Friends as family: How the company we keep can change our lives

When author and comedian Lane Moore found herself in hospital, she had a problem. The intake forms asked for an emergency contact – and Moore didn’t have a name to put down. Estranged from her family and happily single, Moore
didn’t have a spouse to turn to when life got hard, but so much of the world – including that seemingly ever-present “emergency contact” request encountered at hospitals, therapy, insurance forms, even some gym membership forms – assumed that she did. Realising that she was missing a major support system in her life, Moore knew that she would need to turn to friendship for intimacy, support and care – but in adulthood, no one teaches you how to make friends, even if you really, really need them.

And so Moore wrote the book she needed, a funny, poignant essay collection, How to Be Alone, which addresses Moore’s struggles with feelings of loneliness and inadequacy as she seeks out the deep friendships she craves – all while worrying that it may be too late: “as if there were a deadline for intimacy and friends and family, and I just kept missing it.”

“We don’t teach people how to do this, to create friendships, to nurture them, to choose better, and then when and how to end them if they’re not working,” writes Moore. “And because of that, so many of us are just fumbling around, hoping one day we’ll stumble into the friendships of our dreams because we want them, because we deserve them.”

Moore’s book was released in 2018 and charts her attempts to forge the friendships she craves – but the more complex questions she asks, of why society prioritises romantic relationships over friendships and whether better frameworks for relationships and community are possible, have become even more prescient in the past few years. Sociologists have
declared that Western adults are in a “friendship recession”, with adults reporting a significant drop in both the quantity of friends they have, and the depth of those friendships. The first-ever EU-wide survey on loneliness conducted in 2023 showed that Irish people reported the highest levels of loneliness in Europe, with more than 20% of respondents reporting feeling lonely, compared to an EU average of 13%.

Researchers have pointed to many different, co-existing reasons that people are finding it hard to forge meaningful friendships in our modern culture. One study showed that it takes about 80 hours of time together to move from an acquaintance-level relationship to a genuine friendship – but this was much easier when the majority of people worked 9-5 in an office with the same people and attended church or other events within their community. This lifestyle is in stark contrast to modern Irish life, where many people are freelance, work from home, don’t attend church, and are pushed out of the communities where their friends and families live due to the housing crisis. Opportunities to make friends are shrinking, and this doesn’t just impact people’s sense of loneliness – it can have negative effects on their romantic relationships, too.

When individuals don’t have fulfilling friendships, it can put pressure on their romantic partner to be their everything: lover, friend, family, co-parent, therapist. Rising divorce rates would suggest that this strategy isn’t working. In Mating in Captivity, relationship expert Esther Perel writes that “today, we turn to one person to provide what an entire village once did: a sense of grounding, meaning, and continuity. At the same time, we expect our committed relationships to be romantic as well as emotionally and sexually fulfilling. Is it any wonder that so many relationships crumble under the weight of it all?”

While there is a growing understanding of the possibility of alternate romantic and sexual frameworks such as polyamory, this focus can ironically feel somewhat conservative and limited, claiming that sexual connections should still be centred in a person’s life. But along with Moore, two other writers are exploring how to prioritise and centre friendship in one’s life, and how to show up for our friends with the same levels of care and commitment we offer our romantic partners.

Writer Rhaina Cohen believes that centring your life around friendship rather than romance is not just possible, but potentially life-changing. In her book, The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center, Cohen
invites us into the world of people who have chosen friends as their family; “friends who have become a ‘we’, despite having no scripts, no ceremonies, and precious few models to guide them toward long-term platonic commitment”.

This idea is not entirely new. Queer people have long had friends as chosen family that challenged society’s focus on straight couples and the nuclear family. But Cohen shows how more straight women and couples are realising the radical possibilities of expanding their definition of family to include friends. Cohen’s fervour for the topic was ignited by her own life-altering bond with a woman named M, who “stretched my understanding of the role a friendship could play in my life” and “made the world pulse with more possibilities for intimacy and support than before, and I wanted others to feel those possibilities for themselves”. Cohen and her husband even bought property right beside M, who has a husband and
son. Having four adults available not only benefits M’s son, who now has meaningful relationships with
several adults, but it means there’s more support available to alleviate the pressures of parenting – an empowering possibility in a society where parents have been left isolated and are now expected to do the work of a village alone.

Centring friendship doesn’t just benefit couples – it provides vital support for people who can be forgotten. Single people, child-free people and widowed people are often disadvantaged in a society that prioritises romantic relationships and the traditional nuclear family. But life can be different, exciting and full of possibility with friendship at its core.

Cohen gives the example of Barb and Inez, who have been best friends for 50 years. After Inez divorced her “useless” husband and started working to provide for her two children, she met Barb, who couldn’t have children of her own. Inez and
Barb became platonic life partners, vacationing and co-parenting together. Their relationship is not recognised as existing on the same level as a marriage – legal rights, custody or financial benefits that spouses would share are not available to Barb and Inez, showing how much society focuses on sexual and romantic love. But despite society not acknowledging the
depth of their bond, Barb and Inez have no doubt that it has been their friendship, not romance or marriage, that has been the most meaningful and life-affirming relationship of their lives.

But how can we strengthen the friendships we have and create a real, unshakeable sense of community? Mia Birdsong’s book, How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community is a blueprint to being both brave and vulnerable enough to love our friends harder and better, expanding our relationships and by doing so, expanding our understanding
of ourselves. As Birdsong writes, “We exist, not as wholly singular, autonomous beings, nor completely merged, but in a fluctuating space in between. This idea was expressed beautifully in Desmond Tutu’s explanation of the South African
concept of Ubuntu. He said, ‘It is to say, my humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours. We belong in a bundle of life. It is not I think therefore I am. It says rather: I am human because I belong, I participate, and I share.’”

Birdsong uses case studies, often from Black and queer communities, to illustrate how community can exist and grow outside of church and the nuclear family. One thing that is vital to Birdsong’s image of community is the dismantling of
“toxic individualism”. She highlights how we have been encouraged to prioritise our own comfort and convenience to the detriment of our friendships. As people become flaky about making plans; don’t show up for celebrations and birthdays under blanket claims of needing some “me time”; avoid conflict or difficult conversations by simply ghosting on
friends; or fail to turn up for friends who are struggling, our sense of community fails. As Birdsong writes,
we need to invest in friendships – by inconveniencing ourselves, by accepting others’ imperfections, and by simply showing up.

“We need a vision of community that is relevant and future-facing. A vision that brings us closer to one another, allows us to be vulnerable and imperfect, to grieve and stumble, to be held accountable and loved deeply. We need models of success and leadership that fundamentally value love, care, and generosity of resources and spirit.” Birdsong gives helpful, practical advice, such as investing in real self-care so that you have energy for the requirements; showing up for friends’ milestones, and also by asking for help when needed. We can often shy away from being vulnerable in friendship, fearing that we’ll be a burden, but doing so can add depth to our relationships.

Birdsong quotes a friend of hers, saying, “It’s okay to ask for help. In fact, by doing so, you are taking part in the divine circle of giving and receiving. While we often focus on what the request means for the asker, we should remember that giving can be transformative for the helper. By not asking for help when you need it, you are blocking that flow.”

As these three writers prove, creating deep, fulfilling friendships can require as much work, effort, and vulnerability as romantic ones – but the impact that those friendships could have on our lives is immeasurable. Transforming our cultural scripts so that friendship is truly valued isn’t easy, but nothing important ever is. Maybe the question we need to ask ourselves is, would we rather have the life-shrinking isolation of disconnection, or the life-affirming inconvenience of connection? I know what I’m choosing, every time.

This article originally appeared in the Winter 2024 issue of IMAGE.

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