if you, like many others, crave deeper connections and friendships, maybe you can find them here
JUL 27, 2026
I wish I weren’t such an intense friend. Long expanses of passionate closeness punctuated by vulnerability and depth can be followed by brittle silence. Inside my very small inner circle, my friends find an endless ocean of warmth, empathy and generosity. Until I feel crossed, and then I am sharp, aloof and unreachable.
If you’ve been in and then found yourself out, it’s notable. And if you exist on the outer edges of my circle, there lies a distinct boundary. It’s my nature; I am extremely protective and private in ways anyone outside my circles can’t know, and I think my Leo-sun Scorpio-moon astrology explains a lot about it.
Last year a lot changed for me, including the natural closure of some long-term close friendships. The endings were easy. We had grown in various directions, and instead of nurturing the friendships, we dropped the effort required to maintain any kind of relationship and allowed them to drift apart. New friendships that once had been more distant naturally closed in and created a tight circle around me.
Due to my entirely unplanned nomadic life the past year, my closest friendships have been sustained through long voice notes and even longer phone calls. It thrills me that we can work the phone for hours like we’re still 15. Friendships, in lieu of family, have always been extremely important to me, and making new friendships is something I prioritise and pour my heart and time into.
One of the most common questions readers send in is about having friends and how to make them past college/university years. People love to lament that making friends in your 30’s/40’s etc, is hard.
I disagree.
There’s a lot of chat about how friendships require friction, but I think it’s more nuanced than that. “Friction” has become a catch-all for awareness, intention, contemplation, effort or sacrifice. The distinctions are important. What friendships really need is openness, grace and flexibility.
We need relationships, friends, and all other kinds of connections. Though it sometimes feels that these connections are assigned at random, it is never true; they are always the product of someone’s efforts. Not everyone is meant to be your friend, and not anyone deserves to be in your inner circle. We need to practice discernment. But before we can even do that, we need to put ourselves into situations that reveal us to potential friendships.
I think what is happening is that people are exposing themselves to fewer new experiences, places and people. In our modern lives, many of us are so focused on getting where we need to go and completing the tasks we need to do that we never interact with the people around us along the way. The same happens as we live more of our everyday lives online. We do not get as much exposure to others existing around us and the potential for all these small interactions that can lead to friendship.
Location and environment also play a role. Some places are much more open or contain more like-minded individuals with whom striking up a friendship is easier than others. It took me four months in Bali to make any meaningful friendships. A lot of people here are particularly transient, self-absorbed, and have inflated egos, so they don’t feel genuine to me. Most people I’ve met here are all deeply alone (like the Playboy model) even when they are surrounded by people. When I finally did meet a woman whom I could actually talk to, at the end of our first day at the beach together she giggled nervously, “Thank you for being normal!” and I really understood what she meant. Comparatively, it took me 3 weeks in New York and Paris.
All of my friendships were created through building a sense of familiarity by showing up to the same places, doing similar things, or chatting online over and over again. In this digital age, a lot of my friendships started online. In instagram comments, on substack notes, through dm’s. This is one of the many reasons that I write. Many of the most interesting people that I have come to love I did not first meet in person. I think that the best way to build new relationships of every kind is to do something together. Start a project, join an association, become penpals.
Let me invite you to something.
If you, like many others, crave deeper connections and friendships, maybe you can find them here. Penpal is your invitation to write to a stranger and, in doing so, find your way back to yourself and to closeness with others.
If you’re worried that you’ll be the first to try this, just know that 17 people have already connected through penpal. You can share more of what you are like, what you love, what you want, with a potential new soul-sister/brother. If you have art, or writing, or projects of any kind, you can share them with a stranger across the world.
Who knows who that stranger might become to you or what they might tend or know.
