Maintaining friendships

Friendships fade without small, regular effort. Reach out more than feels natural, be positive and supportive, and keep spending time together.

• Evidence: Some

The idea

Adult friendships rarely end with an argument. They drift. Work, partners, children and moving house all take time, and the friend you used to see every week becomes someone you see once a year.

The research on what keeps friendships going is mostly survey-based, but it is consistent. In three studies, researchers identified four kinds of maintenance behavior: positivity (being pleasant and fun to be with), supportiveness (helping and encouraging), openness (talking about personal things) and interaction (actually doing things together). Best friends did more of all four than close or casual friends. Effort tended to be roughly equal on both sides, and what each friend did predicted how satisfied and committed the pair felt [1].

Time together matters too. In two studies, one with adults who had recently moved and one with first-year students, more hours together went with closer friendships, and time spent on leisure activities together also predicted closeness [3].

Why bother? In a survey of over 270,000 adults, valuing friendship was linked to better health and wellbeing, especially in older age. In a separate study that followed about 7,500 older adults, support from friends, as well as from a spouse and children, predicted higher wellbeing over eight years [4]. Strain from friendships predicted more chronic illness, so quality matters, not just quantity. These are associations: healthier, happier people may also find it easier to keep friends.

How to use it

1. Pick the friendships you want to keep. You can’t keep up with everyone. Choose a handful who matter most. The friendship check-in helps you list them and see who you’ve lost touch with.
2. Reach out, even briefly. A two-line message, a photo that reminded you of them, a link. In a series of preregistered experiments, people consistently underestimated how much others appreciated being contacted. The gap was biggest when the contact was a surprise, such as from someone they hadn’t heard from in a while [2]. So the friend you feel awkward messaging is the one most likely to be pleased.
3. Make plans with a time and place. “We should catch up” rarely happens. “Walk on Saturday at 10?” does.
4. Build in a regular slot. A monthly dinner, a weekly call on the way home, a standing game night. Regular, low-key time adds up and saves you organizing from scratch.
5. Do things, not just talk. Shared activities were linked to closer friendships [3]. Cook together, go for a run, watch the match.
6. Be the positive, supportive one. Ask about the thing they mentioned last time. Turn up when something goes wrong. Share something real about your own life too [1].

Common mistakes

• Waiting for them to get in touch. They may be waiting for you. Assume your message will be welcome [2].
• Thinking you need a reason. “Saw this and thought of you” is enough.
• Saving it all for big catch-ups. Rare long evenings are nice, but frequent short contact keeps the friendship warm in between.
• Only talking about problems. Support matters, but so does being fun. Positivity was one of the core maintenance behaviors [1].
• Keeping every friendship going out of guilt. A friendship that mostly brings strain may not be worth the same effort [4].

If you’ve already lost touch with someone, see Reconnecting with an old friend.

Evidence

Rated Some. The finding that people underestimate how welcome a message is comes from several preregistered experiments [2]. The research on maintenance behaviors and time together relies on self-reported surveys, and the hours-together study included many first-year students [1][3]. The link between friendship and wellbeing comes from large surveys and one long-term study, which show associations, not cause and effect [4].

Topics: Friendship, Relationships, Social, Long Term

Sources checked 4 October 2026. Spot a mistake? Tell us.