How to make friends (and keep them) | Sheridan Voysey

Sheridan Voysey says every fourth person is regularly lonely, and warns that loneliness can increase anxiety and depression, diminish meaning and happiness, weaken the heart, and shorten lifespan. Close friendships, by contrast, can help counter these harms and support longer, healthier, happier lives. He argues that friendship deserves attention not only as a source of companionship but as an important influence on health and well-being.

Adult friendships are harder to sustain amid mobility and busyness, Voysey says, and culture has given romance more attention than friendship. Friendship Labs describes a friend as someone you can talk to, depend on, grow with, and enjoy. Citing Robin Dunbar, Voysey presents friendship as a major influence on health, well-being, and happiness, making it more than a pleasant extra in life.

Voysey proposes treating friendship as a vocation: a meaningful, even sacred, calling that merits deliberate effort and skill. That means making time for friends rather than letting screens take priority. Citing ONS figures, he says the average person spends five hours a day watching streaming video, while a text takes 10 seconds, a catch-up call about 10 minutes, and meeting up about an hour a week. His comparison highlights the gap between the time available for connection and the time many people devote to it.

Friendship also requires sustained contact. Voysey says about 50 hours together can move an acquaintance toward casual friendship, with deeper friendship requiring more time. Time alone, however, is not enough: close relationships involve vulnerability, sacrifice, and an ongoing exchange of giving and receiving. A relationship in which one person only gives is charity, he says, while one in which someone only receives is dependence. Mutuality is what allows care to become friendship.

Voysey illustrates that change through his family’s relationship with Helmut. After Voysey’s father was diagnosed with cancer in 2018, Helmut drove him to chemotherapy every Tuesday and Thursday for two years and organized meals, lawn care, and bin collection. His care began as a sacrifice for Voysey’s parents, but the relationship became mutual as they also listened to and supported him. Voysey’s father’s cancer battle ended in September 2021, and Helmut carried his coffin. The story shows how friendship can grow through practical support and reciprocal care, while Voysey cautions that not every charitable relationship can or should become a friendship.

Friendship, in Voysey’s account, can bring change when life feels stagnant and continuity when it is disrupted by crisis. He predicts a friendship “revolution” if people treat friendship as a vocation, put friends before screens, and embrace mutual giving and receiving. The implication is that stronger friendships do not arise simply from wanting connection: they depend on time, intentional effort, vulnerability, and care that flows in both directions.