The Friendship Recession: Why 1 in 8 Americans Has No Close Friends | Flip the Box Ep 10

<p>If something big happened to you tonight, who would you call? Not text. Call. And the harder question: who would call you?</p><p>This week I&#39;m taking on the friendship recession. In 1990, 3% of Americans said they had no close friends. By 2021 it was 12%, and the research since keeps pointing the same direction. Men have been hit hardest: the share with at least six close friends was cut nearly in half in three decades.</p><p>We blame our phones, COVID, remote work, and being busy. I think something else is going on. We&#39;ve become incredibly good at protecting our time and increasingly bad at sharing our lives. So I&#39;m going after some sacred advice in this one: &quot;protect your peace,&quot; &quot;if they wanted to, they would,&quot; &quot;match their energy.&quot; Sometimes that&#39;s wisdom. Applied to every friendship, it&#39;s a performance review. That&#39;s not a boundary. That&#39;s a standoff.</p><p>I also walk through my FLIP method as a friendship practice, talk about why the friendship recession follows us to work, and leave you with one challenge: pick one person this week and give them a date. Because friendship doesn&#39;t happen in the word sometime. Friendship happens on the calendar.</p><p><strong>KEY TAKEAWAYS</strong></p><ul><li><p>We&#39;re not experiencing a shortage of people. We&#39;re experiencing a shortage of practice.</p></li><li><p>Good chemistry may be effortless. Good friendship isn&#39;t. It runs on repetition, inconvenience, and somebody deciding to show up.</p></li><li><p>Boundary advice applied to every friendship turns relationships into performance reviews. Two people waiting for the other to prove it isn&#39;t a boundary, it&#39;s a standoff.</p></li><li><p>Observation is not connection. Knowing what someone is doing is not the same as knowing how someone is doing.</p></li><li><p>Not every connection needs to become a best friend. Dinner friends, walking friends, twice-a-year friends, and meme friends all count. Build a bigger table.</p></li><li><p>The friendship recession follows us to work. Bringing people together is an event. Getting them connected is a business strategy.</p></li></ul><p><strong>LINKS &amp; RESOURCES</strong></p><p>Flip the Box® with Shari Leid is for leaders and entrepreneurs who have built something impressive and still feel disconnected underneath it all. Each week, TEDx speaker, five-time author, and connection coach Shari Leid helps you connect to yourself, your career, and your