Why It’s Harder to Make Friends As an Adult (and What the Proximity Principle Has to Say About It)

 200 adults talk about friendship, magic happens. We'll get into what I mean by that, but first you'll need a little background.  Roughly two years ago, I recruited 200 people to participate in in-depth, two-hour interviews. Also, important to note: These are what's called qualitative interviews. "Qualitative," in this case, means that when I go into the interviews, I don't have a pre-selected hypothesis I am trying to prove. In fact, I purposefully try not to bring in my ...

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Shame: Coming to a Welfare Office Near You?

When checking out at the grocery store, it was the same feelings of failure all over again. Erin continued to explain her situation, time and time again, to try and prevent the cashier from judging her as she used her WIC card--the modern day equivalent of food stamps. "My husband is a teacher. He's out of work. We're hard workers," she said.

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What Can We Do About…Tragedies in Other Countries? Anything?

week, I introduced blog readers to a woman named Natalie who had lived in the same neighborhood for decades. Yet, somehow after Natalie died, her death went undiscovered for eight years.  I described how stories like Natalie's keep me awake at night. How it seems like every day, we're seeing more and more hard-to-read headlines about terrorism, mass shootings, sexual assault. And how these disturbing events always get me rethinking things--how society operates, where connections are ...

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What Real People and Research Tell Us About Friendship

Most of us learned how to function socially through trial and error. We picked up social strategies from watching the people around us. But beyond this, I've found decades of research that can build on what we learn through human experience...practices and habits that, if adopted, would likely strengthen anyone's relationships.

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