Find your ‘about’

Anna Goldfarb, author of Modern Friendship: How To Nurture Our Most Valued Connections and the Substack newsletter Friendship Explained, believes we should all be more reflective about why someone would actually want to be friends with us. All friendships, including rookie connections, “need a clear and compelling ‘about’”, she says. In other words: “What are you going to talk about? What are you going to do together? And what’s in it for the other person?”

Goldfarb points to a 2020 study published in the journal Personal Relationships, which identified the top five reasons people make friends. The research shows we mostly pursue friendships because we think someone has “desirable traits” (such as shared interests, passions and hobbies); we want people to socialise with; we need emotional and practical support; we want to enhance our love lives (either by dating a friend or having a wingperson); and/or to benefit our careers (which sounds cynical, but could just mean you enjoy work more when you have pals in the same industry).

Keep these five factors in mind when you’re thinking about your “about” with a prospective new friend, suggests Goldfarb. Will your friendship be about professional camaraderie? Debriefs from the dating trenches? A shared passion for rock climbing/reggaeton/romance novels? “You can lean into any of those things to help understand why someone would want to invest their time in you,” says Goldfarb.

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