"Everybody Needs Their Own Las Divas"

(2–3 minute read)

Hey Reader,

This week, I met a friend group I immediately wanted to join.

Unfortunately, I don’t think they’re accepting applications.

👥 THE FRIEND: Las Divas

A family member recently threw a going-away party for the nanny who has worked with his family for 18 years. She’s moving back to Colombia, and all her friends came to celebrate her.

They had met over nearly two decades of playgrounds, school pickups and playdates. They worked for different families, but they spent their days in the same places, helping raise kids alongside one another.

Somewhere along the way, they gave themselves a name:

Las Divas.

This is an incredible name for a group of friends. It makes a gathering at the playground sound like the Latin Grammys.

But Las Divas wasn’t just a cute name. It had become their identity. These women had spent 18 years helping raise other people’s children while building a family of their own.

At the party, they all kept saying the same thing:

“This isn’t goodbye.”

And they meant it.

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🛠️ THE FIX: Give Your Crew a Name

Aaron and I talk about this in our Audible Original, The Buddy System: If you want a friendship ritual to last, ritualize the ritual.

Give the annual trip a title. Name the monthly dinner. Create a trophy for the golf weekend. Make the fantasy league sound like a shadowy organization with the power to manipulate global currency markets.

A name gives the group an identity. It creates a shared history and makes membership feel meaningful.

A name turns a recurring hang into an institution.

Think about a group you want to keep in your life.

It could be your college friends, your running crew, your poker game, former coworkers who still get lunch or the neighbors who always end up drinking in someone’s driveway.

Now give yourselves a name.

It doesn’t need to be clever. Slightly embarrassing is probably better. The best names usually come from an inside joke, a disastrous vacation or a geographical reference that makes no sense to anyone outside the group.

Then use it. Rename the group chat. Put the next gathering on the calendar under that name. Start referring to the group seriously enough that everyone eventually stops resisting.

The people are what make the friendship meaningful. But the name gives everyone something to protect.

You can cancel a dinner.

It’s much harder to quit Las Divas.

🔥 THE RECO: Make Merch Nobody Asked For

Once your group has a name, you may feel compelled to put it on something.

I support this completely.

We have hats for the DILFs of Larchmont, the neighborhood dad crew I founded with a buddy. Did society need these hats? No. Did they immediately make us feel like a legitimate organization? Absolutely. Are we now working on really fun top secret Hollywood projects...maybe, ask me again in a few months ;)

So go make four hats. Print terrible T-shirts. Create a mug, a fake crest or an unnecessarily official logo. The cheaper and more homemade it looks, the better.

People throw away generic merchandise. They keep the ridiculous hat that only seven other people in the world understand.

The name says: We are a group.

The terrible hat says: And unfortunately, we’re taking this seriously.

Las Divas spent 18 years building something that could survive one of them moving thousands of miles away.

You may not be there yet.

But you can start with a name.

Your friend,
Matt

P.S. Reply and tell me the name of your friend group. The more embarrassing and impossible to explain, the better.

Until next Monday,

Matt Ritter​
​The Friendship Guy

“Friendship is the original life hack.”

🎧 Listen to The Buddy System on Audible​

⏩ Forward this to a member of your version of "Las Divas". They can join the Friendship Challenge here.