How to Make and Keep Friends (pt.2)

Welcome back, friend.

So, you’ve taken the leap. You got out of the house, met some people, maybe even asked for a follow-up hang. That’s huge. But now the question is: how do you make it last?

Friendship, like any living thing, needs tending. It needs a bit of structure, a dash of vulnerability, and the willingness to show up — even when you’re tired, even when it’s awkward, even when life gets lifey.

In this next section, we’ll explore the art of maintaining connection. You’ll learn how to navigate conflict, build consistency, and grow friendships that don’t just survive — they thrive.

Let’s keep going.

3️⃣ Strategies for Keeping Friendships Going

Annoyingly enough, the only person we can control in a relationship is ourselves. If we want a friendship to be good, we have to be the one to put in the work for it. Towards the other person we can make requests for different behavior, set a boundary, or end things. But otherwise, it’s on us to create the friendships we want.

Here are 4 tips for creating great friendships by being a great friend. Simplified, these boil down to: trust your friends and invest in them.

Step 1: Be Vulnerable

In the USA, and much of the individualistic Western world, we are taught to be self-sufficient. To support instead of receive. To keep our own counsel, and be dependent on nobody for emotional or logistical support.

While these are great maxims for interpersonal safety (e.g. never getting close enough to be hurt in relationship), they are terrible for either personal safety or the development of friendships. We require other people for projects, disasters, connection, and - yes - emotional support.

Self-disclosure can either happen intrapersonally or interpersonally - in other words, disclosing things about yourself or disclosing things about the relationship. Disclosing things about others is called gossip, and it’s not the most effective way to connect.

To disclose about yourself, share personal details about your life. You can:

Call a friend when you’re having a hard time
Talk when there’s been some life transition, positive or negative (a new job, a death, etc.)
Ask for help on a project, or to think something through

The personal benefit is that you will likely receive relief around your situation, as the act of sharing itself expands our perspective and capacity. The relational benefit is that your friends will start feeling comfortable to share more themselves. A saying I have when training relational facilitators is “the group only goes as deep as we do”. I’ve found this to be true across thousands of groups, and it holds for relationships as well.

To disclose about the relationship, when you’re feeling something that is bringing you closer or keeping you distant from a friend, name it. Disclosures like these can help the other person feel like they matter in your life and affirm the value of your relationship with them:

“I’m enjoying hanging out with you.”
“I felt sad when you didn’t call last week.”
“You’ve helped me feel more welcome in this city.”
“I notice I haven’t been feeling as close to you lately, and I’d like to talk about it.”

It can feel scary to bring up negative disclosures, but it’s better than letting a good relationship fade. We’ll talk about this more in Step 4: Health Checks.

There is one caveat to this section. Vulnerability feels scary for a reason: it leaves you open, unguarded. Bad actors can take advantage of that. I like using something I call “titrated vulnerability”. When you’re first getting into a connection, share small truths about yourself and how you feel. See how the other person responds. Do they gossip about what you’ve shared? Do they save these vulnerabilities for later attacks? Or, do they use your trust to deepen the relationship?

If the other person’s response patterns feel trustable - and, make sure you do actually give them the benefit of the doubt! - then you can move into deeper openness. Connection will never be fully safe. But on their deathbed, one of the top regrets people mention is “I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings”. Be wise enough to test, and brave enough to trust.

Step 2: Show Up

If you want to deepen a friendship, show up for your friends in times when they need you - and times they don’t. While we may think, in this modern era, that it’s normal to skip a friend’s birthday or gathering because we’re tired or have other things, our lack of presence affects their trust in us. It’s important to decide which friendships are the most important to you, and prioritize those over other social or personal engagements. The most relationally valuable things are not always the most fun or fulfilling. But long term, they’re what will pay off when you yourself are not feeling fun or fulfilling, and you need someone’s help.

This means:

Don’t cancel on the day of a hangout or event, when you can avoid it.
If you have to change a commitment, find a new time or date.
Be honest about your capacity. If you know you won’t be able to hang out weekly, only say yes to a monthly. It’s better to commit less and show up fully, than overcommit and cancel.
If you are hosting an event of your own, tell your friend why it matters for you that they be there.

A great way of building friendship bonds is to regularly ask “What are you up to? Any help or participation you need?” If they need help, you’ll get more excuses to hang out! And they’re more likely to offer the same showing up in future.

“Showing up” also means that when a friend is being vulnerable, you actually listen. A subtle form of self-involvement is to only be thinking about yourself even when your friend is trying to self-disclose. Conversation is a meditation. You have to get out of your head and focus on the other person, which is not always easy. But if their vulnerability is met with advice or ignoring instead of empathy, your friend will be less likely to share with you again.

Step 3: Find Your Cadence

If one of the fastest ways to sink a budding friendship is to say “Let’s hang out sometime!”, one of the best ways to sink a burgeoning one is to make every interaction require scheduling. Find a recurring activity you can do, and stick to it. If you need to change on a given week, fine - either create a norm that whoever cancels is the one to reschedule, or suggest a new time yourself.

Every friendship appreciates different cadences and modes of interaction. Where one may thrive on a monthly routine of 1:1 coffee catchups, another might do better with sharing a weekly meetup at a board game cafe. With any given friendship, you can vary the:

Number of people involved
Activity
Energy level
Place
Time of day
Length of time

…or any other variable you can think of. Run experiments on your friendships just as you do when starting interactions. Try different combinations and see what works for this particular relationship. Then, if your current cadence fades and you still want to keep the friendship, suggest a new time, date, or activity.

If you’ve gotten into a rut, consult your desires. Ask yourself: what’s a restaurant you’ve been wanting to try? Friends you’d love to connect with together? A place in the world you’d enjoy road tripping to? A habit you’ve been wanting to develop? Experiment with including others in your personal life explorations.

Often, the reason friendships end is not because the relationship itself is flawed - it’s because you haven’t found the right activity or rhythm to keep it going.

Step 4: Do Health Checks

Many work projects, especially within the Agile realm, hold what is known as “retrospectives”. After a project is completed, the members of a team meet up and ask, “What went well? What could be better for next time?”

An even more powerful tool is to do this kind of retrospective in the middle of a project - or a relationship. “What’s going well? What could be improved? Are we getting what we need, here? Is this a good rhythm and flow for us?”

We expect, on a subtle level, that a good friendship will “just happen”. But anyone who has been in a long-term romantic relationship knows that when something is off, you have to talk about it.

So, if something is feeling off or stagnant in your friend-relationship - you aren’t talking as much anymore, they don’t seem to want you around, you don’t want them around - find a good time during a hangout to say, “Hey, I’ve been thinking about our friendship lately. I think you’re a good human and I enjoy our connection, but it seems a little strained of late. I wanted to ask….

What do you enjoy most about our friendship?
What do you enjoy least?
How could I be a better friend to you?
How do you think you could be a better friend to me?
What things would you like to do together that we don’t already?
Is there anything you’re not saying to me, maybe because it feels awkward or you’re scared of my reaction?
What do you want in this connection?

(Pro tip: In the intro-to-conversation above, note the phrasing of “I feel like our connection has been strained” instead of “you’ve been distant”. Even if you think the latter is true, it’s easier to resolve a difficult conversation if you stay on the same team. Look at the problem together, rather than pointing fingers at each other.)

Finding and keeping friends can feel difficult. But once we get ourselves out of the house, there is a whole world of people who want to connect with us.

If we work on our internal cognitions, we will trust that friendship is possible.
If we run experiments on connection, we’ll have a reason to meet different people.
If we start and continue conversations, we’ll get to know those people.
If we suggest follow-ups, we’ll create a friend.
If we’re open and honest with our friends, and open to their needs in return, we’ll build deeper bonds.
And if we maintain our relational health, we’ll have friendships for life.

May your friendships flourish and your connections thrive.

With curiosity and care,
Sara

Sara Ness is a facilitator, teacher, and connection researcher. She has worked with tens of thousands of students, from Google to Mindvalley to Burning Man - teaching leadership, conflict engagement, and authentic communication through Authentic Relating skills. She is the founder and CEO of Authentic Revolution and is on the board of the social health nonprofit Seek Healing. You can find more of her writing by clicking here.

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A Guide On Building Lasting Connections: How to Make and Keep Friends (pt.2)

3️⃣ Strategies for Keeping Friendships Going

Step 1: Be Vulnerable

Step 3: Find Your Cadence

Step 4: Do Health Checks

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