldn’t.
People want to hire their friends, and they might not remem-
ber people they don’t talk to or see as often, so then you’re
supposed to stay close with “the right people,” but it’s hard
to know who those people are. What if you don’t really click
with them and aren’t able to pretend you do, or don’t see them
as people you want to be that close with? It’s exhausting to
navigate. And it can be especially challenging if you later have
to distance yourself from that coworker friend, or move them
from close friend status to an acquaintance for your own peace
of mind. And now you have to worry that you’ve put yourself

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in jeopardy at work, which is a position no one should ever

have to be in. But ohhh, it happens.
Similarly, let’s look at the idea of being best friends with
your family members, which is arguably the dream, and often
the most difficult one of all three of these to navigate.

Pros and Cons Of Being Friends

With Your Family
For anyone who is already seeing this section and laugh-cry-
ing because even the idea of being friends with their family at
this point, after years of trauma, is absurd, I will direct you to
my first book, How to Be Alone, because we never talk about
how painful and hard and impossible it can be to be close to
your family in the ways you want to, or the ways you’ve been
told you should be close to them, and I will always want to
talk about that.
But for now, let’s assume you’re close with your family
and that is something you’re able to do to some degree, even if
it’s not always perfect. If that’s you, here are some high points
(which are mostly imagined by me and based largely on what
I’ve seen on fictional television shows):
The pros of being friends with your family members are
just so many, mainly because you hit the lottery: you were born
to warm, loving people who are able to openly love you, see
you, and relate to you. I feel drunk right now even writing
about the idea of that. Not everyone gets this at all, and unfor-
tunately, so many of us were born to people with their own
generational trauma and a lack of tools to be the kinds of par-
ents they wanted to be, and the kinds of parents you needed.
The ability to have your family actually be your friends
means you have friends who’ve known you since birth, so they

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know all the same random movie quotes and that running joke
that started when you were 9-years-old that’s still funny when
you bring it up now. They have a lifetime of shared memories:
they’ve known all the people you were, the child that you were,
the teenager you were, all of the pieces of you no one else likely
saw. If you’re lucky enough to have this, they’re able to love
you and see you in a way that is so special and so rare.
As much as it’s amazing that you have a shared history,
that also might mean you share some trauma and it might be
easier for that old pain to come to the surface much more easily
when you’re around each other, even in the best circumstances.
So the cons here boil down to needing boundaries, far more
than with our coworkers or roommates, because we’re told that
family is all that matters. We don’t think of families as being
something that require boundaries, but I would argue that fam-
ilies are where boundaries are most necessary—partly because
it’s so easy to become blindly loyal to your family, to defer to
them, ignoring your own feelings because “blood is thicker than
water” or whatever, no matter what. But these relationships are
absolutely a great place to form boundaries and check in to
make sure everyone’s actually feeling safe and not just pretend-
ing for the sake of appearing like a “good family.”
This often extends to any kind of fight with a family mem-
ber, which could quickly turn into a situation where people
can choose sides and a simple disagreement or a bid for more
boundaries could quickly turn into a genuine nightmare of seis-
mic proportions. Because it’s not just a fight between you two
now, it’s a fight between you and your grandma and your other
parent and your siblings and everyone has opinions and, good
lord, you just wanted to set a few boundaries on a weekend!
There is so much in our culture that wants us to have blind

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allegiance to our personal family, no matter what our bound-

aries or needs are, and it’s absolutely not healthy or required of
you. So the most important thing to remember in your friend-
ships with your family members is that your needs matter too.
There is nothing shameful or antagonistic about asking
for what you need, or having different needs than you used
to, and asking your family members to meet them. Even if it
sounds weird to them, even if they don’t understand why you
need them, even if you didn’t need them before and they don’t
understand what changed. If someone loves you, truly loves
you, they will make it a priority to give you the things that you
need and ask for directly.
In all these instances, these cons can contribute to our
fears and beliefs that finding friendships that feel healthy and
good to us are impossible, because it’s just not as simple as
what we’ve been told. There’s danger and joy within any of
these situations, but there is also power in remembering that
you have agency.
You have the ability to discern and assess and reassess every
one of your relationships with your family, coworkers, room-
mates, you name it, and set any boundaries as you see fit. You
can always adjust as necessary, and remember that even though
these situations can feel powerless—But they’re my family! But
we work together every day! But I live with them!—you always
have power in these situations. You can absolutely stop talking
to that family member, find a new job, or find a new apartment
if any of these relationships has become harmful to you. And
in each of those situations, what may seem like a devastating
blow to life as you currently know it, may actually be a blessing;
a re-­routing to a better life with people who are right for you.

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 How to Fight with Your Friends:
When It’s Healthy and
When It’s a Warning Sign
“Two persons cannot long be friends if they cannot forgive
each other’s little failings.” —­Jean de La Bruyère

In most of the depictions of friendship I saw growing up,

friends never fought. They would have, at most, one big fight
in the whole series when you were thinking, Oh no! What if
they break up?! but of course they never did. But even still, it
was a huge deal to fight with your friends. It was explosive, it
would happen once, and oftentimes it would show two friends
­really hashing out all their issues (we see this in Yellowjackets,
Jennifer’s Body, Almost Famous, Parks and Recreation, Romy and
Michele’s High School Reunion, Glow, Heathers, Grey’s Anatomy,
Buffy, Insecure, Girls, Mean Girls, hell, even Practical Magic
when they’re drunk on haunted ghost wine) and then they
were (mostly) fine forever after that. Well, except for Yellow-
jackets, RIP Jackie. And Jennifer’s Body. Wow, a lot of death in
some of these . . . ​ANYWAY.
I know why people write fictional friendships this way.
In my ideal friendship, we would rarely, if ever, fight. So, as a
viewer, it’s exhausting and stressful to watch these characters
you’re rooting for in an uncomfortable situation where they’re

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saying things they both mean and haven’t communicated

properly before, but are also saying a lot of things you know
they don’t mean, but the fight has become so heated that now
they’re just hurting each other because, well, fighting hurts.
For many of us, fighting is exhausting and scary and can make
us question if our friendship is in jeopardy.
Are you right? Are they right? Are you both right? And
how do you move forward from this fight? How do you make
it less of a “fight” and more of a conversation that’s productive
and helps guide you both to whatever happens next? Because
maybe you WILL realize you’re not meant to be friends and
maybe you WILL be too hurt to continue. Those outcomes
are possible. So, is there a way to fight where you can at least
attempt to minimize the unnecessary harm you cause each
other and yourself ? In my experience, there is.
Although people can be quick to say that couples who
fight are healthy, and if anything, if you’re a couple who never
fights and never disagrees, there’s something wrong, we’re less
likely to say that about friendships. There seems to be a belief
with friendships that you’ll never fight ever, and if you DO
fight, something is definitely wrong, which is why so many of
us, myself included, will keep years of frustrations about our
friendships bottled up. And in some cases, we’re doing this
because we know that if we fully address the feelings we’re
keeping inside, we might realize this friendship isn’t working
for us anymore, and we may need to leave.
Then there’s the other side of this coin, where you’re fight-
ing too much. “Too much” is of course relative, and I would
say if you feel like you fight with your friend too much, you
probably do. Because as always, you’re allowed to define these
boundaries, you’re allowed to define what ­doesn’t feel good to

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you, and if you’ve already made a good-­faith effort to commu-

nicate that to your friend and you don’t see any changes then
it’s OK to make that call.
It’s OK to say, “We fight too much. For me personally.
Maybe someone else would be alright with the amount we
fight, and maybe you’re okay with the amount we fight, but
I’m not.”
Interestingly enough, I’ve had very few fights with friends,
and there are times I r­ eally wish I had been more confronta-
tional. As a recovering people-pleaser, I was never ever going
to start fights, no, no. I would whisper my needs and sulk when
they were not met. Far healthier!
And I’ve come to realize that if we do that, we’re never
fighting, but we’re never clearing anything up either. We’re
never allowing ourselves to fully be heard, and thereby allowing
the other person to tell us why they feel or act the way they do.
For me, the fear is that they will admit the reason they
acted a certain way is because they don’t r­ eally care about our
friendship, don’t ­really care if they hurt me, and that they’re
doing it intentionally. But the truth is, more often than not,
those things are just misunderstandings and miscalculations
of what they thought you needed. But you can’t know that
until you “fight,” in whatever way works for you.
It’s absolutely possible to “fight” with a friend in a way
where neither person is yelling. Especially if you, like me, hate
yelling, or hearing yelling, and it just makes you want to cry. I
never want to yell during fights, but hey, if both of you love to
passionately shout your boundaries, I’ve done this before and
I could see why people like it. There’s yelling AT someone,
which can seem like an attack, and then there’s a “damn it, I’ve
kept these needs inside me for so long that I need to shout

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them so I’m finally heard. I’m sick of being scared to voice

these, I hope that’s OK, here goes!” yelling that sometimes you
need to do, especially if you’re scared of it and it’s new to you.
Fighting in a healthy way d ­ oesn’t need to involve serious
yelling at all and should allow you both to feel heard by each
other, identify core needs, and address real concerns in your
friendship. Steering away from blame and things like “you
always do this”—­the things people often tell couples to steer
clear of when fighting—­can go a long way in being able to
address real concerns in a friendship.
If you can do this in a good-­faith way, where you’re saying
what you need and how their behavior has felt to you, and
they’re able to do the same, it actually creates an opening for
a deeper intimacy and understanding for each of you, which
can make your friendship even stronger than it was. And yes,
it still can hurt when you’re fighting and they disagree, or they
can’t or won’t see your perspective, which absolutely happens.
The main goal here should be to see your fights as an opportu-
nity to truly communicate and set boundaries, and, above all,
gather information about the current health of this friendship.
If your friendship were a car and you never took it to a
mechanic to see how it was running, you’d never ­really know
what’s going on with it, and eventually the car might just die
because you never looked under the hood. Friendship is the
same way. Yes, it can be scary to look and see what’s going
on in there, but if you can figure out a way to make it
productive—­ no fault, no blame, just two people working
together to find common ground—­and it’s done well, it can
be an opportunity for you to both meet each other where you
are, and grow and change together.
But sometimes there is fault, there is blame. Someone did

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something hurtful, or there was a misstep, and you need to

talk about it, which is admittedly harder to face, as it requires
accountability on their end and the ability to forgive on yours.
Or vice versa. It also might require you to see something from
their perspective that will show you something about yourself
that you may not like.
Healthy fighting should be productive, not punitive. We
should be able to see it as something that’s worth doing, so
you’re both able to talk out conflicts when they come up. And
if you still can’t reach an understanding, then at least now
you know this might not be right for you anymore. And you
can move on to better friendships, better connections, with a
greater knowledge of what d ­ oesn’t work for you and what you
need. Leaving something that isn’t working for you or ­doesn’t
feel right to you is a gift you’re giving both of you. It’s permis-
sion for you to seek something better for yourself, and permis-
sion for your friend to do the same.

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 Friend Breakups: How to
Know When to Leave,
How to Do It, and How
to Cope with the Grief
“Even though we meet as strangers now I still love her
with an inextinguishable love.”
—Anne Shirley, Anne of Green Gables

As much as it can be heartbreaking if someone turns out to

be not what they seemed, or for your friendship to not be the
forever friendship you’d hoped it would be, the upside is that
this can bring you to the realization that you can trust yourself.
Your suspicions that these are not the right friends for you
anymore and that there is nothing you can, or should, do to fix
it are warranted.
A few years ago, I was in this exact position. I realized my
“I finally have friends, yes! I did it!” was a bit of a false positive,
and a lot of my friendships were still being chosen from the
places where I was not yet healed and therefore my friendships
were kind of a nightmare. I was, for the first time ever, allowing
myself to say, “I tried my best in this friendship,” let it go, and
focus on people who did love me and did care. Was it easy? Oh
goodness, no, it was not.
But now I know how empowering it is to realize you
deserve to choose who you let into your life. You get to choose
who has access to you. And as hard as it can be, sometimes

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you can only meet the right people once you release the wrong
ones who aren’t making you happy.
What if you’ve outgrown the people in your life right
now? It can be ­really hard to just find someone else, espe-
cially because when you love someone, you’re invested. Except
everyone is a puzzle piece, and you can’t always see why the
edges don’t quite line up when you’re together, but you know
it when they don’t. You feel it.
You want to grow, you want to be better, but what if as you
do, that you realize there are people who don’t fit in your life
anymore? Sometimes the people you bonded with in the past
fit you well at the time because you were wounded in the same
way. But the more you work on yourself, the more you heal,
the more you grow, and they don’t fit anymore, you will won-
der what warped them. Was it weather? Did someone get this
puzzle WET??? But the truth is you have changed shape. Your
edges have softened, you have expanded. Maybe they stayed
the same. Maybe they contracted or expanded in a different
way. But you don’t fit anymore.
On the surface, this is growth, this is the goal. But no one
­really tells you about what growth can cost you. You want the
people you came with to follow you to this new place. To grow
as you grow, alongside you.
We believe that partners come and go, yes, but friends and
family are forever, they are our constants. And I want my con-
stants like they are free breadsticks at an Olive Garden!!! You
told me I get them, I know other people got them, I saw them on
TV, and I swear to god if you don’t bring them out for me soon I
will smash every window in this Cincinnati mall location!!!
We spend so much time in our childhoods learning
about fairness, but not everyone is walking the same path, and

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although the world should be fair, it isn’t. Ideally, we’d all get
the support systems we were promised, but then some of us
don’t, and no one taught us how to fill in those cracks. No
one teaches you how to find power in vulnerability, how to
build intimacy, how to grow as a person, or how to grieve
when you’ve outgrown the people you once loved. Or when
they outgrow you. And they definitely don’t teach us how to
navigate the anxiety that can come up in your friendships. I
am so endlessly nervous around some of my friends, which I
assume you’re not supposed to be. But I am often plagued with
worry—­what am I allowed to need? Who am I allowed to
be? How much imperfection will people allow? And is having
these anxieties about the friendship more about the baggage I
have from my past friendships, or is this friendship wounded,
or worse, broken entirely?
So here are some signs your friendships are not working
for you anymore. This ­doesn’t mean they’re irreparable, but
you may need to talk things through. Again, recognizing these
patterns is all about gathering information, so you can know
what you need to do next:

1. You can’t remember the last time you felt good around
them. Your relationship to each other might change often,
or every now and then, but if you no longer feel like you
have fun together, or you’re still getting too weighed down
from past hurts, or you’re hanging out with them out of a
perceived obligation because you’ve known each other so
long, that’s a sign.
2. You stress about the way you communicate with each
other. If something about this friendship causes you to feel
anxious about how often, or how much they reply to your

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texts, and this stresses you out regularly and consistently,

even though you’ve told them what you need, that’s a sign.
3. You don’t feel supported by them. Your friends ­shouldn’t
be passive in their support of you, or worse, visibly
competitive with you, so if you often feel like when you
ask for help, they’re tepid and don’t seem to care, even
when you’ve communicated what you need them to say or
do in that situation, that’s a sign.
4. Your other friends make you feel more loved than this
friend does. While it’s hard to compare friendships, if
you notice there are some friends who you always feel
super loved and supported by, but you don’t ever, or very
rarely, feel that with this friend, ask yourself why that is.
And if it’s something that can be discussed, bring it up
to them! But if it feels fundamental,that could be a sign
it just might not work well. Some people are just a better
fit for you than others. It’s such a gift to have friends who
make you feel the way you want to feel in a friendship, and
often they make it easier to realize that maybe it’s time to
release the friends who don’t.
5. You’re happy less than sixty percent of your time
together. This number is very generous, but if you’re not
happy with your friendship at least most of the time,
that’s a sign.
6. You feel like they treat their other friends better than
they treat you. This one is so brutal when it happens to
you, and yes, everyone has different levels of closeness
with people. But if you notice they’re able to give the
things you’ve told them that you need to other people but
not to you, that’s a sign.
7. You’ve started to think maybe you can’t have everything

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you want in a friendship. If you’ve started thinking that

maybe your dream friendship d ­ oesn’t exist and perhaps
this is the best you can do, seriously, that’s a sign. Your
friendships should feel like you won the lottery, not a
consolation prize.

Sometimes the reasons for the friendship breakup r­ eally are just
that you’ve realized you’re no longer getting what you need from
them, if you ever did in the first place. It might not even need to
be toxic for you to decide to break up with them, it can just be
that the friendship isn’t making you happy anymore. That is so
important to note. There have been so many times when I ­didn’t
want to end something because it w ­ asn’t completely toxic, but
oftentimes, simply staying in a friendship that isn’t working for
you anymore, and some part of you knows it, can become toxic.
But even the more classically toxic friendships can still
be hard to spot when you’re in them. And if you’re above the
age of one, you’ve had a toxic friend. You know, the type of
friend who treats you like garbage, who you secretly hate at
least twenty percent of the time. Here are some ways to spot
the toxic friends in our lives:

1. They hate everyone but you. For years, and I do mean

years, I thought I was very special because people who
­didn’t like anyone liked me, but every time this happened,
it was because this person would find one person they liked
and create a toxic pattern with them, and once that person
did even the smallest thing they did not like, they hated
them and swiftly discarded them, to confirm their belief
that everyone was bad. It’s kind of the same principle as
men who love that you’re “not like other girls.” One day

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you’re going to land in the Other Girls pile because that’s

how they see the world. Side note: I love The Other Girls.
The Other Girls rule. Solidarity with the Other Girls
forever.
2. You don’t like the way they treat other people. If you love
the way they treat you but see them being mean to service
workers, or other friends, or people who just plain aren’t
you, that can be a warning sign that the same path awaits
you. And even if it doesn’t, that might not be the kind of
person you want to be friends with.
3. You view money in totally different ways and it really
stresses you out. This is a huge one that’s not spoken about
often enough, and it’s not about who has more money
or less money, though that can absolutely impact your
friendship. This one is really about the ways you’re both
conscious of the differing ways you view money. If they
view money as not a big deal because they have a lot of it,
or just don’t view it as a stressor, and you view money as a
very big deal because you don’t currently have a lot of it,
or you grew up worrying about money, this can be a huge
problem. Ideally, your friend is able to see these differences
and be very mindful of them but that’s not always the case.
And if it isn’t, and this consistently causes friction between
you too, (like they know you’re stressed about money and
they’re not and yet somehow you have to still remind them
multiple times to Venmo you for dinner, which is hell)
that could be a sign. Boundaries around money are still
boundaries, and if they know you have them, and they’re
being crossed regularly, it’s fair to be upset by that.

Once you’ve realized that things might be toxic, or something

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isn’t working, and you’ve had the fights/productive conversa-

tions to try and rectify things (­if warranted) the hardest thing
can be to realize that you might actually have to leave, instead
of being able to repair things and grow together. But at least
you can leave knowing you did all you could to try and save it.

On Friends Leaving Without Warning

When friends leave without saying goodbye, it is a specific type
of hurt and grief that we don’t often speak about. The friends
who left without telling you about what was wrong, even
when you reached out and left the door open to talk about it
because you didn’t want it to end this way. That is brutal.
The important thing to remember is it is usually not about
you. Yes, it would’ve been great if they could’ve told you what
was wrong, but sometimes the other person left because of
their own assumptions, their own fears, their own issues, or
they couldn’t explain what they needed and it was easier to
just leave. The other possibility is that sometimes someone did
try to talk to you before they left, and didn’t feel heard, so they
felt they had no choice. In the past, for my own sake, I’ve pulled
away from a friend who I had tried to talk to many times about
their harmful behavior—­both to me and sometimes to others.
It happened so often that I knew talking to them one more time
was unlikely to awaken some secret other person full of com-
passion who was hiding under their coffee table. And I wanted
to spare myself the pain of trying again and being disappointed
again and maybe even spare them the pain of continually dis-
appointing someone when they ­couldn’t give me what I needed.
But most of the time, people who reject us and leave us
out of nowhere are doing it to keep themselves safe, even if
we feel like we haven’t harmed them. They’re doing it to avoid

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getting too close to people, to avoid getting hurt. Many times,

people will even pat themselves on the back for this ability, for
the speed and frequency with which they’re able to cut and
run when they decide they no longer like someone. And it’s
not necessarily our job to dissect that and decide if it’s healthy
or why they do it, even though that is often our desire.
I’ve known friends who turned on a dime and became
vicious. It was so upsetting to know they could just flip a
switch, that someone I’d known as my closest friend could
now become a bully, could know they’re hurting me deeply
and continue to do it. I can’t tell you how many times that
happened, especially in my teen years.
But I know from many years of reaching out to friends who
had left without warning, or been cruel without warning and then
left, in search of a reason why they did it, this never actually gave
me the closure I wanted. I would write these intensely vulnerable
letters, hoping it would soften them, that they would open up and
we could talk and heal it, and it never did.
So let me save you some time. If someone leaves without a
word, don’t chase them. Allow people who want to leave like that to
leave, even if it breaks your heart more than you could ever explain.
The hardest thing to realize is that not every friendship is
meant to last forever, as much as we wish it would. So many
friendships are meant to show us things, good and bad, about
what we want, what we need, and who we do and don’t want
to be, and who we do and don’t want to be around.
Just because your friend left without warning ­doesn’t mean
that you are bad or that you deserve to be abandoned. And I say
this as someone who has struggled with that so many times. So,
hear me when I tell you: Those are not your people.
The challenging part about friendships is that both

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parties have to continuously feel good about it, which means

that communication should ideally be wide open. People are
allowed to leave what isn’t working, even if it feels painful to
us. Just as much as we are allowed to leave what isn’t working,
even if it feels painful to them.
In any of the friendships I’ve had to leave, I truly hope
those people are happy and have found other friendships
that are a better fit for both people. Even if the person who
left your friendship is kind of a dick and they want you to be
miserable and to suffer, again, truly, that is about them. And
if you’re the kind of person who would never leave a friend-
ship that was loving and kind by being cruel and casual, then
why would you wanna stay friends with someone who had no
problem doing that to you?
Real friends aren’t also your bullies, and real friends don’t
stay close friends with your bullies or your abusers. So, if you’re
seeing that happen? Well, now you have that information.
Again, friendship is information gathering, about yourself,
about the other person, and finding the things you truly want
to find in the people around you. Even if it is absolutely not
this person. Everything is a data point. A messy, emotional
data point, but a data point nonetheless.
So if you’re noticing jealousy in the friendship, or they’re
staying friends with people who hurt you, or you realize you’re
often trying to prove your worth to them, these are all things
you can talk about. And in my experience, when you start choos-
ing better people and start communicating better, you’ll realize
those may be miscommunications, or problems that are easily
repairable, both with yourself and others. And on the off chance
that it is not, fuck ‘em. You don’t want them in your life anyway.
Loyalty, in its purest sense, is not a bad thing. It can be

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beautiful to hold onto people tightly, to cherish them as rare

gifts, yes. But we also have to remember that in some cases,
taking stock of your friendships can be like cleaning out your
closet. Sometimes there are people in there who used to fit us
but no longer do. Or who used to make us feel good but no
longer do. This ­doesn’t mean we have to cry over it, though we
can if we need to, but we can also be happy for the times when
they did fit us, the times when they did make us feel good, and
then remove them, and pass them along to another person
who they might fit perfectly.
Similarly, maybe some friends just need new buttons or
a new hem before you can wear them proudly again. And for
those people, that could mean setting more boundaries, or
openly communicating more of how you feel, or changing the
depth at which you interact with them like we talked about in
the friendship levels chapter. If you ­really love someone, it’s
worth it to see if you can make it work in a new way. And then,
if the worst-­case scenario comes to fruition and the friendship
ends, after you grieve it, try to let it go and remember there
is now even more room in your heart for people who fit you
better.
And if you’re in the in-­between territory of not being sure
if your friendship should end, or if you should work through
it, it can be helpful to remember that sometimes the best thing
you can do for yourself, and for the other person, is to walk
away from the friendship.Walking away can actually be an act
of compassion, to release you both from the cycle of wishing
you could get your friendship back to how it used to be, or
what you’d hoped it would become. In the best cases, you can
part ways resolute in the knowledge that you both really tried.
And I can promise you that both people really caring, really

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 trying, is still a very successful friendship, even if it ends.

How Marriage and Kids Can

Impact Your Friendship
“We made a deal ages ago. Men, babies, it ­doesn’t
matter . . . ​We’re soulmates.”
—­Samantha Jones, Sex and the City

Years ago, I watched Bridesmaids and ­didn’t fully under-

stand why Annie was so upset that her best friend was
getting married. I didn’t understand how a friend getting
married or having kids when you’re not there yet or have no
desire to ever be there could feel like you were losing some-
one. They’re still alive and they’re still your friend, so unless
they moved radically far away, I c­ ouldn’t see how coupling,
marrying, or becoming a parent would change things. Now
I do.
I don’t know if you can fully understand just how much
someone coupling, or marrying, or becoming a parent can
shift your friendship until it happens to you. When I saw
Bridesmaids, I had some friends who were married and had
kids. Neither life phase was on my immediate radar, and I
never felt like that difference affected our friendships. How
life changes affect your friendship often boils down to a few
factors: How close were you? How long had you been friends
before the life change occurred? Did you want to experience

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what they were experiencing but ­couldn’t yet? And how did
your friendship change after?
If someone gets married after you’ve been friends for fif-
teen years, it probably won’t affect you as much as if they were
someone who you became best friends with a year ago and,
now they’re suddenly swept away by someone else. And if it
does, it could have something to do with the extent to which
you’re feeling left out, in favor of Who The Hell Is Brad H.?
And Why The Hell Does He Now Have Priority Access To
My Friend? Or it might not affect you at all if that person
is able to maintain their friendships and their new romantic
relationships or kids, etc., without missing a beat.
I have a friend who quickly became my best friend, to the
point where we both did that sweet, awkward declaration of
“Are we best friends? I feel like we are!” and the other said, “OH
my goodness, I was thinking that too!” and you each do a little
dance in your respective hearts. We had that kind of friend-
ship I’ve always wanted most, one where we text pretty much
all day every day and send each other every post that makes
us think of the other, which is usually every single thing we
see that we love. That borderline codependent, but definitely
not, seriously no more codependency type of friendship is
what I’d always wanted. And I had it! It was here! And then
she met someone and they quickly fell in love and she was
with him constantly, and I had to navigate the very real con-
flict of “I am happy for you, and I also feel like you’re gone”
crossroads that can happen when one of you is going through
a huge life change and the other is not. She is truly wonder-
ful and would gladly reassure me that she was not actually
gone and just caught up in this bubble, which I completely

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understood. And when I d ­ idn’t understand it, I called my ther-

apist. And then called my therapist again.
Even if you are over the moon for your friends when they
go through these positive life changes, it is still completely
normal if these shifts bring up abandonment issues, even if
you know you’re not actually being abandoned at all. Because
for now, and maybe for now only, the friendship dynamic as
you previously knew it has changed. For how long? You likely
won’t know. And I realized that this was yet another case
of where checking in with yourself to see what you need to
soothe yourself can help.
The frustrating but ultimately true fact is that after col-
lege, our life phases will directly impact our friendships in
some way, large or small. And I don’t directly correlate this
with age, though I know many people like to. I know plenty
of people in their forties who are still socially in their twen-
ties, or people in their twenties who have old married couple
energy, and both are great, so I would attribute it more to a life
phase than an age range. People move, they get married, they
break up, they go through normal or abnormal things, fall in
love, fall in love but oops it w­ asn’t love, find themselves, lose
themselves. And friendship is about being able to love and
support each other through all these phases and learning how
to mold your friendship in fresh, new ways, as that clay may
change and shift colors and textures into something new but
not necessarily something bad. Just different.
Still, having someone go through a life change like get-
ting married, finding a partner, or having kids, when you’re
personally wishing to experience that and haven’t yet, can feel
painful, even if you love your friend so much. As long as you’re

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kind to this person, despite your own conflicted feelings about

it, I don’t believe this is a selfish way to feel. I believe it is hon-
est. It’s completely normal and reasonable to feel jealous when
you see someone experiencing something you’ve longed for
and aren’t sure when it will come for you, if it will come at all.
So let’s sit with that for a second. Not because there’s any-
thing wrong with being the single friend, but because soci-
ety has such a complicated and strange view of “unmarried
friends” with all “married friends” that people can, without
even knowing, act out these subconscious (and frankly boring
and deeply flawed and often sexist) ideals, even if they know
better. Those are usually the following:

The Perils of Being the One Single Friend

1. Perpetual third-­wheel hangouts. Nothing better than

hanging out with two people who are either totally into
each other, or having a terrible fight in front of you while
you sit there eating snacks and thinking, I guess this is how
it’s gonna be forever. Just me and snacks.
2. Getting pity invitations to things. “We should invite
Deb, don’t you think? I mean she’s all alone on [insert
holiday or day of the week].” Then you show up and they
act like they’re relieved you came to their party because it
means you d ­ idn’t walk in front of a bus.
3. Having to hear tons of platitudes like “You’ll find
someone” every time you talk to your friends. Yes! I’m
sure I will find someone! Will they be great for me? I can’t
say. Will I meet them when I’m eighty-­eight and have one
more year of life left? Who knows? These phrases are not
helping! Be specific with your fortune telling!

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4. Getting asked “Whatever happened to so and so?” like

they were The One and you blew it. “Well, I put their face
on a milk carton, but thus far, no response.” What do you
think happened? They messed up or I messed up, but either
way, something got messed up, and we’re not together and
it’s for the best. Please never bring them up again.
5. Watching your super happy friends in couples being
super happy. This is wonderful on some level, it ­really is.
And on another level, it can create anxiety if you tend to
wonder if you’ll ever have that.
6. Dinner parties where you’re sitting in between two
couples because you’re the only single person there.
And if you’re not the only single person there, you may be
seated next to someone you would never date in a million
years who thinks you’re going to marry them because
you’re the only two single people there. How romantic!
What a story to tell our children! “Well, your dad was my
only option, and then we had you!”
7. Your partnered friends may not respect your time. Your
friends only call you when their partners are out of town,
because they actually have time to hang out now, but what
they do not understand is you already had alone-time
plans involving television. Or they assume you’re never
busy because you’re not married or don’t have children,
which even if you’re not busy, that’s a choice you were
allowed to make: to not be busy in those specific ways.
8. Your friends think all your traumatizing dating stories
are hilarious. “Oh goodness! You always have the
wackiest stories! Ah, to be single again. What a thrill
ride.” You mean a sea of men holding fish while yelling
and no hope for tomorrow? Pass.

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9. Friends who tell you “Never get married” when they’re

fighting with their partner and therefore you lose all
hope in love. Don’t tell me that! Tell me it’s challenging,
tell me it can be hard but it’s worth it. But I don’t want to
hear “Marriage is horrible. Love is a lie” from a couple I
view as a model for a relationship I’d like to have. Are you
trying to kill me?

And then there’s the nonstop unsolicited advice you’re likely to

get from people about how you’re supposed to join their ranks,
as happily or unhappily, as long as you’re coupled. Coupled
friends who give their single friends advice as though there’s
one way to “cure” their single friends have got to find another
way to communicate. Being the single friend is not a flaw you
need to fix, it’s not a problem you need to solve. And so all the
platitudes of “It happens when you’re not looking” or “Maybe
you should just try not dating for a while” are unhelpful. No
one would ever tell you this about jobs. “Oh, you can’t find
your dream job? Maybe you should just be unemployed for a
few years even though you’ll lose everything and your life will
be terrible!” It’s interesting that we put so much pressure on
one another to find the perfect partner, because everyone else
around you already has, but it’s interesting that we don’t tend
to do this with friendships. Our friends who have tight knit
friend groups don’t give the same cliche advice to people who
reached a certain age and still don’t have their dream friends,
we just sort of stop talking about it all together. Or they try to
loop you into their friend group even though it might not be
the right fit for you. But that pressure for everyone to be on
the same path, to reach the same milestones at certain dead-
lines, can still be very present.

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It’s so easy to think we’re all supposed to be on parallel

tracks. That if all our friends are making these life changes at
once, then they’re doing everything correctly and we’re fail-
ing. That they’re ahead and we’re behind. But the thing is,
maybe all your friends who got married before you did will
get divorced years later when you’re getting married. Maybe
the friends who had kids before you did wish they’d waited
until later. Or maybe your friends who did things before you
did them made perfect choices, and that still d ­ oesn’t mean
your choices were any less valuable.
I know there are probably people reading this who are also
struggling with being the only married friends, or the only
coupled friends, or the only parent friends, who feel alienated
from their friends who haven’t yet hit those milestones. I’ve
heard from many friends that they’ve felt very lonely when
they had a new baby, and their other friends just kind of van-
ished because they assumed they were too busy being new
parents to want to have any friends around. Which was wild
to me to hear about, because that’s absolutely what I’d always
assumed about my friends who had kids. I didn’t reach out as
much because I didn’t want to be the friend who doesn’t have
kids asking you out on a Friday night and seeming insensitive
because of course you can’t go or you’re too tired or you need
to take care of and/or want to be with your new child.
There’s so much room for misunderstandings on both
sides during these life changes, especially if you’ve never gone
through that experience before. Even if you’ve already had
kids or have gotten married before, you still may not know
how your friend feels about it, or what they need from their
friends now. They might still want to be invited out, even if
they probably can’t come, so you can compromise by asking

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them to come out anyway, and both just agree you’ll never be
upset with them for saying no. This can be a great way to hold
all parts of yourself and to keep reaching out, while also mak-
ing allowances and seeing the totality of the person.
It’s vital to keep the lines of communication open, with
each of you prompting the other if necessary. If one of you is
silently thinking, Well I don’t want to bother them because they’re
probably busy with their new [insert life change here], and the
other person is thinking, I haven’t heard from them in a while,
I guess they don’t like me as much anymore, what good does that
do either of you?
In these cases, I think what keeps us silent, and what has
kept me silent, is the fear that I am doing something wrong,
expecting something unfair, or that these are just my “strange”
issues, and the other person will judge me or dismiss my feel-
ings. But when I feel like that, I have to remember that this
person isn’t a stranger, they are a longtime friend of mine who
knows me. They probably know my issues aren’t strange, but
are instead very human emotions.
The fear here is usually that if you communicate those
feelings they won’t be able to give you what you need, or you
won’t see eye to eye, and there will be no way forward. But
even if it can’t be resolved, I’ve found it’s always been far more
worth it to attempt to resolve it, to address it head on, than
to just silently wish things were different, when it might be
possible that they absolutely can be. And if they can’t, at least
you don’t have to spend any more precious energy wondering.
If your people are truly your life-long people, they will
grow with you, they will change with you, and they will honor
your feelings about how they’ve changed, just as much as you’ll
honor their feelings about how you’ve changed. The truth is that

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long-­term friendships will be both a grieving and discovering

process throughout the years. If you can find a way to do that
together, as a team, as two people who are so excited to meet
every fresh self that each of you develops and blooms into, then
it’s absolutely worth doing.
And then you get to be 80-years-old together, reflecting on
all of it, in cozy wicker chairs, looking back at all the people
you were throughout your lives together, grateful you both got to
meet every single one.

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 The Frustrating Realization
of the Part You Played in
Choosing the Wrong Friends
“If you keep on killin’ you could get me to settle, and as
soon as I settle I bet I’ll be able to move on.”
—Fiona Apple, “The Way Things Are”

At some point in my interactions with new-­age hippies who

may or may not be toxic (the good ones are so good, but the
bad ones are a nightmare in yoga pants), a nightmare-­in-­
yoga-­pants person told me that we choose everything that
happens to us before we are born, as part of our reincarna-
tion journey.
If you just said, “Wait, what?” so did I when I heard it.
There’s this idea that we chose all our traumas, heartache, and
struggles, because this was our best path to enlightenment in
this life. This is an idea I find to be deeply flawed in so many
ways, since it’s far too easy to hear this and slide into a pit
called “I deserved [insert painful traumas]” that is never, ever
true. I think it’s more accurate and compassionate to real-
ize that every person we’ve ever chosen was tolerated by us
based on our past experienced. So, if you’ve attracted a non-
stop stream of unhealthy friends, it’s not because you wanted
unhealthy friends or you deserved toxic friendships, but that

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 The Frustrating Realization of the Part You Played in Choosing the Wrong Friends

you chose them based on what you knew, what felt comfort-
able, and your ability to tolerate or ignore red flags.
Instead of taking this as an opportunity to berate yourself
and tell yourself you ­shouldn’t be upset because you “chose”
this, I view it as an opportunity to ­really sit with the reasons
for why you chose people who were wrong for you, or treated
you poorly, the reasons you can and can’t control.
I used to spend so much of my time trying to fix the
things I ­couldn’t control. It was only when I put my energy
into addressing why I was choosing, and allowing, the wrong
people to stay in my life that I started to realize what these
often empty and perhaps poorly translated platitudes might
actually be getting at.
In all my failed friendships, I had absolutely been choos-
ing people who could never r­eally give me what I wanted or
needed. I ­didn’t know it at the time, but I had played a role
in choosing the wrong people, tolerating incompatible behav-
iors that were hurting me and diminishing my own needs and
never openly confronting people to make room for change.
And yes, they could’ve also initiated those conversations and
should’ve been kinder, but I would often engage in friendships
with people who were even less likely to be aware of these
dynamics than I was at that time, let alone address them with
open communication.
So, I had to ask myself what it was about my beliefs about
friendship that had previously caused me to pursue, or toler-
ate, people in these categories:

• Withholding
• Inconsistent care and affection

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 You Will Find Your People

• Instances of emotional or even physical abuse

• Betrayal
• Inability to express emotions
• Inability to express remorse or take responsibility for their
own actions
• Incapable of lasting change in their harmful behaviors

Similarly, I encourage you to take a moment to think back on

your past friendships that ended or d ­ idn’t work, or even the
ones you have now that you feel aren’t working as well as you’d
like, and look at what they might have in common. Feel free
to use the space below to write it out.

What patterns do you tend to see in the people you’re choos-

ing to be close to? Is there anything you notice that keeps
coming up for you?

_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________

It’s likely that while writing these you’ve already had a flash-
bulb moment of “Oh my goodness, that sounds a lot like my
parent, or grandparent, or sibling,” or someone from your

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 The Frustrating Realization of the Part You Played in Choosing the Wrong Friends

childhood who was close to you. And if you haven’t, you’re

probably having one as you read that last sentence, and that’s
no coincidence, but it’s pretty mind-­blowing how much it
always comes back to that.
We often talk about how much our parents and caregiv-
ers and childhood experiences impact who we choose as a
romantic partner, but we rarely if ever talk about how much
we’re choosing our friends in the exact same ways. So if you
had very few, or zero, examples of healthy caregiving and rela-
tionships as a kid, then surprise! You have the frustrating task
of realizing you might still be on autopilot when it comes to
choosing, or tolerating, friends who are totally wrong for you.
Rather than remaining stuck in self-­blame or shame, take
pride in your ability to be honest with yourself about what
led you here, that you are here, and feel the relief that you are
finally seeing these patterns, and that you no longer want to
repeat them. Take that information, honor it, and now use it to
clear the way to getting what you ­really want and have always
deserved.

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 What to Do When You Finally
Find Your People: How to Be a
Good Friend
“Everyone needs a friend they can call and wake up
in the middle of the night. Leslie’s usually already
up . . . and often she’s usually on her way over.”
—Ann Perkins, Parks and Recreation

You’d think that by the time you find your people, you’ll know
it and it will just feel great instantly and forever. But in my
experience, if you’ve struggled to find better friends for a long
time, you might not even notice when your friendships finally
do get better. Not because it won’t be noticeable, but because
it’s easy to get used to being the person who struggles with
your friendships, to get used to being disappointed, used to
being wrong about someone.
Recently I heard a friend talk about a care package her
friend sent her, and my first thought was, Aww, I wish I had
friends who would do that for me. A week later, a care package
from an internet friend came in the mail and it was perfect.
And I thought, Oh wait, I have friends now kind of ? I am some-
one who has that!?! It felt scary and confusing, as though if I
had it now, it could also, would also, be taken away from me
just as it had been before.
Because how can you know if it’s different this time? How
can you tell? We spend so much time looking for red flags of

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 What to Do When You Finally Find Your People

what isn’t working, what to watch out for, and how to break old
patterns, but it’s just as important to know how to tell when
things are working. How do you know when your friendships
are finally healthier, when a friendship has real promise, and
when you should start trusting a friendship more because it’s
making you really happy? So here are the green flags from my
personal experience:

Green Flags in Friendships

1. You’re able to relax around them. This is something I’ve

consistently seen when I’m around my favorite people.
And while it might take a while, especially if you have
anxiety, the best people are the ones who make you feel
safe to be all versions of yourself.
2. You feel safe to make mistakes. You feel safe to be
misunderstood, safe to be given the benefit of the doubt
if you say something unclear, and safe to not worry if you
are doing everything “right” or else they’ll be mad at you.
3. You’re able to have disagreements and communicate
your feelings openly, knowing you’re both on the same
team. Did I only recently realize this was possible? Yes!
Did I have it in 99 percent of my past relationships? No!
But this is a huge green flag, and if you have this with
someone, this is such a great sign. Especially if you, like
me, spent many past friendships scared to ever bring
anything up. It’s so freeing to be around someone who
allows you to do that in a way where you know everyone
will be respectful and respected.
4. You don’t worry about where you stand with them. Or if
you do, they’re always quick to put you at ease and happy

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 You Will Find Your People

to address those feelings of uncertainty or insecurity

that may be coming up because of your past experiences.
Which then makes it easier for you to feel that anxiety
less and less until you one day never feel it at all.

Sounds peaceful, right? That’s the goal.

It’s been surreal to occasionally realize that so many of
the green flags are present in my friendships, and that I actu-
ally have friends, at least on some level. (See? I c­ ouldn’t even
say it definitely, that’s how much anxiety I still have about it.)
Friends who truly care about me and will probably stay my
friends, as long as I’ll let them and as long as we both main-
tain this living, breathing friendship we’re building together. It
has been an interesting experience for me to embrace that my
story has changed and can change, and to potentially mourn
the loss of my identity as someone who struggled so much
with that previously, because the pain of not having it for so
long and fearing I will lose it again can be so great. So if you
have people in your life who you love but you struggle with
those things as well, I want you to know that makes total sense
to me and that you’re not alone in feeling it.
The transition from “Where are my friends?” to “My
friends are finally here, now what do I do?” is very real and
can feel absolutely overwhelming. Part of it is addressing and
mourning the loss of the part of you that became so comfort-
able with toxic relationships as you move into the strangely
scary reality of friendships that work, friendships that are
collaborative, and that friendships that are still going to take
some work—­but at least it’s not nearly as much work as your
toxic friendships required. And it might not look the way you
always thought it would.

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 What to Do When You Finally Find Your People

My current friendships, in some ways, are absolutely what

I dreamed of when I was an overly romantic teenager. And
in other ways, they are very different from that ideal, as they
perhaps should be. I think most of our friendships won’t look
exactly as we’d previously thought they would, especially if our
only source of how they “should” look was fictional pop culture
friendships. But just because they might look different d ­ oesn’t
change the fact that everything we want in our friendships is
still possible, even if it builds slowly, but beautifully, bit by bit
throughout our lives.
Once you have friendships that feel better to you, feel
promising, and seem to be off to a good start, you’re now at a
wonderful place where you should be mindful of three things:
assessing if your friend is being a good friend to you, com-
municating openly to give them a chance to do better if they
need to do better, and just as importantly, being a good friend
to them.
For people who struggle with codependency and giving
too much, the last part will be fairly innate, but since many
people don’t struggle with that (wow, what a gift, sounds great),
this part is so important. It’s so easy to become obsessed with
how other people are being hurtful that sometimes we don’t
think about how we could be better to our friends as well.
I have great compassion for this, because I know it usually
comes from the fear that you don’t want to get invested, or get
too close to someone who you’re not sure ­really cares about
you, but that’s why I keep stressing the importance of keeping
both sides of this two-­way street as lovely as possible.
A lot of people aren’t sure what it r­eally means to be a
good friend, and a lot of it is very personal to each person.
Which is why it’s a great idea to go back to the section on

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 You Will Find Your People

attachment styles and ­really make sure you know those, so you
can know what being a good friend looks like to each one of
your friends. Ask them what their love language is! Do those
things for them! Being a Good Friend is truly subjective, so
showering someone with macarons every day at noon might
be one person’s heaven, but another person’s midday carb-­filled
annoyance. (Note: if they are the latter, I will gladly take their
macarons and, if I cannot finish them, keep them in my fridge
to eat in about an hour. They will not go to waste either way.)
So here are some things I have learned about how to be
a great friend. You don’t have to do them all, and you don’t
have to do them all regularly, and of course they all depend on
how you feel comfortable showing love. But it’s nice to have
a reminder of ways we can make someone feel seen and loved
and that we’re thinking about them:

1. If you planned on grabbing coffee, pick up coffee for

both of you on the way to meet them. I love this move
so much, and we often only see it in rom-­coms with cute
dates, but this is such a lovely thing to do for your friends.
Plus, you probably know what they were going to order
anyway, and this way you’re both sufficiently caffeinated
for what will obviously be an incredibly charming day.
2. Bring snacks to their place whenever you come over.
This is such a simple gesture, but it is also super sweet,
especially if you both love food as much as I do. Take a
moment and imagine your best friend doing this for
you. You’d look at them like they were the Oprah of
hangouts. And you get a snack, and youuuuu get a snack, and
youuuuuuuuuuu get a snack!
3. Send them a playlist of songs that remind you of them

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when they’re having a hard day. It’ll be much more

difficult to continue beating themselves up for forgetting
to do something important for their boss when they’re
listening to cheerful songs from their friend who was
thoughtful enough to do this for them.
4. Invite them over when you clean out your closet so they
can claim any of their favorite pieces before you donate
them. It’s like free shopping plus a fashion show plus
donations at the end. That’s a good hang out. (side note:
as long as you don’t TAKE THEM ALL BACK!)
5. Sneakily tell the waiter when it’s their birthday and
order their favorite dessert. So not only do they get
cake, they also get an embarrassing rendition of “Happy
Birthday” sung to them by a bunch of hot waiters who
may not enjoy this part of their job.
6. Write them real letters on paper with a pen. They’re not
as fleeting as texts, and you can use pretty stationary. I
firmly believe that everyone loves getting paper mail and
that it will never go out of style.
7. If they have you over for dinner, do the dishes without
saying a word. They might not even notice at the time, but
later when they go to wash the dishes and see you already
did them, they’ll be like, Aww. This is why we’re friends.
8. Shoot them a text just to let them know you’re thinking
of them. Especially if they’ve been stressed about
something, but also just because. Who d ­oesn’t love
hearing that someone is thinking of them? That’s among
my favorite texts to get.
9. If you see something that you think they’d like, get it for
them. Even if it’s not their birthday or Christmas or some
other gift-­giving occasion. Life is short, and you somehow

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 You Will Find Your People

found each other. You can never celebrate that too much.
Unless they tell you that you are, in which case stop I guess.

If you have the sweet gestures department covered and you

want to deepen what you already have, there are so many ways
to do that. And even if you don’t want to do anything at all,
just knowing someone for years and going through all the ups
and downs and changes will deepen what you have. That’s the
beauty of longevity and intimacy. But if you want active things
you can do to bring you closer, here are some ideas.

1. Take a ­really nice vacation together because you deserve

it. It ­doesn’t have to be a five-­star trip to Spain, but just
taking your friends and going somewhere where there
are mints on the pillows and a swim‑up bar with dreamy
lifeguards will make you feel like you’re that group of cool
best friends in the tv shows you love, which is a feeling we
all deserve to have.
2. Get to know the messiest parts of each other. It’s easy
to spend a lot of your time with your friends talking about
superficial things and going over the details of your day and
how work was, but it’s just as important to take some time
to get to know the things that made them who they are.
It can be so wonderful to have a whole night devoted to
figuring out your friends’ saddest memories, their happiest
memories, their scariest memories. You do those things
with people you date, so why w ­ ouldn’t you do them with
the friend you’ll probably know for the rest of your life?
3. Get into a massive fight and work together to move past
it. Say all the stuff you’ve been dying to say as directly
as possible. When I say to say it directly, I mean don’t

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water it down in a way you’re not actually communicating

what’s wrong, which can make it hard for the other person
to help you address it. You don’t want to just dump a long
list of complaints on someone out of nowhere in a hurtful
way, but you do want to be honest about painful things
in a way that lets the other person know what you need
and how you feel. Because once you purge all of that from
your relationship, you’ll not only be rid of all that hidden
baggage between you, it’ll show you that your friendship
is strong as hell and can handle even the worst of fights,
which is actually super comforting. And you already know
how to do that because there’s a chapter on it.

One of the biggest things I’ve had to remind myself is that

friendship ­doesn’t have to look a certain way for it to “count.”
And if you’ve had a hard time feeling safe around people, it
might take you years to r­eally feel like you do have friends,
and something horrible won’t come along to wash it all away.
I’ve also realized that every time I’ve thought something
was missing from a friendship, or something was off, this was
a reminder to address my own boundaries again. This comes
up for me often, and if it comes up for you often, you can go
back to those sections of the book again and again. If you feel
confused about your own feelings, or when and how to address
problems in your friendship, this book is meant to be used
over and over again to support you. Even if things have been
great with you and your friend for years, you still might once
again find things are off-­kilter, or realize you no longer make
each other happy, and you need to ask yourself why, and then
decide what to do. That’s a great time to go back through those
sections, bookmark them feverishly, and remind yourself there

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are tools and these feelings of discomfort are not permanent.

There is always a solution, even when it feels like there isn’t.
As much as I sometimes want to just bail on a friendship
that has been fraying, I remind myself to use these moments
as powerful opportunities to be mindful of my own needs and
boundaries and how openly and effectively I can communicate
them. Even if it doesn’t repair this particular friendship, this is
an invaluable skill that will still carry you into the next friend-
ship, and the next after that.
And if you’re not able to get there in your friendships yet,
that is OK. If you made some great progress, but still have
wounds to heal around this topic, that is OK. If you’re still
waiting to find your people or aren’t sure if you’ve found them
or not, that is OK. And if you’ve realized you have found your
people and now know how to have a better relationship with
them, or you’re still waiting to meet your people but now you
are fully prepared to meet them and excited to experience
friendships you’ve always wanted, I am so glad.
Above all, it’s OK if you still want the fictional friend-
ships you saw growing up, while also remembering that
those friendships, while comforting, are not always realistic,
and comparing our real-­life friendships to them can quickly
become an exercise in masochism.
So it becomes a balancing act between not settling and
realizing that real-­life friendships are textured and can change
shape and quite possibly become as close to what you’d always
hoped for through communication and boundaries. Many of us
love TV “hangout shows,” because watching people have great
friendships on TV is so much less complicated than navigating
our friendships in real life. But I know it is worth it for those
moments when your friendship not only feels as good as the

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friendships you see on TV, it feels even better because it’s real.
I’ve started to realize that maybe I did find my people,
and maybe the people I’ve been waiting for and romanticized
meeting are already around me, even if it’s only one or two
people. Maybe so much about finding your people is realizing
when you’ve found them. Because if you have someone who’s
willing to work on your friendship with you, even if it d ­ oesn’t
look like you’d hoped, but it’s very close, then maybe you can
get it to that place, together. As much as it might seem like
finding your people will be a watershed moment when you
step into a new reality and dust yourself off, thinking, That’s
settled, onto the next wonderful phase, it’s possible there will be
a surprising grieving process involved.
As I’ve realized more and more that I have found my peo-
ple, at least some of them, I’ve had to work to grieve and release
the part of me that ­didn’t think it could happen, is still hurting
from all the friendships that were harmful or that I lost, and is
still scared my new friendships will go away or become harm-
ful. It’s weirdly hard to let go of that identity, even though it
was uncomfortable. It’s so easy to turn something you d ­ idn’t
want (to not have your people) into an identity, as a way to
cope with the pain. “I don’t have the friends I want, but it’s
OK, I’m a cool loner, it’s actually a badge of coolness.” And
then you find your people, and you’re scared, or they hurt you,
and you’re back to what you knew: solitude, disappointment,
loneliness, and the want for something better.
Often when you finally see some consistency, healing, and
improvement, it’s likely you’ll still cycle through those aban-
donment fears, and maybe even a total dismissal of these peo-
ple as real friends, because some part of you got so used to the
feeling of waiting for them. We feel safest with what we know.

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You know how to deal with wanting more from people, with
filling your time fantasizing about what your perfect friends
will be like, so then when you get closer to having them, or
even finally have them, that can feel very unsafe. You’re new to
feeling this positively about your friendships, so how will you
handle it? And what if you feel like you’ve found your people
to some extent, but you still hope for even more, from them
or someone else?
Finding your people is all of these things. It’s grief, and
hope, and fear, and work, and adjustment and communica-
tion. It’s easy and it’s hard, and it’s confronting past wounds
and making room in your heart and your brain to accept that
things could be better now, are better now. Even if it’s not
exactly perfect yet. Even if the perfect friendship, as you’d
grown up defining it, ­doesn’t exist, or has changed its mean-
ing entirely. Some part of finding your people is ­really about
enjoying whatever path you’re on and reveling in any and all
moments of joy and connection that will lead you to the purely
good friendships you’re meant to have. Maybe it’s the friends
you have now, maybe it’s not. But there’s good to be found in
them all, and there’s lessons in every one of them that will take
you to where you want to go.
I have faith you will arrive there, at the most perfect moment.
And I want you to have that unshakeable faith in yourself,
that you will find the friendships you dream of, and you will
get everything you want in them, even the biggest friendship
dreams you never told anyone about.
Some people have always fantasized about their wedding
day. They dream of what their outfit will be like, what the
music will be, the kinds of flowers there, seeing all the people
they love there to celebrate them. Why is this the only thing

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we fantasize when it comes to our relationships? Because I can

tell you right now, when I think about the best case scenario of
how it will be when I find my people, I can see it all so clearly.
What would it look like to you, to finally have the friend-
ships you dreamed of as a child, or even dream of now? Maybe
it’s having the ultimate copilot on a really incredible road
trip overseas for two months. Or maybe it’s finally having an
emergency contact you can write down without even thinking
about it, someone you know who will always be there if you
need them. For me, I always think of having a surprise party.
I have thrown surprise parties for other people, and
attended many, but I have never had one (yet, still hopeful.) To
me, a surprise party is the dreamiest final form of friendship
and I want it so very much. I’ve wanted one since I was a little
kid, and with every year since, I want one even more.
I want a surprise fucking birthday party thrown by my
friends that I didn’t have to do anything to organize. I want
everyone I love to be there, and I want fucking gifts. I want
to open those gifts and not think for a second about what I
have to do to pay them back, or if I deserve them, or about all
of the birthdays I spent without any gifts at all. I want to walk
through that door and step into a world where I am known,
where I am seen, where I am celebrated. I want lights and I
want a great playlist I didn’t have to make myself but is just
as good as if I had. I want all my favorite foods to be there,
and then another secret plate of food that’s in the back just for
me after the party. I want the air to feel good. I want to know
this party is for me, for all the things I’ve been and all that I’m
becoming. And I want to enjoy it, not as my past self who didn’t
get this or my future self looking back at it, but as the person I
am in this moment, feeling as loved as I should’ve always been.

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I want to know, with every bone in my body, that it was a

gift for my friends to be able to do this for me, that it was not
done out of obligation or for someone else’s selfish reasons, or
to serve someone’s ego. I am not a shelter cat, no one ever is.
I know that people are, no matter what has chipped away at
them, deserving of love and boundless adoration. And it took
so long to get here? That’s OK. Some people don’t meet their
soulmates until they’re sixty, but they deserved that love every
day prior, just the same.
I want that birthday party and the next. I want a party for
all the years no one threw me one, and for all the pitiful cele-
brations I threw for myself that would bum you out if you saw
them in a movie. I want what everyone else seemingly gets.
And if that means letting go of the disappointing friendships
that I keep trying to solve like a Rubik’s Cube and taking that
terrifying leap into a new world where I, once again, have no
one, then count me in.
I’ll start over a thousand times if that’s what it takes, like
it’s the first day at a new school, but the people here are better
and closer to what I want and, hell, might even be exactly what
I want. I’m willing to be scared. I’m willing to find out.
If the friends I’m meant to have are out there, just on the
other side of this all-encompassing fear, waiting for me to meet
them, then I want to do it. Is it fair to have to keep starting
over? Should we have to cross this bridge for the ninetieth time
to find what some people have their whole lives? Maybe not.
Probably not. But if it’s between being angry that it isn’t fair—
that it should’ve happened sooner and easier—and just getting
the hell over to the other side? I’d rather be over there.
I want my fucking birthday party. And I want you to have
yours too.

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