Friendaholic: Confessions of a Friendship Addict

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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." The read was cathartic and emotively connective, particularly in defining friendship expectations and how difficult it is to sever one that is not serving you. It was also interesting to consider the language ad expectations of friendship and how they don't always align. But the most moving of all was the passages on losing a friend to death and the terrible loss that brings, especially when they feel like a different kind of soul mate. The grief in that chapter was palpable, Blue Badge holders and those with access requirements can be dropped off on the Queen Elizabeth Hall Slip Road off Belvedere Road (the road between the Royal Festival Hall and the Hayward Gallery). Likely, the book exists to provoke this sort of concern – to draw attention to an aspect of life that has gone unexamined because “we’ve spent so much time heroising romantic love”. Whether it’s wise to scrutinise friendship in the way we’ve scrutinised romantic love is debatable but Day does a good job of convincing us the topic is interesting and worthy of at least some analysis. A drop-off point at the Royal Festival Hall (30 metres) has been created for visitors who are unable to walk from alternative car parks. Our Access Scheme

I loved how Day approach this concept, from her early years through to today, and how her friendships (and many of the readers - well certainly me!) have evolved. But it's also sprinkled with a lot of research studies and historical references on this type of relationship in comparison to romantic ones. There was nothing in this book that was new to me but I enjoyed the opportunity to reflect on my own friendships. Day notes that most of her lasting friendships were '...sparked not by a shared hobby but by an initial frisson of kindred feeling.' It's the same for me and I always think of the Anne's (of Green Gables) definition of a 'kindred spirit' when I think of my very closest friends.At times I felt annoyed by the writing style, for some reason, it felt try-hard and contrived at times to me. Especially when she was talking about her childhood, it felt like she was forcing together narratives to make a pretty and poetic point. I got that taste throughout the book. She also made all of her friends seem SO perfect. And i get it, they are her friends. But shoot, people have flaws. it's okay to name them. Not all of your friends are the best humans on the planet. And on that note, she was often too self-deprecating for my taste. it was kind of hard to read at times In summary, you’ll end up wanting to be Elizabeth’s friend, but also being okay with the fact that that’s not going to happen. Rarely have I felt so much goodwill towards someone I’m unlikely to ever meet. For level access to the Royal Festival Hall from the Queen Elizabeth Hall Slip Road off Belvedere Road, please use the Southbank Centre Square Doors. The JCB Glass Lift is situated at this entrance and will take you to all floors. All floors are accessible from the main foyer on Level 2. If you need further assistance, our Visitor Assistants are here to help you. She was determined to become a Good Friend. And, in many ways, she did. But in adulthood she slowly realised that it was often to the detriment of her own boundaries and mental health.

Best: Superlative of good. Better than all others. my best friend. : good or useful in the highest degree : most excellent. For any reader yet to encounter Katherine Heiny, this sparky new story collection provides a joyous introduction. Its title encompasses her protagonists’ antics in pursuit of – or flight from – love. They’re a somewhat jaded bunch with awkward pasts they never seem able to break free of. Nor can they stop yearning. And so a driving examiner only partially succeeds in remaining realistic about her workplace crush; a receptionist wears a taffeta bridesmaid dress to the office; a New York journalist, stranded by snow in her loathed Michigan hometown, finds sozzled closure in an airport bar. The deadpan delivery, the bittersweet wisdom, the sublime farce – it’s all here. Unfortunately, for me, the book is most interesting where it is least like a confessional and most like a scientific exploration of friendship. For example the discussion of Cicero's De Amicitia or Dunbar's friendship circles are fascinating. What's less fascinating to me is Day's hand wringing about what text message she should send a shitty friend who she doesn't really like.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. 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?

This is the argument made by the American historian Christopher Lasch. As a staunch critic of mass consumption, which he viewed as a threat to the integrity of the individual, Lasch was particularly attuned to the ways in which it discouraged “initiative and self-reliance” and promoted “dependence” and “passivity”. “Dependent” people, he wrote in The Minimal Self (1984), are easily converted into consumers of therapy, which is “designed to ease [their] ‘adjustment’ to the realities of industrial life”. Therapy-speak, then, is the language of the consumer, and consumers do not make for independent thinkers, let alone free ones. Don’t miss the opportunity to bring your own best friends or newest acquaintances along to this unforgettable evening of intimate, enlightening and important conversation.From exploring her own personal friendships and the distinct importance of each of them in her life, to the unique and powerful insights of others across the globe, Elizabeth asks why there isn’t yet a language that can express its crucial influence on our world. Everyone should read this book. Seriously. I can’t think of a better guide to opening up the discussion of all those relationships that, after all, massively outnumber our romantic and, for most of us, family connections. If you’re young, you’ll learn a lot about plotting a steady path in your future friendships. If, like me, you’re older, it will help you to unravel much of the confusion, frustration and, yes, grief you may have been carrying on your shoulders for far too long.

I gave the book 4 stars because it was fun to read and it did help me reflect on the topic. But dang, so much about this book annoyed me! I also couldn't help but to think that while the author was presenting her own ideas, she kind of felt like a mouthpiece for liberal culture. Don't get me wrong, I'm also a liberal, and I support therapy and activism. But it felt like she had taken in everything someone on the left is supposed to believe and just shot it out of her writing without ever critically asking herself what is true. I had the sense that she had never done the work to transcend her culture, and so. her views didn't ultimately feel original. It is often said that what passes as left-wing politics these days is just red-washed liberalism, so absolutely has the critique of mass production and mass consumption been abandoned. It is perhaps for this reason that therapy-speak has gained such traction. Rather than recognising it as the language of passive consumerism, it is the left that has most vociferously promulgated therapy-speak – no doubt mistaking it as an instrument of progress. They are yet to discover that the woolly language of therapy works to cushion us from hard but necessary truths. Or that it sets up an impossible series of false expectations about what we are due from this world. They do not discern in the mechanically repeated phrases “that’s so triggering”, or “I feel gaslit”, the whirr of the production line and the chink of the tin as it is lifted off the shelf. Having seen the light about her past self-sabotage, Day is determined to be ruthless in the future. She suggests, not quite jokingly, that it might be a good idea to send potential friends the equivalent of a pre-nup before agreeing to a first coffee date. On this document (you could have it laminated) you would list what you can and can’t offer a new person in your life. Mine, for instance, would explain that I don’t do phone calls but I will answer texts immediately. That I prefer cinema dates to ones in bars and that I don’t do hugs (it’s nothing personal, I just don’t). I am bad at birthday cards but good at emergency call-outs. My preference is for once-a-month meet-ups with an option to consider a mini-break in Prague if things go well.Meet Elizabeth Day, recovering “friendaholic”. While she was no queen bee at school, Day became an indiscriminate collector of pals in adulthood, reaching her 40s before questioning the urge. This unabashedly personal book charts her attempts to “course-correct” by analysing the meaning of friendship. She’s helped by five of her closest confidants, including journalist Sathnam Sanghera and broadcaster Clemency Burton-Hill, with first-person takes from the likes of a neurodivergent Iraqi woman and the sixtysomething chairman of a Norfolk “men’s shed”. It’s a generous, companionable guide to a part of life every bit as crucial – and as fraught – as romance or family. The Women Who Saved the English Countryside But the above is completely symptomatic of this book. The data is interesting if interpreted the right way but it's not useful if you just throw it out there without examining it properly. Why not explore why people from other cultures report having more best friends? And this is the weakness of the confessional, everything is limited to the experience of the author. 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 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? That Friendaholic will be a commercial success is a foregone conclusion. Many people will feel seen by this book. They will find in Day’s relatable prose an everywoman figure who, like them, has survived the harrowing experience of being ghosted by a friend (few, though, will have the opportunity to punish said friend in print); they may feel inspired by her application of “friendship contracts” – in which both sides are explicit about what they can offer to a new relationship and what they want in return; they will probably see themselves in Day’s “charitable” treatment of friends she no longer likes but continues to see out of the kindness of her heart.