The First ‘Real Friend’ You Make After College Is Special
“I have a big-girl job and a big-girl friend, and we’re talking about big, important things like breakups. What a life I live.”
When Your Best Friend Becomes an ‘Aunt’ to Your Kids
“Kristi’s been a constant in my life. I couldn’t even imagine not having her involved in the girls’ lives.”
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When Your Closest Friends Are From Elementary School
“When I see people from Peretz school, it’s as if nothing has changed. The comfort, the ease, the knowing of each other is the same.”
Overcoming American Masculinity to Build a Deep Male Friendship
“I was by myself in a country that felt huge and overwhelming. I felt tiny, and Abhi was my anchor.”
Work-Life Balance Has to Include Friendship
“We’re able to be our fully human, vulnerable, type-A selves with a group of people who get us in a way that your partner or your kids may not.”
Hiking Is an Ideal Structure for Friendship
“Without this hike … it would have been one of those college friendships where you get together and talk about the old days.”
Friendship and Stonework Grow More Beautiful With Time
“If the house was burning down, she would run in and carry me out. She shows up, boy does she show up.”
What It’s Like to Carry On a Tradition With a Friend Who Can’t Remember It
“He could tell if it rang true inside of him or not.”
I’ve Been Secret Friends With My Son’s Ex for 30 Years
“I’ve realized that you have to look for friendship in places you would never expect it.”
The Friend COVID-19 Took From Me
“Baby and I would talk about growing old together.”
A Fantasy-Football League Unafraid to Commit to the Bit
“We have a flag that we fly. We have a portable flagpole.”
What a Simple Haiku Can Do for a Friendship
“I get a glimmer as to what she’s feeling right then, and it also gives me a way to share how I’m feeling with her.”
When a White Republican Teen Invited a Black Pastor to Preach in His Hometown
“It is unlikely to think that someone who was trained by Strom Thurmond would end up being like brothers with me, my father being a civil-rights activist.”
What Teacher Friends Talk About When Students Aren’t Listening
“I don’t know how I’m going to get through the day. I’m not in the place that I need to be, to be positive for the kids. Give me a boost; I need a laugh.”
What It’s Like to Meet a Friend You Know Only From Video Games
“When he walked in and sat next to me, it was really weird. Like, Can you talk in my ear very closely so I can make sure it’s you?”
When Your Job Turns You Into a Brand, You Need a Friend to Be Human With
“Something that totally changes your life like that, even if it’s overwhelmingly good, it still is overwhelming.”
As the Military Transformed, Their Friendship Grew
“As a queer woman in the military, seeing both Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and the combat-exclusion policy repealed [during my career] was momentous.”
When Your Best Friend Gives Birth to Your Babies—All 4 of Them
“My kids know they’re a product of me and their dad, but that Debbie was our oven … They love her even more knowing the sacrifice she made.”
The Empty Nesters Who Run a Bookstore—And Live Together
“A lot of people told me, ‘Don’t do it.’ I said, ‘But I love books and reading.’”
20 Years of Friendship With the Woman Across the Hall
“I used to joke and say, ‘If I died in my apartment, I knew that Barbara was the person who would find me.’”
How the Hosts of ‘Call Your Girlfriend’ Saved Their Friendship
“With friendship, there is this expectation that it’s supposed to be easy, which … is not an honest assessment of what any long-term, intimate bond looks like.”
The Pandemic Forced These Teens to Sail Home Across the Atlantic
“If you cross an ocean, you’re constantly together, and you just become a family.”
These Two Generations of Best Friends Live Like Family
“When they were babies, we raised them together. We were always at each other’s houses, and the girls were always together.”
What a Liberal and a Conservative Learned From Their Friendship
“I think it’s important that you remember who your friend is, that they are not just a set of political policies.”
The High Drama of a Homemade Survivor Game
“It was an all-day game. I was thinking about it almost an obsessive amount.”
The Endangered Art of Letter-Writing
“There’s nothing nicer than opening the mailbox and seeing something friendly, something that’s not a bill.”
What It’s Like to Live Next Door to Your Best Friend Right Now
“We don’t have this superficial friendship where I’m only best friends with you when things are funny and happy … I’m also here for all the transitions and all the rough patches.”
If You and Your Friends Are Bored, PowerPoint Parties May Be the Answer
“It’s a distraction from all that’s going on … This is a way to come together, in a different way—teaching instead of just talking.”
An Anthem for Everyone Who’s Ever Googled Their Name
“At first, I was indiscriminately adding other Paul O’Sullivans on Facebook. It was like a joke. Then I realized, ‘Hey, wait a minute, we’re all musicians.’”
How Two Young Hippie Friends Grew Up to Live Very Different Lives
“I’ll complain to her about how I couldn’t find a parking spot at the Nordstrom sale, while she’s complaining to me about how her goats have hoof rot.”
What Are RAs’ Social Lives Like?
“I was always in a fishbowl. I felt like I was not just Alex, but Alex the RA.”
How Two Candidates Became Friends, and Ran a Joint Campaign
“Maybe there should’ve been some animosity, but we’re both naturally not drawn to unnecessary conflict.”
A Harebrained Scheme to Sell Christmas Trees on the Streets of New York
“People were in the right place at the right time. That’s its own small Christmas miracle, I guess.”
The Case for Buying a House With Friends
“Looking around our culture, I think a lot of people are starting to experience the limits of individualism.”
These Friends’ Collaborative Playlist Has Strict, Elaborate Rules
“Technology nowadays allows people to have music that’s personalized to them … but it also allows people to collaborate in ways that we weren’t able to before.”
Navigating the ‘Old Boys’ Club’ of Science, With a Friend
“It allows me to do my science better when I feel like I have a community.”
How Friendship Changes at the End of Life
“People become frightened at the end of life. Sometimes I see them moving away from friends as they get sicker.”
On Being Happy for and Jealous of a Friend at the Same Time
“It can be hard to be really close to someone who’s trying to do the same thing that you do.”
A Teen-Run Book Charity and the Friendship It Built
“To know that there were people in my school doing things that I had dreamed about doing was really crazy to me.”
Whom Would You Trust If You Were Trapped in the Airport During a Coup?
“We were strong for each other. I don’t think I could have been as clever or as grounded had it been just me by myself.”
Befriending the Queen of Chess
“These idols I’ve had, they were just like real human beings, not some distant star that wouldn’t even talk to you.”
The Unique Friendship Between Astronauts
“Spaceflight makes you try to be a little bit more understanding, a little bit nicer, and try to see other points of view. Because all of humanity is right down there and you’re looking at it.”
They Met in an Elevator; Now They Travel the World Together
“Our motto is: ‘Follow soccer, see the world.’”
An Existential Reading List for Middle-Aged Men
“To be known completely and to be loved is a very profound experience. Adult males do not often have that kind of an experience.”
The Friends Who All Cosplay the Same Character
“You see a lot of cliques in the cosplay community ... But what’s been nice about our friendship is that there’s never any competition.”
The Ukulele Queens of Deerfield, Illinois
“I think our society wants older women to sit down, shut up, and go knit somewhere in a corner. And that’s not what we’re doing.”
Coming of Age on Cape Cod in the Summer of ’71
“The house was a magnet for all kinds of people to come and be with us, because it was such a special place.”
What It’s Like to Join the Freemasons
“The only competition in Masonry is to see who can be the better person.”
The Friends Who Listen to BTS Together Stay Together
“Fans are often prone to saying, ‘This band saved my life.’ BTS made us realize we have to save ourselves.”
How to Win Friends With Influencer People
“What we do—nobody really understands it. I have a lot of friends who don’t work in this space, and they think I’m just having two-hour lunches all day.”
Why Friendship Is Like Improv
“If I’m onstage with people I’ve been performing with for 20-some years … I never get left hanging.”
A Friendship Forged Through the Gay-Rights Movement
“I have a strong sense of public engagement as something that is our moral duty, our social duty, but also is really fun.”
When You Give a Friend a Kidney
“From the moment I thought Scott might need a kidney, it was just a given to me that I was giving him mine.”
The Friends Who Have Been Playing the Same Game of Dungeons & Dragons for 30 Years
“It’s an excuse for us to constantly keep in touch and not drift away.”
The Friends Whose Kids All Have the Same Rare Disease
“It’s a backwards kind of friendship. You get in with the most vulnerable parts of your heart first.”
The Boring Intimacy of the All-Day Group Chat
“Any little decision, I always have to consult them. There’s never a moment where I’m not considering, What would Jess and Sha tell me to do?”
Two Boy Scouts Met in an Internment Camp, and Grew Up to Work in Congress
“Out of that short experience came this wonderful, beautiful relationship. I just love Alan.”
Onboarding a New Friend
“Everyone in the office was like, ‘Are you the new Courtney? She was amazing.’ And I was like, ‘Oh my God, I have such big shoes to fill.’”
The Moms Who Were Extremely Online in 1993
“In the early days, it was so hard to describe us. People were like, ‘What are you talking about?’”
Stumbling Into Adulthood, Alongside a Friend
“She got me to look at things in the future instead of just the present. Kelli had planned so much for herself that I think it started to rub off.”