Friendship Blog

How can you sustain your friendships in a pandemic? The first step is recognizing their importance

Looking to build new friendships? These tips can help you meet people, start a conversation, and cultivate healthy connections that will improve your life and well-being.

Some people maintain friends from childhood, and this special bond affords many benefits. After all, you knew each other through all the growing pains and through those formative years. You both experienced classes, play, and sports activities together. This special friend therefore knows your integral character.

We all want those really easy, meaningful, comfortable, and deep friendships with no drama, right? And while that sounds fabulous, the truth is that most of us are silently suffering from some form of loneliness as we just keep waiting for those relationships to fall in our laps, the way little girls look for little fairies hovering over flowers. I want meaningful friendships for you. So very much, I do! But we have to come to the table with healthy expectations and thoughtful beliefs, rather than with hopes, myths, and limiting beliefs that sabotage us from creating substantial relationships.

This is true in life, and in science, where relationship research tends to focus on couples and families. When Emily Langan, an associate communication professor at Wheaton College, goes to conferences for the International Association of Relationship Researchers, she says, “friendship is the smallest cluster there. Sometimes it’s a panel, if that.”