A present-day primer on nurturing,
savoring, and decoding your
relationships with your best pals.
ZONE
Though so many of us are suckers for
romance, friendships may be the
true love stories, the bonds that really
complete us. A friend knows our
secret aspirations, petty aggravations,
every daily triumph and despair.
She’s our memory bank, moral
compass, and reassurance that we
aren’t the only person on earth who’s
equally passionate about season 1 of
Outlander, putting more women in
Congress, and Hot Pockets. A good
friend exerts a gravitational force in our
lives: Even, or especially, in moments
when everything threatens to fly
apart, she pulls us back to ourselves.
“We see our friends, and our friends
see us, with a clarity that other
people don’t—not even our romantic
partners,” says Lauren Mechling,
whose novel How Could She explores
the complexities of female friendship.
“To be known that way is incredibly
important. Friendship helps us define
who we are.”
But these days it’s getting harder
for us to define what friendship itself
is. Social media has turned friend
into a verb, not just a thing that we
are but a thing that we do—or undo,
as in the Orwellian-sounding
unfriend. On Instagram we connect
with strangers who invite us to join
them where we used to hang with our
nearest and dearest: in the dressing
room at Target, on the couch at wine
o’clock. Meanwhile, our actual friends
sometimes look like strangers—
flatteringly filtered, perpetually
#blessed, and often having too much
fun with other filtered, #blessed people
who don’t happen to be us.
In this universe of insta-intimacy, it’s
good to remember that friendship is
still a matter of the heart, not heart
emojis, and as such must be handled
with care. That’s the spirit in which we
crafted our guide to being a better
friend in the digital age. Because in
the vast reaches of cyberspace, the
network that matters most is yours.BY MOLLY SIMMS AND
AMY MACLIN
ILLUSTRATIONS BY
JOHN RITTER
@OPRAHMAGAZINE SEPTEMBER (^201995)