Where Have All the Good Friends Gone?

Bossed Up

Feel like you’re the only one keeping your friendships going? Recently, I received a letter from a listener about an extremely relatable issue: how to build or rebuild stronger friendships when it seems to be increasingly difficult to do so.

You’ve probably experienced some shifts in friend frequency and intensity throughout your adult years. Making plans and finding the right people to share platonic relationships with gets harder as our priorities shift and our lives get more hectic. In this episode, I explore some of the ways I’ve dealt with this increasingly common and publicized problem myself.

Spark some hope with these actionable approaches to fixing your friendships:

• Identify exactly what’s missing from your relationships;
• Normalize and ritualize casual hosting;
• Keep resentment from curbing your call for companions.

Related Links:

• I’m Starting to Think You Guys Don’t Really Want a “Village” on Slate - https://slate.com/life/2024/11/parenting-advice-friends-loneliness-village.html
• Stuff Mom Never Told You, Can We Be Friends? - https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-stuff-mom-never-told-you-21123631/episode/can-we-be-friends-30231271/
• Americans Need to Party More on The Atlantic - https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2025/01/throw-more-parties-loneliness/681203/
• Bossed Up Episode 479: America’s Parents Are Not Okay - https://www.bossedup.org/podcast/episode479
• TAKE ACTION with Bossed Up - https://www.bossedup.org/takeaction
• Bossed Up Courage Community - https://www.facebook.com/groups/927776673968737/
• Bossed Up LinkedIn Group - https://www.linkedin.com/groups/7071888/