Raina Cohen

you're having a low mood, being open about the parts of your life that are not polished.

It invites other people to then share those things with you.

I've seen this play out with people in my own life, that sharing something that is vulnerable becomes an invitation, and then that kind of is a flywheel that can bring you closer.

And then the last suggestion I'll give is a more radical one, but maybe something to consider.

On the one hand, I really believe in the idea that we should take friendship more seriously.

We shouldn't run away at the first difficulty.

We should try to have harder conversations and be intentional.

But on the other hand, I think that there are ways that we make friendship harder than it needs to be.

because we have oriented so many of us our lives around a different set of priorities which might be as you know the the idea that like you want to have everything to yourself you want to have a home that you have control over or you make a decision about where to live so that it's as close to work as possible or um you know any any number of other kinds of uh priorities

And then we accept that we're just going to have some social deprivation as part of it.

I don't think that's actually or I'd say except, but I'm not sure that people are even conscious of it, that there's this huge loss that we incur when we

to build our lives for some of these other values.

And I have found that in my experience and in other people that I've interviewed, if they situate their lives so that they, it's built around friends physically close by their, to their friends, it makes it so much easier to maintain those friendships.

And that is especially true for people who are really time strapped and like bound to the home.

Like if they have young children or if they have to

caretake for a relative in their life, that having somebody next door or down the block or just very close by can make or break the ability to get close to other people.

So I know that that can take some work and we can talk about that, but that's the more radical suggestion that I think you're doing work on the front end that makes friendship easier in the longer run.

Yeah, I mean, there are kind of a few steps there.

So one is like the search process.

How do you find people who you might potentially want to become friends with?