Friendaholic: Confessions of a Friendship Addict

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I had a bit of a weird moment a couple of years ago that turned out to be quite significant because I've thought about it often since. I walking with my friend Sam around Burnley Gardens. We came across this plaque on a bench overlooking a quiet corner of the gardens - In other words, we can't choose our family but we can choose our friends. One of Day's close friends grew up in very difficult family circumstances and stated that friendships were vital for her because they provided a way to '...understand that you can be loved in a different way outside of your family.' My marriage started to disintegrate. Seeing babies being pushed along the street in buggies caused me a stab of psychic pain,’ Elizabeth Day. Photograph: Sophia Spring/The Observer

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. 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. This position may be horribly wrong for some people but it was noted down in the 80's so I'm sure its simple summary has since been superseded but it highlights the fact that if Day had just done a little bit more research she may have been able to really shed some light on male-to-male friendships and by way of contrast female-to-female friendships, and then friendship in general.

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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. 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. 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. 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). Bestselling author, broadcaster and host of the hit podcast How to Fail, Elizabeth Day grew up wanting to make everyone like her.

A generous, companionable guide to a part of life every bit as crucial - and as fraught - as romance or family.’THE OBSERVER -

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We sipped bellinis and talked about our childhoods, our hopes and fears. By the end of those seven days, I’d made one of my dearest friends’: Elizabeth with Joan 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. And then, out of the blue, I was offered a free trip to Las Vegas. It came courtesy of an organisation called the British-American Project, which every year nominates several individuals under the age of 40 from both the UK and the US to attend a conference intended to foster “the special relationship”. I did the interview process and was selected as one of the 2014 intake.It’s such a unique friendship that when it came to writing my new book, Friendaholic: Confessions of a Friendship Addict, I knew I had to include it. Joan has taught me so much about life, but also about what true friendship really is. It doesn’t matter that we live thousands of miles apart, or that we are separated by two decades, or that sometimes we will go months without speaking. Her friendship is offered without obligation or expectation. We offer each other generosity of spirit, no matter the circumstances. I always know she will think the best of me, and there’s a beauty to that when so many friendships become dulled by a sense of misplaced duty. Hearing her say this, I felt I could breathe for the first time in months. I allowed myself to believe that it was going to be OK.