"Friendship is so weird. You just pick a human you've met and you're like, 'Yep, I like this one,' and you just do stuff with them." — Bill Murray
Welcome to the Friendship summer series. Each week, I’ll explore a different aspect of friendship, sharing audio interviews with over a dozen friends, as well as 7 sensory ways to explore friendship.
The greatest love of my life is friendship. My friends are the sail that propel me, the anchor that grounds me, and the safe harbor to always return to. Even now, in my late thirties and married, I still consider my friendships to be my most enduring and significant relationships.
Yet our culture seems to place friendship on the backseat, a secondary relationship to romance, family, and even career. The cultural markers are everywhere: in the form of songs, movies, and even technology. There are countless dating apps, but where do you swipe to find friends?
I’ve been told that making friends comes easily to me. To which I half-jokingly respond that it’s a “survival mechanism.” Perhaps it’s due to growing up as an only child, or having moved around a lot, but friendship has always been the most central aspect of my life. I could relate to Anna Brones who shared that “Being an only child made it that friendships were very important growing up because there was no other young person at my house… if you want any interaction with anybody who's near your age, you have to get that elsewhere.”
By the time I was five years old, I had lived on three different continents, which made me proficient at making friends. I learned new languages and adapted to foreign cultures through interacting with other kids. My friend Kristine, who also moved a lot in her youth, shared how that shaped her friendships: “They've replaced the concept of a home because in many ways my home is this web of friendships which are all over. They capture and hold a lot of childhood and adulthood memories. They’re the most important thing in my life.”
Beyond our parents, friendships are our first bonding experiences. Long before the first roller coaster of romance, one is introduced to the attraction, immersion and drama of friendship. Sometimes, our friends can even become “chosen family,” replacing blood relatives as more stable sources of unconditional love.
From preschool to my early twenties, my whole world revolved around friendships. During those years, we form little tribes that dictate our interests and habits. Looking back, those early friendships look a bit like a mafia or a cult. Each clique has its own dress code, mannerisms, and even vocabulary that ties them together.
I still witness it today when I see a group of teenage girls hovering together in front of their high school gate, all wearing matching outfits and whispering low-stake secrets. I remember doing the same. I have no memory of what we actually talked about, but I vividly recall the feeling of being deeply absorbed in conversation and passionately devoted to each other.
The excitement of going to class everyday was driven by the prospect of seeing my friends. Summer felt like an eternal separation, and I was eager for back-to-school as it meant back-to-friendship.
As we get older, move away, focus on our careers, and start families, the dynamics of friendships change. We no longer have the same endless freedom to sit in the park, affectionately interlaced, conversations flowing for hours. I often long for those precious memories – the passionate and all-encompassing quality of friendships then.
Anna Brones expressed a similar sentiment. When the film ‘Frances Ha’ came out, someone said to her "Remember when your girlfriends were everything?" The idea saddened her and it struck her as unthinkable that she would ever get to a point where that was the case. But she says, “Now, many years later, married, living in a rural community, I understand the sentiment. I miss the long evenings on the couch with my friend who would show up at my Portland apartment with Thai food in the middle of the week. I miss the intensity of friendship that came at an earlier age when we weren't pulled in all the directions of our responsibilities.”
The intensity of that closeness can be sharply revealed when going through a friend breakup. Especially when we’re younger, losing a friendship can be devastating – as if the ground suddenly collapsed and engulfed us into an abyss of despair. No one can reach us like our friends, and in their absence, our social structure quickly disintegrates.
Though friendship breakups now feel less cataclysmic, I still find them extremely painful and disorienting. Even as an adult, the end of a friendship has been the source of some of my deepest sorrows. Having divorced parents, I had low expectations of the duration of romance, but I held tightly to the idea of “friends forever.”
Not all friendships last, nor do they need to meet a dramatic ending. My friend Rachel introduced me to a helpful concept a couple years ago. To her, the “open/closed door” policy felt too rigid and final. So she came up with an analogy that felt better suited for the ongoing evolution of our relationships.
Imagine your life as the solar system, with you as the sun and your friendships as the planets. The closer the planet is to the sun, the closer the connection. But these planetary relationships are not bound by gravity: they can move in and out of orbit. It doesn’t signal that the relationship is over but that it’s at a further distance for some time. Friendships naturally evolve at various points, growing closer or further apart.
Though it may feel like friendship is on the decline in our adulthood, they can also grow closer with age. It even seems that the quality of youthful friendships returns in our later years, except with a bit more wisdom and a little less drama.
At 75, my mother has a very close group of friends. They all live in a small French Alpine town, so their dynamics may stem from their cultural context (a topic I’ll dive into next week). Most are retirees, though a couple of them still work. A few are married and have adult children and grandchildren. Some are single and childfree, while others are divorced or widowed. Regardless of their various family structures, they all prioritize their friendships. It doesn’t seem to be a particularly conscious and effortful decision, but rather a natural and self-evident way of living.
Their group comprises of five or six women. Most of them have known each other for decades, though new friends have joined over the years. The circle is open to expanding or retracting as life fluctuates. The bonds between each individual may orbit in and out, but the love they share is ever-present.
They host their birthday dinners at each other’s homes. They go on multi-day treks together, sleeping in bunk beds in mountain chalets.They have movie outings and then discuss the film over drinks. They volunteer for social causes and protest at political rallies together. They drive to Italy, or boat along the rivers of central France. They wash each other’s hair if one has a broken arm. They bring flowers and bake cakes on celebratory occasions. And they show up for one another, when they grieve a parent, partner, or child. They are each other’s companions –– the sail, the anchor, and the harbor –– through life’s changing ocean.
This week’s audio interviews include Ani Simon-Kennedy, Mason Currey, Anna Brones, Brandon D., Rachel Reid Wilkie, Michael Reynolds, Bianca Butti, Sage and Kristine. I’m incredibly grateful to each one of them for their openness, honesty and vulnerability.
Putting together this series has been a true labor of friendship. But it’s been labor nonetheless: countless hours of interviewing and audio editing, writing and curating. I’ve made today’s edition free for all but upcoming ones will be for paid subscribers.
If you’ve been considering upgrading your subscription, I’m offering 20% off until the end of the month. Paid subscribers also access the weekend edition Present Sense and Travel Guides.
For today’s Seven Senses, I’ve asked my friends to curate their sensory recommendations on the theme of friendship — SEE, HEAR, SMELL, TASTE, TOUCH, BALANCE, and ENVISION.
In Joy,
Sabrina
PS: if the below is too large for email, you can access it on your browser: sevensenses.substack.com/p/the-greatest-love
To listen to the interviews, play audio above.
HEAR
Friendship Audio Series | Episode 1
For this first episode, I wanted to dive into the role friendship plays in our lives and how it evolves over time. I asked my friends to reminisce about their very first friend; some of the friendship challenges in adulthood; and ways to nurture our friendships.
SEE
Daisies, film by Věra Chytilová (1966) | recommended by Ani Simon-Kennedy
Available on Amazon, Max, and Kanopy (free with a library card)
I was excited to discover this film, which was described by Ani (herself a filmmaker) as a “surrealist comedy about two friends both named Marie living their best lives. Friendship as a place of refuge!”
SMELL
The scented trail of friendship | recommended by Gala Delmont Benatar
Read more in this NY Times article + Scientific American Journal
In 2022, neuroscientist Inbal Ravreby published her research revealing that scent plays in important role in friendship. The experiments conducted showed that we “seek out those who smell like us.”
To test this theory, they gathered pairs of same-sex friends and used an electronic nose to measure the chemical differences in their body odor. They found that people who “clicked” immediately when they first met, smelled more alike than random pairs.
TASTE
Friendship Cookbook | created by Zandie Brockett & friends
Digital Zine available below for download
I’m so delighted that my friend Zandie is launching her friendship cookbook here on Seven Senses –– sharing it for the very first time for everyone to enjoy.
The project came to life during the pandemic when she was getting a flurry of texts from friends quarantined around the world. She says: “In the copious amounts of newly discovered free time, we all had two priorities: sharing recipes of all the things we were experimenting in a kitchen and also all the strange aspects of the new dystopian reality we were all living through. It first took the form of a folder on my desktop, and then a few pages as a zine that I made in InDesign. The pandemic continued and so the zine grew to a full on cookbook. This is the first time I'm releasing it to the world! Bon app!”
TOUCH
‘Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell’ | recommended by Mason Currey
Available in bookstore or online
Mason described this book as “very touching letters between two poets and longtime friends.” The book chronicles their letters, written over three decades, starting after the publication of their first books and ends only with Lowell's death.
Robert Lowell once remarked in a letter to Elizabeth Bishop that "you have always been my favorite poet and favorite friend."
BALANCE
‘Four friends catch up over pasta’ poem by Amy Kay | recommended by Anna Brones
When I asked Anna Brones for her friendship recommendations, she mentioned she had just shared this poem with her friends. It beautifully captures an evening with friends, and the various slices of life shared over a meal.
ENVISION
Favorite friendship articles
Since I’ve started researching this topic a few months ago, I’ve come across a number of fascinating pieces recently published on this theme. Either I’m paying closer attention, or friendship is on our collective minds. Here are 7 inspiring reads on this topic:
‘Why Friendships Makes us Healthier’ by Christine Ro (BBC article)
‘A Korean Secret to Keeping Friendships Strong: Savings Groups’ by Euncheol Shin (New York Times paywalled article)
Beautiful insights, Sabrina.
So delighted to be included in this series! And I need to watch Daisies!