‘Friends? The fewer you have, the better they tend to be’

Relationships

Friendly

By Elizabeth Day (Fourth Estate £16.99, 416 pp)

What Makes a Best Friend? It appears to vary from place to place. A study found that in many Asian countries, it is often based on the understanding that a relationship is both about exchange and equality – ‘If I do this for you, I hope you give something back’.

The same survey found that people in India and the United Arab Emirates said they valued culture and intelligence most in a best friend, and their most common friendship activity was visiting museums and galleries.

In the UK, by contrast, only 16 per cent worried about such things. The British go to the pub with their friends 18 percent more often than the rest of the world, which should come as no surprise.

Finding a shortage of books on platonic friendship compared to the countless books on romantic love, author, journalist, and self-professed friendship addict Elizabeth Day has set out to rectify the imbalance with her own take on the subject.

Bullied at school – she moved from England to Northern Ireland, where her accent was mocked – as Day got older and realized she was good at making friends, she started collecting as many as she could. “It turns out I wasn’t just passionate about friendship, I was addicted to it. I was physically and emotionally dependent… I was a friendaholic.”

You might think: so what’s the problem? How can having too many friends be a problem when a 2017 report published by Relate found that 13 percent of people have none at all? Another report found that a lack of social interaction can be as harmful as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

As Day discovered to her detriment, having too many close friends can also have a negative impact. The perfect number for good mental health is four to five; more and the benefits diminish or disappear altogether. In fact, the demands of keeping more than seven have been linked to an increase in depressive symptoms.

This fact resonated with Day, as she experienced the loneliness of lockdown and began to re-evaluate: “All the while I had been busy making and maintaining contacts and actually undermining what was most important to me. I had become a worse friend to the few who really counted in my desperation to be accepted by the many I barely knew.”

Day realized that “the kindred spirits you drop everything for, whose calls you answer at 4 a.m., who you know will be there in times of crisis, just don’t come around very often.” And friendship lived with such loyal intensity can only extend to a handful of people.” Essentially, we don’t all have to be each other’s best friends.

Drawing on her own experience of multiple miscarriages, Day reveals how tragic moments can be the most valuable lessons about who your friends really are. “So this was where I found myself when my closest friends revealed themselves. . .’

The British go to the pub with their friends 18 percent more often than the rest of the world, which should come as no surprise

Her best friend, Emma, ​​always makes time for her apart from her kids. Her real friends don’t ask her to babysit because they know how hard this can be for her. But they do come to her for parenting advice. “This makes me feel valued for who I am rather than the babies I haven’t been able to produce.”

Friendships are not always pain free. Elizabeth also addresses the feelings of devastation when a friendship ends abruptly with ghosting, as with Becca, a best friend who gradually stopped talking to her and eventually blanked out Elizabeth on the street: “It was slow-motion grief, unlike all the others I had been through.’

Maybe, she thinks, some friendships just aren’t meant to last forever. “Maybe, like in a romantic relationship, it’s okay not to be in love anymore.”

No matter how many friends you have, Day’s book is perceptive, compassionate, and filled with relatable insights into all that’s beautiful about friendship, the most valuable point being that it should be about quality rather than quantity.

“I couldn’t hope to be the friend I wanted to be to those who mattered most if I kept spreading myself too thin in a pointless quest to prove that I was, in a fundamental way, lovable.

“I could never convince those bullies at school afterwards. It was no use—unless I befriended myself first.”