“You can have friends who would do anything for you and still have nobody to do anything with.”
(Three-minute read)
Reader,
Adam Grant is one of the most respected thinkers in the country. He's a brilliant organizational psychologist, a bestselling author, and someone whose work I genuinely admire.
But his new book about friendship, Vibe, makes an argument that I think gets one of the most important things about friendship completely wrong.
Grant argues that depth matters more than consistency. That you can go years, even decades, without speaking to an old friend, pick up the phone, and feel like no time has passed.
Of course you can. I have friends like that. Most of us do.
But here's my question: What does that have to do with solving America's loneliness problem?
It's wonderful that someone you went to college with 20 years ago still loves you.
But what about the other 7,299 days?
What about the woman who has nobody to go on a walk with tomorrow morning? Or the dad who hasn't had a casual beer with a friend in six months? Or the person who spends another Saturday night at home because getting together with friends now requires three weeks of scheduling?
That's the loneliness I'm worried about.
And I think Grant's academic approach, while incredibly valuable in many respects, misses something fundamental about what people are actually experiencing.
We're not suffering because we lack people who would take our calls after 20 years. We're suffering because we lack people who are part of our everyday lives.
Think back to your teenage years.
Remember how easy friendship used to be?
You didn't need to organize a dinner weeks in advance. You just showed up somewhere and your friends were there.
You walked around the neighborhood. You played basketball. You sat on someone's couch watching TV. You spent hours doing absolutely nothing.
And somehow, those hours became some of the best memories of your life.
Why was it so easy?
Because we had structures.
School. Sports. Dorm rooms. Neighborhoods. Lunch tables. People we saw every day without making a single plan.
Then we grew up, those structures disappeared, and we started treating friendship like a special occasion.
We traded spontaneous hangs for calendar invitations. We moved away from our friends, got busy with careers and families, and convinced ourselves that a few deep relationships scattered around the country were enough.
For a lot of us, they aren't.
Here's what I've learned building a community of dads in Los Angeles: The effortless friendships we had when we were young can absolutely be replicated in adulthood.
But we have to rebuild the structures that made them possible.
Regular gatherings. Standing walks. Neighborhood groups. Pickup games. The same people showing up in the same places often enough that friendship becomes part of the routine.
You don't have to have an incredibly deep conversation every time you see someone. Sometimes you just need to hang out.
In fact, all those ordinary, seemingly meaningless hours together are often how friendships become deep in the first place.
I respect the research. I really do. But I worry that when we approach friendship purely as something to analyze, we overlook the emotional reality of living without it.
People don't just want to know they have friends.
They want to spend time with them.
And that's the problem we should be trying to solve.
👋 THE FRIEND
I have tremendous respect for Adam Grant, and I'm glad someone with his platform is bringing attention to friendship.
But I think we're asking the wrong questions about loneliness, and I'd love to have a real conversation about it.
If anyone knows Adam, please send this his way. I'd love to have him on Man of the Year to discuss what we're getting right, what we're missing, and what it's actually going to take to rebuild friendship in adulthood.
Adam, the invitation is open!
🔧🔧 THE FIX
Read Fragile Neighborhoods by Seth D. Kaplan.
If you're looking for a book that gets closer to the heart of what we're missing, this is the one I'd recommend.
Kaplan looks at how neighborhoods, community institutions, and the relationships between the people who live near one another shape our sense of belonging.
It's about rebuilding the social fabric that makes connection possible.
Because we can't solve loneliness simply by encouraging people to value their existing friendships more. (which by the way, I agree is important)
We need to create environments where friendships can actually happen, and where people see one another often enough for those relationships to grow.
Start with your own neighborhood. That's where so much of this work can begin.
📺 THE RECO
War — HBO
I used to be a lawyer, so naturally I'm drawn to legal shows. And this one is right up my alley.
War is about just how ugly a high-stakes divorce can get when you combine enormous wealth, powerful lawyers, massive egos, and people who are willing to do pretty much anything to win.
It's messy. It's fun. It's sexy. There's plenty of cloak-and-dagger maneuvering, and everyone seems to have a secret.
It stars Dominic West and Sienna Miller, plus, like seemingly every British television show, the same four actors you've seen in every other British television show.
And we have some BRAND-NEW NEPO BABIES!
Cillian Murphy's son, Aran Murphy, and Tilda Swinton's daughter, Honor Swinton Byrne, both landed plum roles. Apparently the British acting gene pool is even smaller than we thought.
Anyway, I'm hooked.
If this made you think of someone, forward it to them. And if a friend forwarded this to you, subscribe to The Friendship Habit here.
See you next Monday,
Matt Ritter
The Friendship Guy
“Friendship is the original life hack.”
🎧 Listen to The Buddy System on Audible
