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We Should Get Together: The Secret to Cultivating Better Friendships
Have you recently moved to a new city and are struggling to make friends?
Do you find yourself constantly making plans with friends that fall through?
Are you more likely to see your friends’ social media posts than their faces?
You aren’t alone! Millions of adults struggle with an uncomfortable and persistent ache: platonic longing, which is the unfulfilled wish for authentic, resilient, close friendships. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Making and maintaining friendships during adulthood can be hard—or, with a bit of intention and creativity, joyful.
Author Kat Vellos, experience designer and founder of Better Than Small Talk, shares the best tools to overcome the four most common challenges to adult friendships: constant relocation, full schedules, the demands of partnership and family, and our culture’s declining capacity for compassion and intimacy in the age of social media. Combining expert research and personal stories pulled from hundreds of interviews with a diverse group of adults, We Should Get Together is the modern handbook for making and maintaining stronger friendships.
With this book you will learn to:
• Have deeper and more meaningful conversations
• Conquer awkwardness in social situations
• Become less dependent on your phone
• Identify and prioritize quality connections
• Balance friendship and everyday obligations
• Create closer, more durable friendships
Full of charming illustrations, relatable stories, and practical tips, We Should Get Together is the perfect gift for anyone who wants to have dedicated, life-enriching friends, and who wants to be that kind of friend, too.
Do you find yourself constantly making plans with friends that fall through?
Are you more likely to see your friends’ social media posts than their faces?
You aren’t alone! Millions of adults struggle with an uncomfortable and persistent ache: platonic longing, which is the unfulfilled wish for authentic, resilient, close friendships. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Making and maintaining friendships during adulthood can be hard—or, with a bit of intention and creativity, joyful.
Author Kat Vellos, experience designer and founder of Better Than Small Talk, shares the best tools to overcome the four most common challenges to adult friendships: constant relocation, full schedules, the demands of partnership and family, and our culture’s declining capacity for compassion and intimacy in the age of social media. Combining expert research and personal stories pulled from hundreds of interviews with a diverse group of adults, We Should Get Together is the modern handbook for making and maintaining stronger friendships.
With this book you will learn to:
• Have deeper and more meaningful conversations
• Conquer awkwardness in social situations
• Become less dependent on your phone
• Identify and prioritize quality connections
• Balance friendship and everyday obligations
• Create closer, more durable friendships
Full of charming illustrations, relatable stories, and practical tips, We Should Get Together is the perfect gift for anyone who wants to have dedicated, life-enriching friends, and who wants to be that kind of friend, too.
310 pages, Hardcover
First published January 4, 2020
287 people are currently reading
3731 people want to read
About the author
Kat Vellos
3 books61 followersKat Vellos is a trusted expert on the power of cultivating meaningful connections, the loneliness epidemic, community-building, and healthy work environments.
She's the author of "We Should Get Together: The Secret to Cultivating Better Friendships" which was called "marvelous" by BookLife, a subsidiary of Publishers Weekly, and which Kirkus Reviews compared to the work of Norman Vincent Peale and Cicero. Since its release in January 2020, it's been helping adults around the world heal from disconnection and loneliness. Following on the heels of her debut book's success, she recently released "Connected from Afar: A Guide for Staying Close When You're Far Away" to support readers who are trying to maintain and bolster their friendships without the benefit of face-to-face interaction.
Kat has twenty years' experience creating communities where people find belonging and authentic connection. A veteran facilitator, she founded Better than Small Talk and Bay Area Black Designers which was profiled by Forbes. Both groups have created community and connection for hundreds of people across the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond.
She's also a seasoned researcher and UX designer. She's worked for Slack, Pandora, and multiple Silicon Valley startups. She's graced the stage as a speaker for Design for America, UX Week, Social Good Tech Week, the Transforming Loneliness Summit, AIGA SF, and many more.
Kat has now turned her UX expertise towards combating the loneliness epidemic, by helping millions of people experience greater wellness and fulfillment through thriving platonic relationships.
She's the author of "We Should Get Together: The Secret to Cultivating Better Friendships" which was called "marvelous" by BookLife, a subsidiary of Publishers Weekly, and which Kirkus Reviews compared to the work of Norman Vincent Peale and Cicero. Since its release in January 2020, it's been helping adults around the world heal from disconnection and loneliness. Following on the heels of her debut book's success, she recently released "Connected from Afar: A Guide for Staying Close When You're Far Away" to support readers who are trying to maintain and bolster their friendships without the benefit of face-to-face interaction.
Kat has twenty years' experience creating communities where people find belonging and authentic connection. A veteran facilitator, she founded Better than Small Talk and Bay Area Black Designers which was profiled by Forbes. Both groups have created community and connection for hundreds of people across the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond.
She's also a seasoned researcher and UX designer. She's worked for Slack, Pandora, and multiple Silicon Valley startups. She's graced the stage as a speaker for Design for America, UX Week, Social Good Tech Week, the Transforming Loneliness Summit, AIGA SF, and many more.
Kat has now turned her UX expertise towards combating the loneliness epidemic, by helping millions of people experience greater wellness and fulfillment through thriving platonic relationships.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 154 reviews
January 24, 2020
Kat. Vellos. Remember that name because you’re going to need to refer to her work again and again.
As someone who spends her days thinking about relationships and community (and who prides herself on spending time on close friendships), I was surprised just how much I learned from this book and how open-hearted and -minded it made me feel.
It also inspired me in several concrete ways: I set text message alerts to check in with friends, started inviting people over more casually, and I’m actively working on getting closer with someone I met a few months ago, whom I otherwise probably would have repeatedly said “we should get together!” ten times over before actually making it happen.
Yes, I learned much from this book. And then the hundreds of questions included at the end? A gorgeous cherry on top.
This book will stay on my desk this whole year and I’ll reference it constantly, I already know it.
As someone who spends her days thinking about relationships and community (and who prides herself on spending time on close friendships), I was surprised just how much I learned from this book and how open-hearted and -minded it made me feel.
It also inspired me in several concrete ways: I set text message alerts to check in with friends, started inviting people over more casually, and I’m actively working on getting closer with someone I met a few months ago, whom I otherwise probably would have repeatedly said “we should get together!” ten times over before actually making it happen.
Yes, I learned much from this book. And then the hundreds of questions included at the end? A gorgeous cherry on top.
This book will stay on my desk this whole year and I’ll reference it constantly, I already know it.
May 22, 2022
Sadly not for me. It’s a fun book, no doubt, and has lots of great suggestions on how to make and maintain friendships. But I’m a structural analysis man. I need me that macroeconomic perspective. I need that neoliberalism call-out. Anything short of that is just feeling empty to me at the moment.
In other words: why does this book even exist? Why does someone need to publish a book on how to make friends and connect with people and spend time with the people you care about? Clearly, it’s because, by default, society is not providing us with that. We have few civic organizations or community institutions where people can meet each other and hang out. Capitalism has eaten the world, so the workplace is for many people their main source of interpersonal connection. The decline of religion means a hollowing out of spiritual connection and community. We spend an inordinate amount of our time on a profoundly addictive internet, which feels empty compared to genuine quality time with loved ones, and this was only exacerbated by a global pandemic. We have few third spaces where people of all backgrounds and classes can mingle, which further deepens political and economic and ideological divides.
I don’t even know if these things are accurate. They’re my very crude attempt at structural explanations for the loneliness epidemic. But to me, these are the explanations for why a book like We Should Get Together even needs to be written in the first place, and so it feels strange to me that Kat Vellos would not really acknowledge them at all.
That said, there are a lot of genuinely really excellent suggestions in here. My main takeaway is that friendship comes from spending lots and lots of time with someone. When I think about my best friends, they’re people I’ve spent an enormous amount of time with: thousands of thousands of hours in elementary and high school, or living together in university. No wonder it’s hard to make friends in adulthood outside the workplace. Under what circumstances are you ever going to be able to spend that many hours with someone new? The lesson, for me, is that if you want to become friends with someone, you have to put yourselves in a situation where you can be around each other all the time. Join the same organizations. Have standing plans. Sleep on each other’s couches for a while. Social norms be damned!!
Another takeaway I have is that social media is just straight-up bad for friendships because it makes us feel as though we’re learning about and connecting with people, when in reality we’re just passively consuming their hyper-curated updates. What matters is spending real time with real people. I shouldn’t fool myself into thinking I know anything about anyone because I follow them on social media.
In summary: some good suggestions and views on friendship, but ultimately, I want books that zoom out. I want my solutions to be contextualized within a larger narrative. Nothing exists in a vacuum. If friendship is hard and people are lonely in the 21st century, there are probably socio-historical-political-economic-cultural reasons why. That reason, to me, is more interesting than any solutions.
A thought as I type this: am I being a big ol’ dummy by just reading the wrong books? Is it unfair to write book reviews that basically say “this is not the book I would have written on this topic”? I’m not actually reviewing the contents of the book, which I liked. This book meets its goals. I just wish it had different goals. That feels unfair to me. Who am I to criticize an author’s goals? If I want a book on these macroeconomic forces so much, I should just go read one of those.
In other words: why does this book even exist? Why does someone need to publish a book on how to make friends and connect with people and spend time with the people you care about? Clearly, it’s because, by default, society is not providing us with that. We have few civic organizations or community institutions where people can meet each other and hang out. Capitalism has eaten the world, so the workplace is for many people their main source of interpersonal connection. The decline of religion means a hollowing out of spiritual connection and community. We spend an inordinate amount of our time on a profoundly addictive internet, which feels empty compared to genuine quality time with loved ones, and this was only exacerbated by a global pandemic. We have few third spaces where people of all backgrounds and classes can mingle, which further deepens political and economic and ideological divides.
I don’t even know if these things are accurate. They’re my very crude attempt at structural explanations for the loneliness epidemic. But to me, these are the explanations for why a book like We Should Get Together even needs to be written in the first place, and so it feels strange to me that Kat Vellos would not really acknowledge them at all.
That said, there are a lot of genuinely really excellent suggestions in here. My main takeaway is that friendship comes from spending lots and lots of time with someone. When I think about my best friends, they’re people I’ve spent an enormous amount of time with: thousands of thousands of hours in elementary and high school, or living together in university. No wonder it’s hard to make friends in adulthood outside the workplace. Under what circumstances are you ever going to be able to spend that many hours with someone new? The lesson, for me, is that if you want to become friends with someone, you have to put yourselves in a situation where you can be around each other all the time. Join the same organizations. Have standing plans. Sleep on each other’s couches for a while. Social norms be damned!!
Another takeaway I have is that social media is just straight-up bad for friendships because it makes us feel as though we’re learning about and connecting with people, when in reality we’re just passively consuming their hyper-curated updates. What matters is spending real time with real people. I shouldn’t fool myself into thinking I know anything about anyone because I follow them on social media.
In summary: some good suggestions and views on friendship, but ultimately, I want books that zoom out. I want my solutions to be contextualized within a larger narrative. Nothing exists in a vacuum. If friendship is hard and people are lonely in the 21st century, there are probably socio-historical-political-economic-cultural reasons why. That reason, to me, is more interesting than any solutions.
A thought as I type this: am I being a big ol’ dummy by just reading the wrong books? Is it unfair to write book reviews that basically say “this is not the book I would have written on this topic”? I’m not actually reviewing the contents of the book, which I liked. This book meets its goals. I just wish it had different goals. That feels unfair to me. Who am I to criticize an author’s goals? If I want a book on these macroeconomic forces so much, I should just go read one of those.
December 13, 2019
Kat Vellos has the warmest voice, offering gentle advice and stories about friendship struggles and successes with humor. I came away from every chapter with ideas for how to strengthen my friend life and (unlike some "inpiring" books that can leave me feeling overwhelmed) a sense of gumption to do them.
I found myself texting and calling friends while I was reading the book twice as often as I usually do, and feeling appreciation for my friends in a big and present way. She makes it easy to get started on any level, with accessible tips and fun ideas, along with adorable cartoons.
The book closes with a series of open-ended questions for more meaningful conversation, and I have been using them non-stop since I finished the book - with my partner, an old friend, a friend of a friend who I just met, and even with a kind stranger I met while donating blood ♥
This book is wonderful!
I found myself texting and calling friends while I was reading the book twice as often as I usually do, and feeling appreciation for my friends in a big and present way. She makes it easy to get started on any level, with accessible tips and fun ideas, along with adorable cartoons.
The book closes with a series of open-ended questions for more meaningful conversation, and I have been using them non-stop since I finished the book - with my partner, an old friend, a friend of a friend who I just met, and even with a kind stranger I met while donating blood ♥
This book is wonderful!
December 14, 2019
I love this book! Halfway thru reading it, I was so inspired I contacted 7 old friends and 2 new connections. Kat Vellos’ writing has a levity and joy that made it super easy to read.
A mixture of empirical research, stories, wonderful illustrations, and tips, it provides a wealth of inspiration and practical advice for:
-making and maintaining friendships
-making friends in a new city
-making friends in closer proximity
-evaluating friendship compatibility
-making and keeping friends as new parents,
-how to grow acquaintances into closer friends
-how to make good friends into potential best friends and more.
The book demystify's and breaks down friendship into components I had not before considered. It showed me places where some of my friendships need to grow and helped me understand why certain friendships of mine were flourishing. I’m completely inspired to approach my friendships in new ways.
A mixture of empirical research, stories, wonderful illustrations, and tips, it provides a wealth of inspiration and practical advice for:
-making and maintaining friendships
-making friends in a new city
-making friends in closer proximity
-evaluating friendship compatibility
-making and keeping friends as new parents,
-how to grow acquaintances into closer friends
-how to make good friends into potential best friends and more.
The book demystify's and breaks down friendship into components I had not before considered. It showed me places where some of my friendships need to grow and helped me understand why certain friendships of mine were flourishing. I’m completely inspired to approach my friendships in new ways.
March 7, 2020
This book about friendship talks about the difficulties of making deep, lasting friendships as adults and provides strategies to make them happen even when everyone is super busy and more comfortable behind a screen than in-person. While some of the tips make a lot of sense, too many of them see very forced to me. You’re going to be my friend, damn it, and we’ll wrestle this thing to the ground to make it happen. We’ll get together exactly 12 times in 3 months and discuss exactly these things and schedule a timed heart-to-heart (I’m not joking). I know we’re all desperate for connection, but there is something to be said for developing it organically. AND, more importantly, the issue for a lot of people is finding another person who is equally as interested in a friendship...if you’ve found someone who is willing to commit to 3 months of friendship bonding activities to deepen your connection, isn’t the battle already mostly won? HOW do you find these people? Where are they? And what if they already all have their friend quota met? These seem to me to be much harder questions to answer but much more valuable, and the book doesn’t touch on them at all.
Now, do we need to be brave and put ourselves out there so we can meet new people and try to find ways to connect? Absolutely. Is it worth the reminder that we need to BE the kind of friend we want to have? YES. Too many people, in my experience, have forgotten that friendship (like any relationship) MUST be a two-way street. And pointing out that friendships need to be nurtured and maintained in order to thrive is a valuable lesson. We’re all busy with lives and jobs and families, but if we want friendships to work, we have to work on them.
The little whimsical drawings and images throughout the book were cute and broke up the text so it didn’t drag too much. I liked the author’s voice and style, but I would have liked some more anecdotes from people who have found lasting friendships as adults and how they made that happen. Not just cold strategies, but some success stories.
Overall, I’m glad I read this book and it had a few good tips. But I was left wanting more because I just don’t think you can FORCE friendships into happening. I’ve tried, others I know have tried, and it never works. It always ends in frustration, fizzling or let-down. The real ones seem to be half magic, half miracle with no real explanation...but how do we find them? How do we make ourselves open to them? And how do you keep them going? Those questions seem more important to me. And anyone coming to this book to look for answers and hoping to walk away with the BFF of their dreams is, I fear, going to be very disappointed.
Now, do we need to be brave and put ourselves out there so we can meet new people and try to find ways to connect? Absolutely. Is it worth the reminder that we need to BE the kind of friend we want to have? YES. Too many people, in my experience, have forgotten that friendship (like any relationship) MUST be a two-way street. And pointing out that friendships need to be nurtured and maintained in order to thrive is a valuable lesson. We’re all busy with lives and jobs and families, but if we want friendships to work, we have to work on them.
The little whimsical drawings and images throughout the book were cute and broke up the text so it didn’t drag too much. I liked the author’s voice and style, but I would have liked some more anecdotes from people who have found lasting friendships as adults and how they made that happen. Not just cold strategies, but some success stories.
Overall, I’m glad I read this book and it had a few good tips. But I was left wanting more because I just don’t think you can FORCE friendships into happening. I’ve tried, others I know have tried, and it never works. It always ends in frustration, fizzling or let-down. The real ones seem to be half magic, half miracle with no real explanation...but how do we find them? How do we make ourselves open to them? And how do you keep them going? Those questions seem more important to me. And anyone coming to this book to look for answers and hoping to walk away with the BFF of their dreams is, I fear, going to be very disappointed.
June 15, 2020
This book should be mandatory reading for all adults!!! You will find yourself feeling validated by what Kat names as difficulties of making and keeping friends in as an adult, and find hope and a plan for how to remedy this. I love this book and plan to recommend it to many!!
July 10, 2020
This was a funny book to read in isolation during a pandemic, but hopefully I'll get to leave the house someday and can put some of these strategies to work. And tbh there are plenty of things that are applicable to being a good friend even when you can't see each other.
April 2, 2022
A valuable, no-nonsense, breezy read on strategies for making and keeping close friends: doesn’t try to be more than it is; makes reference to studies but doesn’t get into trouble by reading too much into them; offers lots of exercises and prompts to re-contextualize and re-engage with social connections; takes a journalistic approach and qualifies suggestions with examples and alternatives.
The book is filled with exercises and prompts for figuring out what one wants in a relationship and how to better get there. Some of these were ideas that I have successfully tried and so gave me more trust and openness to trying out the perspectives and tasks that I hadn’t considered before.
For example, she uses mindfulness techniques to reframe the social anxiety we sometimes feel in new situations, when waiting for others to arrive at a rendezvous, or when trying to meet new people. A lot of what she recommends—variations on focusing on patterns in the environment—is what I’ve done naturally from a young age. This part did not come difficult to me. However, I rarely will engage strangers in any kind of small talk, request help, or try to make friends in public settings (in part because this mindfulness strategy works so well for me). Because the mindfulness strategies resonated, I'll try out Vellos's recommended strategies for connecting with others and making friends in the wild.
The example of focusing on one’s environment to get over awkwardness and anxiety is also notable because even though I already practice this behavior, I hadn’t explicitly connected it to making friends. There were various similar realizations I had while reading the book: there's no reason we can't recreate the way in which close friendships formed in school and childhood neighborhoods: frequent exposure in lower stakes, more communal environments. I’m excited to apply her strategies for recreating these kinds of environments by meeting more intentionally in homes instead of coffeeshops or bars and by trying out friendship incubation (intentionally meeting X number of times over a few weeks or months to jumpstart a friendship).
These insights hidden in plain sight show that Vellos has clearly spent a lot of time thinking about the social difficulties of contemporary life. With her experience and ideas, one will likely find at least one new strategy for making and keeping close friends. As I resettle after moving around for the pandemic, I’m inspired to put her ideas into practice!
——
Favorite Quotes
“if you live in a modern city and you have a credit card and an internet connection, you don’t really need to ask anyone for help. . . You hardly ever need to ask another person directly for help with anything. This is amazing and terrible. It’s like we’re in a race to prove that we can make other humans unnecessary.” (Section “Ask for Help”)
“After two years of trying to make friends in San Francisco, Nina said she’s made exactly one new, genuine friend. Despite all her struggles, she’s doing better than a lot of people. According to a recent study conducted for Evite, a party-planning website where you can send and manage free invitations, the average American hasn’t made one new friend in the last five years. Over 80 percent of the 2,000 people surveyed said that they felt enduring friendships are hard to find and keep. The number one reason why friendships fizzle out? Relocation.” (Section “#MoNewFriends”)
“You may have heard by now, perhaps a disappointing number of times already, that loneliness and social isolation are on the rise. They’re also correlated with having high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, poor cognitive functions, depression, personality disorders, dementia, and suicide.[2] A 2018 study by Cigna on loneliness found that:
• 46 percent of Americans report feeling lonely some or all of the time
• One in four Americans feel like there’s no one they can talk to, or like there’s no one who understands them
• One in five Americans report that they rarely or never feel close to people”
(Section “How Friendship Got So Complicated”)
Some Strategies and Ideas
Don’t be “Busy”
“My friend Jed . . . eliminat[ed] the phrase “I’m busy” from his vocabulary . . . Whenever someone asks him how he’s been, he doesn’t say, “I’ve been really busy.” He tells them what he’s actually been spending his time on. If someone asks him to do something at a time when he has other plans, he’s specific when he declines. If he would rather exercise than go to a movie, he won’t just say, “I’m busy that day”—he’ll say, “I’ve been trying to stick to my fitness goals, and I have a commitment with myself to exercise at that time.” He said that this practice makes him check himself to make sure he’s not just copping out by using a vague reply that modern society takes as an acceptable or even admirable answer. An additional bonus is that by being specific, he lets the other person in on more details of his life. It often sparks a conversation, or leads him to feel closer to the other person.”
Friendship Staycation Weekend
Many interviewees described the fulfillment they get from spending a weekend with a dear friend who unfortunately now lives far away. As I was leaving one such weekend with my friend Balthazar on the east coast, he quipped, “This was like forty phonecalls combined.” Why should we save such in-depth friendship immersions just for friends who live a plane ticket away? Have a forty-phonecall-weekend with an in-town friend, too. No, that doesn’t mean literally making forty phone calls. It’s an in-town “un-getaway” weekend that you spend at one of your houses. Think of it like a platonic grownup slumber party weekend. The friend who is coming over packs everything they’ll need, just as if they were going on a trip to visit a friend in another state. Then, be together as if you are visiting from out of state. Sleep in the same place, eat your meals together, put your phone away, talk at the kitchen table, cook and clean up meals together. When you get bored, just sit there, or go for walks to explore your surroundings.”
Do a Social Media Un-share
Version 1:
The next time you want to share an update with all of your followers, pick one or two people that you think would be most interested in your news and tell them each directly instead.
Version 2:
The next time a friend shares something on social media that you connect with or are curious about, instead of posting a comment, take the time to tell them directly, whether as a direct message, text message, voice memo, or IRL conversation. Want to hear more about their family visit, vacation, conference presentation, latest achievement, or recent struggle? Ask if they’ll tell you about it over the phone or in person.
Version 3:
For one month, instead of posting photos on Instagram, send each IG-worthy photo to only one person. Send it to them directly or show them the next time you see each other. If your photo isn’t good enough to share with an audience of one, then why are you sharing it with all of your followers? See what happens if you go deep with one person instead of sharing photos indirectly with many people.” (Section “Anti-Social Media”)
The book is filled with exercises and prompts for figuring out what one wants in a relationship and how to better get there. Some of these were ideas that I have successfully tried and so gave me more trust and openness to trying out the perspectives and tasks that I hadn’t considered before.
For example, she uses mindfulness techniques to reframe the social anxiety we sometimes feel in new situations, when waiting for others to arrive at a rendezvous, or when trying to meet new people. A lot of what she recommends—variations on focusing on patterns in the environment—is what I’ve done naturally from a young age. This part did not come difficult to me. However, I rarely will engage strangers in any kind of small talk, request help, or try to make friends in public settings (in part because this mindfulness strategy works so well for me). Because the mindfulness strategies resonated, I'll try out Vellos's recommended strategies for connecting with others and making friends in the wild.
The example of focusing on one’s environment to get over awkwardness and anxiety is also notable because even though I already practice this behavior, I hadn’t explicitly connected it to making friends. There were various similar realizations I had while reading the book: there's no reason we can't recreate the way in which close friendships formed in school and childhood neighborhoods: frequent exposure in lower stakes, more communal environments. I’m excited to apply her strategies for recreating these kinds of environments by meeting more intentionally in homes instead of coffeeshops or bars and by trying out friendship incubation (intentionally meeting X number of times over a few weeks or months to jumpstart a friendship).
These insights hidden in plain sight show that Vellos has clearly spent a lot of time thinking about the social difficulties of contemporary life. With her experience and ideas, one will likely find at least one new strategy for making and keeping close friends. As I resettle after moving around for the pandemic, I’m inspired to put her ideas into practice!
——
Favorite Quotes
“if you live in a modern city and you have a credit card and an internet connection, you don’t really need to ask anyone for help. . . You hardly ever need to ask another person directly for help with anything. This is amazing and terrible. It’s like we’re in a race to prove that we can make other humans unnecessary.” (Section “Ask for Help”)
“After two years of trying to make friends in San Francisco, Nina said she’s made exactly one new, genuine friend. Despite all her struggles, she’s doing better than a lot of people. According to a recent study conducted for Evite, a party-planning website where you can send and manage free invitations, the average American hasn’t made one new friend in the last five years. Over 80 percent of the 2,000 people surveyed said that they felt enduring friendships are hard to find and keep. The number one reason why friendships fizzle out? Relocation.” (Section “#MoNewFriends”)
“You may have heard by now, perhaps a disappointing number of times already, that loneliness and social isolation are on the rise. They’re also correlated with having high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, poor cognitive functions, depression, personality disorders, dementia, and suicide.[2] A 2018 study by Cigna on loneliness found that:
• 46 percent of Americans report feeling lonely some or all of the time
• One in four Americans feel like there’s no one they can talk to, or like there’s no one who understands them
• One in five Americans report that they rarely or never feel close to people”
(Section “How Friendship Got So Complicated”)
Some Strategies and Ideas
Don’t be “Busy”
“My friend Jed . . . eliminat[ed] the phrase “I’m busy” from his vocabulary . . . Whenever someone asks him how he’s been, he doesn’t say, “I’ve been really busy.” He tells them what he’s actually been spending his time on. If someone asks him to do something at a time when he has other plans, he’s specific when he declines. If he would rather exercise than go to a movie, he won’t just say, “I’m busy that day”—he’ll say, “I’ve been trying to stick to my fitness goals, and I have a commitment with myself to exercise at that time.” He said that this practice makes him check himself to make sure he’s not just copping out by using a vague reply that modern society takes as an acceptable or even admirable answer. An additional bonus is that by being specific, he lets the other person in on more details of his life. It often sparks a conversation, or leads him to feel closer to the other person.”
Friendship Staycation Weekend
Many interviewees described the fulfillment they get from spending a weekend with a dear friend who unfortunately now lives far away. As I was leaving one such weekend with my friend Balthazar on the east coast, he quipped, “This was like forty phonecalls combined.” Why should we save such in-depth friendship immersions just for friends who live a plane ticket away? Have a forty-phonecall-weekend with an in-town friend, too. No, that doesn’t mean literally making forty phone calls. It’s an in-town “un-getaway” weekend that you spend at one of your houses. Think of it like a platonic grownup slumber party weekend. The friend who is coming over packs everything they’ll need, just as if they were going on a trip to visit a friend in another state. Then, be together as if you are visiting from out of state. Sleep in the same place, eat your meals together, put your phone away, talk at the kitchen table, cook and clean up meals together. When you get bored, just sit there, or go for walks to explore your surroundings.”
Do a Social Media Un-share
Version 1:
The next time you want to share an update with all of your followers, pick one or two people that you think would be most interested in your news and tell them each directly instead.
Version 2:
The next time a friend shares something on social media that you connect with or are curious about, instead of posting a comment, take the time to tell them directly, whether as a direct message, text message, voice memo, or IRL conversation. Want to hear more about their family visit, vacation, conference presentation, latest achievement, or recent struggle? Ask if they’ll tell you about it over the phone or in person.
Version 3:
For one month, instead of posting photos on Instagram, send each IG-worthy photo to only one person. Send it to them directly or show them the next time you see each other. If your photo isn’t good enough to share with an audience of one, then why are you sharing it with all of your followers? See what happens if you go deep with one person instead of sharing photos indirectly with many people.” (Section “Anti-Social Media”)
January 2, 2020
A clear, concise, and practical book on how cultivate and maintain friendships. Even if you are not interested in making new friends, it's a great book to read to learn about relationship trends in this day and age. I love that it touches on how different stages of one's life can affect how friendships are made. It is an interactive book. I read it with pen and paper in hand and finished it in one day. The "try-it" sections at the ends of chapters are really nice ways to apply the chapters in real life. I also enjoyed the list of questions at the end of the book. Overall, this is a nice book to have on hand, and I can see people using the book as a resource for richer conversations and relationships.
November 4, 2025
Actual Rating: 4.25 stars
WHY do I keep reading illustrated books as audiobooks!!! 😭 I did the same thing with Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness, and I keep saying I’m going to get a physical copy from my library and then forget every time I go in. With Kat Vellos’ We Should Get Together: The Secret to Cultivating Better Friendships, I won’t need to wait on the library version—I’ve already ordered several copies for myself and some friends at my local bookshop. This one feels like a very crucial guide for many of the things I most want to happen in my life!!
I was just thinking about this in Angela Flournoy’s The Wilderness, but so many of my close friends are desiring a much stronger sense of closeness than we have in our current cities, families, and friendships. We look back at the interconnected neighborhoods and social worlds of our grandparents’ generation, and we struggle to understand how we’ll get there when everyone is on the move for jobs, school, or something else. It feels like you spend 2-3 years building a strong sense of community in one place, and then half your friends decide to move, or it’s your turn to move. It’s a never-ending cycle, and the only encouragement I’ve found is in discussing this with people, working to build small experiments of deeper connection, and finding tools to do so.
We Should Get Together is chock-full of tools for how to grow intimacy with people you see every day or meet randomly, so you can have much more people in your life and corner. So many of us are struggling to figure out how to feel like we have someone we could spontaneously hang out with on a random Tuesday, in the age of scheduling your friend hangs out 6 weeks at a time. Part of the solution, Vellos offers, is turning everyday acquaintances into closer friendships. We need more than group trips, we need people down the street from us! So, this is how we connect with them…
🌱 The four seeds of connection
Vellos’ concept of the four seeds of connection (proximity, frequency, compatibility, and commitment) was really helpful for me! It immediately showed me something I’ve felt—like we need routine to bond with people. As she notes, it’s why we felt so close to others in college—we commuted together, did laundry together, went grocery shopping together, the list goes on!! Even if we’re not doing all that anymore, we can find other ways to weave our lives together: stopping by after work, exercising together, and many other solutions. While you could call those points the proximity and frequency seeds, the notes on the compatibility and commitment seeds are equally telling. In fact, I think there’s even a nesting element where you need compatibility WITH your commitment to friendship. Forming deep connections require both people to be in the same place when it comes to their dedication, follow-through, and consistency.
This was helpful for me, as I think there are times where I’ve overvalued my compatibility with people, without thinking about their commitment. If we have a great time whenever we connect, but I can’t get ahold of them 95% of the time I reach out, or I have to reschedule our get-together three times, then maybe that’s not someone who is in the place to make a lasting connection. It’s tough news, but helpful ones as I attempt to understand the signs that show someone is equally ready for a meaningful relationship.
🚧 Barriers to adult friendships
Vellos is a very gracious author, and she lays out several barriers to adult friendships without making it seem like people are ridiculous for not being able to surmount them. For starters, as I mentioned in the intro, transiency is a huge barrier for adult friendships! This is particularly the case in certain cities, where transplant culture is a huge thing. It can feel like every 5 years, you have to entirely redevelop your friendship circle. Vellos doesn’t deny the heartbreaking nature of this pattern, but instead provides readers with some key strategies you could use to address this cycle, and build relational skills that allow you to dust yourself off and try again when your friends move away. Overall, she encourages us to embrace the impermanent nature of some relationships, because we still need them! Just like we make bonds with people in college or on vacation, even though we know we’ll eventually separate, we need to do that in our adult lives Let’s say “we’re only going to be here for a short minute, so let’s make it count!!”
Vellos’ other suggestions to overcoming barriers to friendship included relying on friend groups or friends of friends to expose you to more people. She also suggests mixing up the types of activities you do with people, to activate new pathways of connection in the brain. I also appreciated that she is a proponent of hanging out at home, because it puts you at east and lets people into who you truly are. My girlfriend, sister, and I (we live together) are all becoming the sort of people who are like “yeah I’m just going to have so and so come over the house.” Even though we each only have one close friend in the area, with us having these people stop by our shared space more often, it results in really fun group chats, and a much cozier environment around the apartment.
Vellos also discusses how some barriers to developing friendship could be eliminated by—you guessed it—getting off the phones! Not only will it free up more time in the day, but consuming social media can often make us feel like we know what’s going on in our loved ones’ lives, without actually talking to them. She also has a bit of criticism for our podcast obsessions—like are we sometimes listening to other friends’ conversations, instead of having a conversation with our friends? Don’t worry, she’s not saying you can never look at your friends’ IG stories, or you have to quit listening to your favorite podcast. Instead, she’s recommending that you invite the actual people in your lives to share in the content you’re consuming! If you see a post from your friend’s vacation, try asking them actual questions about the details of the trip beyond what a photo could share. If you listen to a good podcast, try sharing it with a friend to see if they have thoughts on it. I’ve already tried to start doing the latter with books I’m reading, and it’s been a great experience so far!!!
💭 Final thoughts and gripes
So yes, basically I loved this book and all the ideas within it!! You can use the four seeds of connection to gauge when someone is ready for a relationship, and you can use the barriers to adult friendship to help avoid common pitfalls. I think this would be an excellent follow-up to another one of my favorite relational books from this year, Dean Spade’s Love in a Fucked-Up World. We Should Get Together can help you flesh out more of the “how” of building trust, scheduling regularity into your friendships, etc. I also am just always a proponent of having more than one source to tackle a tough topic.
One disclaimer, which also ties into why I docked .75 stars from this book—it isn’t as politically sound as LIAFUW. There are a lot of glimmering platitudes about the importance of friendship, without going a lot into the hierarchical forces that prioritize romantic love above all else. But, this stuff is an essential contributor to the “compatibility” seed—some people only want friends as placeholders until they find a relationship, and that leads to a lot of misalignment. You’ll need to combine your read of Vellos’ book with something else to get there—even more than Dean Spade’s book, I’d actually recommend looking into asexual authors, who have the clearest understanding of amatonormativity and its impact on friendships. For starters, I’d recommend Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen, and Sherronda J. Brown’s article, Grieving platonic love in a romance-driven article. (Brown’s full-length book, Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture, is more like amatonormativity 401.)
One other theoretical complaint: Vellos’ points about how “we need friends who think differently from us”, because I think difference for difference’s sake can be a slippery slope. Like, some thoughts can’t be compromised on, because they’re core values we should hold close in our hearts!!! Also, Western society tends to overvalue respectful dialogue and “bridging divides in our society”, even when the bridge doesn’t functionally change any of the problems in our society, it just makes people feel better about a conversation they had. To trouble this sort of thinking, definitely check out LIAFUW—Spade has lots of deconstructions of the less helpful self-help myths, which allow his readers to engage with the helpful points a bit more easily.
Okay, those are enough criticisms, because overall this book is sweet and full of practical advice!! I’d recommend reading in general, and specifically with buddies if you can (I plan on it very soon!)
WHY do I keep reading illustrated books as audiobooks!!! 😭 I did the same thing with Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness, and I keep saying I’m going to get a physical copy from my library and then forget every time I go in. With Kat Vellos’ We Should Get Together: The Secret to Cultivating Better Friendships, I won’t need to wait on the library version—I’ve already ordered several copies for myself and some friends at my local bookshop. This one feels like a very crucial guide for many of the things I most want to happen in my life!!
I was just thinking about this in Angela Flournoy’s The Wilderness, but so many of my close friends are desiring a much stronger sense of closeness than we have in our current cities, families, and friendships. We look back at the interconnected neighborhoods and social worlds of our grandparents’ generation, and we struggle to understand how we’ll get there when everyone is on the move for jobs, school, or something else. It feels like you spend 2-3 years building a strong sense of community in one place, and then half your friends decide to move, or it’s your turn to move. It’s a never-ending cycle, and the only encouragement I’ve found is in discussing this with people, working to build small experiments of deeper connection, and finding tools to do so.
We Should Get Together is chock-full of tools for how to grow intimacy with people you see every day or meet randomly, so you can have much more people in your life and corner. So many of us are struggling to figure out how to feel like we have someone we could spontaneously hang out with on a random Tuesday, in the age of scheduling your friend hangs out 6 weeks at a time. Part of the solution, Vellos offers, is turning everyday acquaintances into closer friendships. We need more than group trips, we need people down the street from us! So, this is how we connect with them…
🌱 The four seeds of connection
Vellos’ concept of the four seeds of connection (proximity, frequency, compatibility, and commitment) was really helpful for me! It immediately showed me something I’ve felt—like we need routine to bond with people. As she notes, it’s why we felt so close to others in college—we commuted together, did laundry together, went grocery shopping together, the list goes on!! Even if we’re not doing all that anymore, we can find other ways to weave our lives together: stopping by after work, exercising together, and many other solutions. While you could call those points the proximity and frequency seeds, the notes on the compatibility and commitment seeds are equally telling. In fact, I think there’s even a nesting element where you need compatibility WITH your commitment to friendship. Forming deep connections require both people to be in the same place when it comes to their dedication, follow-through, and consistency.
This was helpful for me, as I think there are times where I’ve overvalued my compatibility with people, without thinking about their commitment. If we have a great time whenever we connect, but I can’t get ahold of them 95% of the time I reach out, or I have to reschedule our get-together three times, then maybe that’s not someone who is in the place to make a lasting connection. It’s tough news, but helpful ones as I attempt to understand the signs that show someone is equally ready for a meaningful relationship.
🚧 Barriers to adult friendships
Vellos is a very gracious author, and she lays out several barriers to adult friendships without making it seem like people are ridiculous for not being able to surmount them. For starters, as I mentioned in the intro, transiency is a huge barrier for adult friendships! This is particularly the case in certain cities, where transplant culture is a huge thing. It can feel like every 5 years, you have to entirely redevelop your friendship circle. Vellos doesn’t deny the heartbreaking nature of this pattern, but instead provides readers with some key strategies you could use to address this cycle, and build relational skills that allow you to dust yourself off and try again when your friends move away. Overall, she encourages us to embrace the impermanent nature of some relationships, because we still need them! Just like we make bonds with people in college or on vacation, even though we know we’ll eventually separate, we need to do that in our adult lives Let’s say “we’re only going to be here for a short minute, so let’s make it count!!”
Vellos’ other suggestions to overcoming barriers to friendship included relying on friend groups or friends of friends to expose you to more people. She also suggests mixing up the types of activities you do with people, to activate new pathways of connection in the brain. I also appreciated that she is a proponent of hanging out at home, because it puts you at east and lets people into who you truly are. My girlfriend, sister, and I (we live together) are all becoming the sort of people who are like “yeah I’m just going to have so and so come over the house.” Even though we each only have one close friend in the area, with us having these people stop by our shared space more often, it results in really fun group chats, and a much cozier environment around the apartment.
Vellos also discusses how some barriers to developing friendship could be eliminated by—you guessed it—getting off the phones! Not only will it free up more time in the day, but consuming social media can often make us feel like we know what’s going on in our loved ones’ lives, without actually talking to them. She also has a bit of criticism for our podcast obsessions—like are we sometimes listening to other friends’ conversations, instead of having a conversation with our friends? Don’t worry, she’s not saying you can never look at your friends’ IG stories, or you have to quit listening to your favorite podcast. Instead, she’s recommending that you invite the actual people in your lives to share in the content you’re consuming! If you see a post from your friend’s vacation, try asking them actual questions about the details of the trip beyond what a photo could share. If you listen to a good podcast, try sharing it with a friend to see if they have thoughts on it. I’ve already tried to start doing the latter with books I’m reading, and it’s been a great experience so far!!!
💭 Final thoughts and gripes
So yes, basically I loved this book and all the ideas within it!! You can use the four seeds of connection to gauge when someone is ready for a relationship, and you can use the barriers to adult friendship to help avoid common pitfalls. I think this would be an excellent follow-up to another one of my favorite relational books from this year, Dean Spade’s Love in a Fucked-Up World. We Should Get Together can help you flesh out more of the “how” of building trust, scheduling regularity into your friendships, etc. I also am just always a proponent of having more than one source to tackle a tough topic.
One disclaimer, which also ties into why I docked .75 stars from this book—it isn’t as politically sound as LIAFUW. There are a lot of glimmering platitudes about the importance of friendship, without going a lot into the hierarchical forces that prioritize romantic love above all else. But, this stuff is an essential contributor to the “compatibility” seed—some people only want friends as placeholders until they find a relationship, and that leads to a lot of misalignment. You’ll need to combine your read of Vellos’ book with something else to get there—even more than Dean Spade’s book, I’d actually recommend looking into asexual authors, who have the clearest understanding of amatonormativity and its impact on friendships. For starters, I’d recommend Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen, and Sherronda J. Brown’s article, Grieving platonic love in a romance-driven article. (Brown’s full-length book, Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture, is more like amatonormativity 401.)
One other theoretical complaint: Vellos’ points about how “we need friends who think differently from us”, because I think difference for difference’s sake can be a slippery slope. Like, some thoughts can’t be compromised on, because they’re core values we should hold close in our hearts!!! Also, Western society tends to overvalue respectful dialogue and “bridging divides in our society”, even when the bridge doesn’t functionally change any of the problems in our society, it just makes people feel better about a conversation they had. To trouble this sort of thinking, definitely check out LIAFUW—Spade has lots of deconstructions of the less helpful self-help myths, which allow his readers to engage with the helpful points a bit more easily.
Okay, those are enough criticisms, because overall this book is sweet and full of practical advice!! I’d recommend reading in general, and specifically with buddies if you can (I plan on it very soon!)
December 23, 2019
I devoured this book and will return to it again and again.
Kat is both generous and thoughtful.
From her experience navigating friendships, or a lack thereof, she has created a variety of actionable tools and processes for understanding our individual friendship needs, setting friendship goals, and achieving those goals.
I appreciated the applicability of the practices, her delightful voice, and the ease with which I felt myself taking a good look at the friendships in my life and how I behave in or toward them.
Launch 2020 off right - with this book in hand as you work your way toward a goal of greater connection.
P.S. - Her sketches are :fire:.
Kat is both generous and thoughtful.
From her experience navigating friendships, or a lack thereof, she has created a variety of actionable tools and processes for understanding our individual friendship needs, setting friendship goals, and achieving those goals.
I appreciated the applicability of the practices, her delightful voice, and the ease with which I felt myself taking a good look at the friendships in my life and how I behave in or toward them.
Launch 2020 off right - with this book in hand as you work your way toward a goal of greater connection.
P.S. - Her sketches are :fire:.
May 22, 2020
It's a lonely world in our digital age, and it can feel impossible to overcome. Kat does an impressive job to bring together existing research, stories from her own research, and a battery of things to try that together 1) help you make sense of and 2) guide you to make more meaningful connections. A well-structured, easy read with delightful, funny illustrations, the book is filled with keen observations that spark self-reflection—like when did hanging out at each other's homes like we did as kids turn into the stressful "hosting" ? I hope that lots of people read this book, feel more connected, and grow the amount of meaning in their lives.
Bonus points for why this book makes me happy—Kat shows how designers are so well-equipped to be great writers.
Bonus points for why this book makes me happy—Kat shows how designers are so well-equipped to be great writers.
January 7, 2022
this book is written with so much love
It took me so long to read because I kept brainstorming more ways to hang out with friends!!! It helped me see ways that I can commit better and follow through in more areas of my life too. :)
take it slowly! read it with a friend!!
It took me so long to read because I kept brainstorming more ways to hang out with friends!!! It helped me see ways that I can commit better and follow through in more areas of my life too. :)
take it slowly! read it with a friend!!
March 31, 2023
Thoroughly researched with practical advice
The author of this book builds user interface for a living. She brings that attitude to this book about solving the problem of making friends as an adult.
There is a complete bibliography. I found it helpful and insightful.
The author of this book builds user interface for a living. She brings that attitude to this book about solving the problem of making friends as an adult.
There is a complete bibliography. I found it helpful and insightful.
December 1, 2021
reading this in public made me worried people would think I had no friends lol, but it was a great excuse to spend time in a headspace thinking about how to be intentional about all the relationships in my life :)
August 29, 2021
I did read this entire book and I am giving it one star. I have two main complaints: nothing covers making new friends (although that is claimed in the blurb) and the author bemoans how much harder it is to make good friends in a large city.
This book might be helpful for those who already have friends. The author gives many tips for ways to strengthen relationships. There is absolutely no advice for those of us who doesn’t have friends currently.
Her premise that making friends in the big city is so much harder is not only annoying, but I think that belief actually blinds her to the fact that she hasn’t included anything about finding kindred spirits. After all, in a big city one is surrounded with new faces day after day - Limitless opportunities to meet new people with which you might share interests. It maddens me that she thinks that friendship must be so much easier for people in the suburbs or rural communities. I guess we all just make BFFs in grammar school, we never leave town for college or careers, and we all remain besties for life, raising barns and baking pies??? Seriously, I am glad that she admitted at the outset of the book that she would focus on the Bay Area, but the references to how much harder friendship was in the city was unnecessary.
This book might be helpful for those who already have friends. The author gives many tips for ways to strengthen relationships. There is absolutely no advice for those of us who doesn’t have friends currently.
Her premise that making friends in the big city is so much harder is not only annoying, but I think that belief actually blinds her to the fact that she hasn’t included anything about finding kindred spirits. After all, in a big city one is surrounded with new faces day after day - Limitless opportunities to meet new people with which you might share interests. It maddens me that she thinks that friendship must be so much easier for people in the suburbs or rural communities. I guess we all just make BFFs in grammar school, we never leave town for college or careers, and we all remain besties for life, raising barns and baking pies??? Seriously, I am glad that she admitted at the outset of the book that she would focus on the Bay Area, but the references to how much harder friendship was in the city was unnecessary.
July 12, 2020
This authentic, expertly researched and heart-warming book brimming with beautiful illustrations and visual wit makes Kat Vellos' discussion about the challenges of adult friendship an absolute joy to read. Validating our shared experiences and providing the tools and support to make it better, this book is essential for 21st century society and should be required for anyone who seeks the satisfaction of deep and meaningful relationships. I am actively applying Kat’s guidance to my own life already and urge that you do the same. For yourself and for the people you love, I urge everyone to make reading this book a priority.
— Kelly Small, Author The Conscious Creative: Practical Ethics for Purposeful Work
— Kelly Small, Author The Conscious Creative: Practical Ethics for Purposeful Work
December 15, 2019
Reading Kat's book is like having a warm chat with a friend over tea. The book is full of empathy, wisdom, encouragement and practical suggestions. Kat conveys her deep and encompassing understanding - through her own experience and research - of the many factors that make adult friendship so challenging! With humor and charm she lets the reader know that she understands first hand how frustrating it can be to try to build adult friendships. She offers tons of practical suggestions for small, step-by-step actions you can take to try to shift things. She also offers encouragement and ways to work with the inevitable pitfalls all of us will encounter. I recommend this book highly!
August 7, 2020
This is a great book. It's full of practical and useful strategies and ways of thinking about how to tend to friendships. This will be a re-read, just so that I can highlight more.
Books on friendships are the 2020 trend. I've been thinking about friendships a lot lately and this has been on my must-read. Friendships are really important to me since we live in a community and our friends are who can help us in the crazy world. And we should be there to help them as well. When it came in the mail, my daughter stole it from me and read it as well. I think she enjoyed it and shared it with her friends.
Books on friendships are the 2020 trend. I've been thinking about friendships a lot lately and this has been on my must-read. Friendships are really important to me since we live in a community and our friends are who can help us in the crazy world. And we should be there to help them as well. When it came in the mail, my daughter stole it from me and read it as well. I think she enjoyed it and shared it with her friends.
January 15, 2024
I SO wanted to love this book. I felt very validated for the first fourth where she explains why none of us have friends. But then all her advice on how to make friends was very focused on single, childless, upper middle class, mid twenties to early thirties people living in a city. Most of it just wasn’t helpful. She at one point says that single women with children are the most lonely people in the world, and then says the solution is to get off social media. Just felt off base.
The one benefit was that it made me text a bunch of friends to hang out, so overall not a total bust.
The one benefit was that it made me text a bunch of friends to hang out, so overall not a total bust.
September 13, 2022
This book is delightful and so helpful! As someone who recently started a new job, I was able to explore some of these friendship prompts in real-time. I highly recommend this read for anyone looking to deepen their friendships and grow their connections to those around them.
August 1, 2020
One of the greatest, most vulnerable, most honest books I’ve ever read.
December 31, 2021
This book made me so introspective I missed my train stop on my way to work the other day. Oops.
I received for Christmas this year two sets of conversation starter question card packs. But, honestly, I like the ones at the back of the book here. I’m going to put them on index cards, color coded for the theme, and that way we can bring them to events and give them a shuffle, picking a question at random.
Am also inspired to get back together with my small writing group and maybe do other things with friends too. I would love to do a regular board game night, but I’ve never had luck with that before...
Gotta try harder, I guess.
Anyway, I liked this a lot.
I received for Christmas this year two sets of conversation starter question card packs. But, honestly, I like the ones at the back of the book here. I’m going to put them on index cards, color coded for the theme, and that way we can bring them to events and give them a shuffle, picking a question at random.
Am also inspired to get back together with my small writing group and maybe do other things with friends too. I would love to do a regular board game night, but I’ve never had luck with that before...
Gotta try harder, I guess.
Anyway, I liked this a lot.
January 6, 2025
Personal thoughts dump lol! I’ve been thinking a lot about friendship recently, especially after my last read in which Delia Ephron talked so much about how much she values her friendships and how they carried her through her illness. I think it’s really dawning on me now that we’ve settled in a city where we have no family, and our close friends are the people we’re really going to have to lean on and also be a support to in difficult moments. I appreciated how seriously this book takes friendship, and it gave me some good reflection points and action items! In terms of tips on making new friends, they felt a little much/overly earnest/like they would attract a certain personality type that I’m not sure I’d be looking for in a friend.
September 12, 2025
Incredibly PRACTICAL resource for strategically working to make friends as an adult. Will it work every time? Nope because friendship is a two-way street. But these tips are GOLD for anyone who is willing to give a solid effort to trying to make new friends! I think I’m pretty good at making new friends and I learned some new insights from this book. I think it would be especially helpful to someone new to a city, or to a long-time resident looking to expand their friendships. The author comes from a different perspective on the world than I have, but so much of what she shares is based in truth. I will be referring back to this book in the future!!
January 22, 2023
I have spent hours thinking on this topic over the last year. Her book isn’t ground breaking, and there isn’t much in there for people with babies and small children, as that part of life is so different and support is greatly needed, but she does provide food for thought and many moments for reflection and practical applications. The key is that we just need to get together. No pressure. Just be. Let our guard down. Get deep. That’s the way to gain a close connection fast and really feel fulfilled in a relationship.
August 15, 2023
I really enjoyed this. In addition to making me extremely grateful for the friendships I have, it was also a good gut check for places where I still want to grow. East listen. Highly recommend.
February 15, 2025
Don’t remember when I started reading this book but it took me forever. Well written with lots of practical guide to implement friendship-cultivating-tips in your life, among references to science, lite case study, and personal reflections. The citations she gave are also great things to look into!
July 28, 2025
This felt like a book I would've been required to read in my freshmen seminar, so the content was straightforward and had direct and manageable actions to follow, but it was overall what you'd expect. Was it revolutionary? Nah, but I think that's the point. Making and cultivating friendship doesn't need to be outlandish or left field. It can be as every day as getting coffee or starting a conversation during your commute.
January 14, 2021
This book is an amazing blend of deep research, hands-on exercises, and journaling prompts. Maybe I'm a little bit biased because I recently joined Connection Club, but I think that's an indication that I'm a fan of Vellos's work in general.
I think Vellos isn't a social scientist herself (she's a UX Designer by day), but she does use her investigative expertise. She sifts through and presents big ideas about how we connect with one another, citing studies about how many people feel lonely, how infrequently people spend time with friends and family, and how it impacts our health and our surrounding communities. Her examples of earlier decades in the US and smaller cultural communities in present day contrast sharply with how intensely isolated we are right now. Or at least, how we were in 2019, before the pandemic turned everything upside down.
Speaking as someone who has ghosted former friends, Vellos's direct communication scripts gave me a lot to think about in terms of how I could've been more considerate toward others. She also addresses other kinds of crappy behavior like flakiness. I'm still appalled that someone bailed on a bachelorette party weekend after insisting on hosting it.
It isn't all discouraging. Vellos offers ways to take inventory of your time or reach out to a specific friend. She also weaves in personal experiences of spending lots of time with a housemate or generously supporting a friend during tough times. Jeannie's story is particularly heartwarming, and sounds just like the kind of life I've long wanted to be living by the time I'm in my 50s or 60s.
I will admit that I bristled a couple of examples, particularly an offhand comment about how urban living requires us to spend time recovering from the stress and unpleasantness of busy downtowns. (I feel the opposite: energized by crowded city streets and deeply depressed and exhausted when forced out into more remote places.) But I'm confident that Vellos isn't anti-city, and the fact that we simply have different dispositions didn't hinder my enjoyment of the book or my ability to learn lessons that I can apply to my own life.
I think Vellos isn't a social scientist herself (she's a UX Designer by day), but she does use her investigative expertise. She sifts through and presents big ideas about how we connect with one another, citing studies about how many people feel lonely, how infrequently people spend time with friends and family, and how it impacts our health and our surrounding communities. Her examples of earlier decades in the US and smaller cultural communities in present day contrast sharply with how intensely isolated we are right now. Or at least, how we were in 2019, before the pandemic turned everything upside down.
Speaking as someone who has ghosted former friends, Vellos's direct communication scripts gave me a lot to think about in terms of how I could've been more considerate toward others. She also addresses other kinds of crappy behavior like flakiness. I'm still appalled that someone bailed on a bachelorette party weekend after insisting on hosting it.
It isn't all discouraging. Vellos offers ways to take inventory of your time or reach out to a specific friend. She also weaves in personal experiences of spending lots of time with a housemate or generously supporting a friend during tough times. Jeannie's story is particularly heartwarming, and sounds just like the kind of life I've long wanted to be living by the time I'm in my 50s or 60s.
I will admit that I bristled a couple of examples, particularly an offhand comment about how urban living requires us to spend time recovering from the stress and unpleasantness of busy downtowns. (I feel the opposite: energized by crowded city streets and deeply depressed and exhausted when forced out into more remote places.) But I'm confident that Vellos isn't anti-city, and the fact that we simply have different dispositions didn't hinder my enjoyment of the book or my ability to learn lessons that I can apply to my own life.
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