#friendship

#friendship

Dear Eric: I recently pet-sat for somewhat new friends. I had been invited on a weekend trip with them but had a work commitment that meant I couldn't go. I offered to pet-sit for them, which is something I've done for other friends from time to time. During the weekend there was an incident which wasn't really anyone's fault that resulted in some minor property damage. I let them know via text what happened and explained the situation and offered to cover any damages.

"When we became friends, I remember her almost walking out the front gate and then turning around, looking at me and saying, 'Are we going to be friends?' And I said, 'Yes.' And she said, 'Now don't just say it by rote. Are you going to be intentional? We've got to be. Because at my age, I have to be intentional,'" Steenburgen said, recalling Fonda's words.

Ein Freund, ein guter Freund, ist das Beste was es gibt auf der Welt [A friend, a good friend, is the best thing you can have in this world].―The Comedian Harmonists I dedicate this essay to my friend Gerhard Almstedt, who was taken from us in 2023. Friendship is an underappreciated topic in psychological research, although having good friends is one of the cornerstones of a successful and rewarding social life. It is a source of happiness (Pezirkianidis et al., 2023).

Two best friends in Alabama became pregnant with twins and triplets at the same time. Their shared experience of parenting multiples created a strong support system for both families. Living close together, they help each other manage the challenges of raising five young children. This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation Madison Knight. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Dozens of women who considered me their gay best friend sounded great until it was time to exchange presents with all of them during the holidays. I was too cheap to buy all my friends expensive Christmas gifts but too classy to give them something, well, cheap. I had also grown tired of spending $50 on something pointless in bulk, usually a criminally overpriced novelty item.

A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles, as travel writer Tim Cahill said. As a Pacific Northwest writer who frequently travels to Canada, I couldn't agree more. Living barely an hour south of the Canadian border, I've had the pleasure of hopping the 49th parallel countless times. The real magic of crossing that line is not just the immediate sense of spaciousness, but the feeling of a familiar, open-hearted welcome.

Dictators like to move people around. Stalin, for instance. From the summer of 1941 through the fall of 1942, with the Russian front facing massive bombardment and Nazi troops on the ground, he decided to relocate civilians, and entire industries, to safer regions in the eastern Soviet Union. The Urals, Siberia, the middle Volga, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan eventually received sixteen million evacuees, perhaps the most ever moved across land by a single directive.

The friendship breakup has become a feature of modern life: Online, advice abounds on "how to aggressively confront, or even abandon, friends who disappoint us," Olga noted. But what if another solution exists? Instead of firing your friends, psychologists told her, it helps to expand your circle, allowing more people to provide you with different types of support or camaraderie: "Rather than resting on one pillar, healthy friendship is better imagined as crowd-surfing-many hands holding you up," Olga writes.

I was 28 and fed up with the dating scene. Swiping had become a ritual of ghosting, small talk, and scheduling conflicts. I work in business development for a US law firm in Hong Kong and was chasing a promotion, so it was easy to tell myself romance could wait. Then, one night, a casual scroll on Instagram inspired me to try something different.

We had similar jobs when I started six years ago. During that time, I've had two big promotions, and she has stayed where she is. Her work is well-received, and she always gets positive reviews, so she's frustrated she hasn't been promoted. She asked me to help her figure out what is going on. (When asked, her supervisor didn't give a straight answer, which is typical here.) I think the problem may be how she presents herself. She dresses within the letter of the dress code but more casual than those around her. She takes personal calls within earshot of others and will pop in and out of the office to run errands or pick up her kids from somewhere, and then work from home to make up the time. While technically it is allowed, others don't do this. Only 10% of our job is client-facing, but looking and acting the part is noticed.

A decade ago it was whitewater rafting, ropes courses, and ziplines. This time, to mark a milestone birthday, three longtime friends - Ben, Brice, and I - set our sights on the Great Allegheny Passage (GAP), 150 miles of crushed-limestone rail trail threading the Appalachians from Cumberland, Maryland, to Pittsburgh. Ben (a college housemate), sidelined by bad discs, volunteered for logistics and to turn his 2020 Toyota Sienna into a makeshift SAG wagon.

I'm friends with my co-worker, not in the way where we naturally grew close after being forced to spend eight hours a day with each other. We were friends before we became co-workers. When I heard she had applied for the same company, I was excited, but grew wary. I secretly didn't want her to get it. I was scared of what it would do to our relationship.

I'm not just saying that he's lazy, unmotivated, and never takes her out or wants to travel with her, but yes to all of that. I hate how he makes her feel like she's asking for too much out of a partner. I hate how he tells her that he'll do something with her or for her then he doesn't.

At one point, I was resting on a hip thrust machine, letting my mind wander without auditory stimuli beaming directly into my brain - kind of nice, actually - when a woman called, "Hey, do you have a second?" and asked for advice on using the belt squat machine. I was happy to help, and we chatted for a bit before exchanging friendly goodbyes.

When the bill came, it sat on the table for a while; neither of us touched it. Eventually, I picked it up and asked if she wanted to split it, and she said yes immediately. I was caught off guard because she had clearly said beforehand that she wanted to treat me, so I hadn't expected to pay. It's not about the money

Rob had long been an unreliable narrator, and his latest story had been a doozy about owing back rent and borrowing thousands of dollars from a shady loan shark who had threatened him with bodily harm if he was late with his payments. There was always a germ of truth in Rob's stories, and this one involved even more disturbing details, but I was going through some of my own stuff at the time, mainly looking for a new job,

A close friend, "Sam," and his girlfriend, "Emily," are doing something truly terrible. She has a lot of student debt to pay off, so they have come up with a plan. She will date and marry someone rich, and he will pay off her student loans, and then she will break up with him to be with Sam after a few years.

When Sheen wanted to meet Carlos Estévez because the major league pitcher shared Sheen's given name, he turned to his connected friend, Tony Todd. When Sheen was in the throes of a crack addiction, fired from his starring role on "Two and a Half Men" and in need of an unwavering voice of encouragement, he turned to his non-judgmental friend Tony Todd.

Rapping over the singer's own classic 2000 single "One Mo'Gin," the often frenetic Rhymes spends several minutes lovingly celebrating both the man and the artist. (Before letting the remainder of the seven-minute track play out to haunting effectiveness.) Whether you're a fan of one artist and/or both, it's the kind of homage that cuts to the beating heart of D'Angelo's singular legacy.