A good place to begin: What are the actual expectations of a friendship?
I think about this one a lot in the context of everything going on. COVID began the whole deal — I wrote about COVID and friendships and COVID and mental health in the past — but then there’s social unrest, racial discord, and hot takes galore swimming around. Americans are more stationary than ever before, per research, but I’d argue every friend group has one or two people (or more) who moved for work, spousal work, kids, family, or something else. In the aggregate we are moving less, but every “crew” has a few people who move away, no doubt.
This has been a topic of interest for me for years — especially what happens to people around 25-to-40, when you see more career jumps and kids and mortgages and aging parents. Heck, I designed a podcast of low-level popularity around that idea.
So, what are the logical expectations of friendship?
Here are the high-level words people tend to attach to this question
- Respect
- Trust
- Shared experiences
- Some in-person context
- Integrity
