Friendaholic: Confessions of a Friendship Addict

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I found the topic interesting but I was not a fan of the writer. I couldn't relate to her upper middle class select group of well connected "bright young things" type friends. I loved the exploration of not just what friendship is and means to people but that it's okay to end friendships, just as it is to end other relationships. And that it's not all about how many friends you have but the value you bring to your life.

In brief: Games and Rituals; Friendaholic; The Women Who

Elizabeth Day is a former journalist, now author and podcaster. She is also a self-confessed Friendaholic. In this book, she examines her friendship and her addiction. It is a reflection of her connection to her friends, a compilation of studies of relationships throughout history. (The studies mentioned include Nietzche and Aristotle). Intertwined within the book are the "Friendship Tapes," various interviews with other people about their feelings in friendships. What makes a ‘best friend’? According to a study quoted by the author, the label is defined as involving ‘a high degree of attachment, intimate exchange and support’ - and the researchers found that people with best friends ‘tended to have lower social anxiety, an increased sense of self-worth and fewer symptoms of depression… The label of ‘best friend’ did not have to be mutual to both parties and nor did participants have to name the same person at different stages. Crucially, it seemed to be quality not quantity that had the most impact’. As a society, there is a tendency to elevate romantic love. But what about friendships? Aren't they just as – if not more – important? So why is it hard to find the right words to express what these uniquely complex bonds mean to us? In Friendaholic: Confessions of a Friendship Addict, Elizabeth Day embarks on a journey to answer these questions. Ja hmm…. had er toch echt meer van verwacht! Op sommige delen interessant maar het bleek gewoon echt meer een boek te zijn over haar vriendschappen in plaats van vriendschappen in het algemeen, ik mis toch gewoon de wetenschap een beetje (ook al probeert ze die erbij te halen maar vaak veel te kort). En vooral in het eerste deel vond ik de auteur gewoon nogal onzeker?? Misschien omdat ik precies het tegenovergestelde ben maar girly je kan gewoon nee zeggen tegen mensen en grenzen stellen?Sam asked me what words would be on my plaque (which wasn't weird - she knows me well). Without hesitation, I said "Friend, swimmer, reader." Sam replied, "Not mother?" And no, 'mother' was not what immediately came to mind. Analyse that whatever way you want... actually, it has come up a few times in my own therapy and I'm no closer to understanding my response, short of saying that my friends always have been, and always will be extremely important to me. I think much of it relates to what I witnessed with my grandmother.

Friendaholic: Confessions of a Friendship Addict - 4th Estate Friendaholic: Confessions of a Friendship Addict - 4th Estate

Her only other source on male-to-male friendships is her male friend who doesn't have any. Seen as he doesn't have any or think they're any good they must therefore not exist right? That's just stupid. This male friend of hers who is the chosen expert on male friendship despite not having any says he's the type of guy who hates a stag do. Hmmmmm. I wonder if we should maybe look around for someone who likes the quintessential western male-to-male bonding experience before we just openly dismiss male friendship as a fiction. I turn to psychologist and professor Paul Wright to sum up the main difference between male and female friendships. I really enjoyed this exploration into the value of friendships. As a bit of a friendaholic in my past too, there was a lot here I could relate too - anxious attachment style, need to feel loved and valued and fear of rejection. I, like Elizabeth, felt that quantity somehow reflected on my own self worth, and more friends would stave off the residual fear that adolescent bullying left me with. Then, when a global pandemic hit in 2020, she was one of many who were forced to reassess what friendship really meant to them – with the crisis came a dawning realisation: her truest friends were not always the ones she had been spending most time with. Why was this? Could she rebalance it? Was there such thing as…too many friends? And was she really the friend she thought she was? Relationships/friendships are so complex and it is reassuring to read something, in an easy way, that means your experiences aren’t that unusual after all! Friendships are important and can be life-altering! I was most interested in the chapters dealing with Friendship and Fertility. Personally, I have also dealt with fertility issues and am childless. I felt I lost friends when they became parents. Other friends avoid all discussions of pregnancy or children around me. Assumable as they do not know what to say around me. So, in the book, I loved reading about another woman's experiences in a similar situation. Suddenly, I felt seen! I realised that I wasn't paranoid and that my fertility issues affected my friendships.

Friendship is unique in not having anything - no birthdays, no anniversaries, no ceremonies to mark it. This means it's also uniquely difficult to manage the development of a friendship in a careful and caring fashion. scientists have routinely overlooked the study of friendship because it has no reproductive value... But if friendship has no survival value, it certainly adds value to survival. We choose friendship - and this, in Aristotle's view, makes it a higher-level love because of the freedom of intention that lies behind it. Academic and scientific lines of reasoning are used in this book to provide a bit of starch to an otherwise completely subjective book. Given that science is used as seasoning it shouldn't be surprising that there is little rigor cast over the facts chosen to support or prompt Day's positions. Of particular note was the use of the 2019 Snapchat Friendship report. I'm all for corporate entities creating qualitative studies with their platforms, we can always do with more research, but I'm also incredibly sceptical of the results. Day unfortunately applies no critical analysis whatsoever. Here's the extract about the Snapchat Friendship Report. I also found the structure of the book slightly frustrating. I thought it was clever to have a different friend for each chapter and the inserted friend diaries from other people she'd interviewed were good too (though they should only have been inserted at the end of chapters not in the middle of one). Unfortunately, the friends don't stay to their chapters and some are far more interesting and more important for Day and hence pop up more regularly and say things of more interest. Because friends from later in the book pop up before their chapter I found the need for a cast list at the start of the book, like a Shakespearean play. I needed a reference to turn to every time Ellen but not Ellie or Lizzie, or Lisa, or Lou popped into the narrative. Was there a Becca and a Becs?