This month in friendship: March 2025
Things to read, watch, and send to your besties
In case it’s not obvious, we think about friendship a lot. This also (blessedly) means that our feeds and algorithms are full of friendship and community-related content.
To share some of these treasures with you, we publish this monthly collection! Think of it as part news update about friendships, part recommendations corner, with a sprinkling of lovely little things to send to your dearest friends to remind them how much they matter.
We’re thinking about: Neuroqueering your friendships
One of our goals with Forevers is to encourage people to rethink societal norms around friendship — freeing yourself from what is expected to build deep, fulfilling relationships that work for you.
That’s why we loved a recent piece from
of on neuroqueering your friendships. We’ve dipped our toes in the idea of queering your friendships before, and Hanna expands on this from her ADHD and autistic lens, offering fresh suggestions for engaging with your friends that are inspiring whether you’re neurodivergent or not.A few of our favorite ideas from Hanna’s post include [with our thoughts in brackets]:
Explore (together) what friendship means to you. Ask big questions like “what makes this friendship work?” and “how is this friendship different from others?” and “what role does this friendship play in your life?” and “what is important to you in friendship?” [We are all about more vulnerability and explicit communication in friendships.]
Create scripts. Use established phrases or scripts to express feelings or navigate tricky moments in the friendship. “Tell me all the weird shit you have going on,” instead of “how are you?”. Say goodbye abruptly without social niceties like “let’s do this again sometime.” Just a “this was fun, goodbye.” is enough. [One of ours? We regularly just text each other “meow” as a low-mental-effort way of checking in or seeking connection.]
Aim for reciprocity where both people feel valued and supported without expecting neuronormative forms of “equal effort.” It means creating a dynamic where both friends feel valued and cared for, but without holding each other to rigid or neurotypical ideas of fairness or "equal effort." Acknowledge that people have different capacities, needs, and ways of showing up. [It’s also worth thinking about cycles of reciprocity — there may be seasons where Sam needs to ask a little more and give a little less, but I know there will be times it swings the other way and trust in the grand scheme of our lives together it all levels out.]
We highly recommend reading the whole list of ideas and picking out one or two that resonate to try in your friendships. For a bonus, check out Hanna’s follow-up post about some of the internal work that may be helpful if you’re struggling to find your forever.
Forevers of the month: The friends behind “bestie row”
I don’t know about you, but I constantly talk to my friends about starting a commune so we can all be neighbors or dream about living together in old age.
Well, this month we learned about a group of friends who actually did it.
Four couples who have been friends for decades decided to build a vacation retreat where they could all make memories together. The compound includes a tiny home for each couple plus a common building with a big kitchen, plenty of gathering space, and bunk beds for other friends who want to tag along. Word on the street is that the plan is to eventually retire there and grow old together.
Obviously, there’s privilege in being able to do this. But we also think it’s a good reminder that, just as owning a home with your spouse can live on the mood board, you are allowed to have big dreams with your friends and work to make them a reality.
“If you can successfully navigate everyone’s ideas for what this can be, this kind of project can be an amazing experience and the perfect way to stay connected,” Jodi Zipp, one of the friends, told Outside Magazine.
Currently consuming: A good hang with friends
I’ve been craving a lot of low-key girlfriend time lately, and feel like Amy Poehler’s new podcast, Good Hang, scratches the itch for times I can’t be with my friends.
In the first episode, she chats with her “comedy wife” and longtime friend Tina Fey. They breezily gab about their special nicknames for each other, how good friends should be truth tellers about the habits we need to watch out for, and coming up in comedy together. At the end, Amy shared that she had learned things about Tina she didn’t know even after 30 years, making me want to interview my forevers just to understand them better.
I’m very excited to listen to the episode with her Parks and Rec bestie Rashida Jones (who she also apparently has a special nickname for). The world is hard enough right now — I’m here for more media that just lets me get a peek into good friends having a good time.
ICYMI: A Forevers recap!
We shared a stupid simple trick that will help you see your friends more.
We asked you to tell us all about when you met your besties. (We would still love more stories if you want to share here!!)
We suggested a spring-themed creative activity to express some things you love about your forever.
We’re still new here and want to build a huge community of forever friends. If you have a few in your life who you think would enjoy our musings on friendship, we’d love it if you’d share it with them!
Did we miss some great friendship content this month? Leave a comment sharing your treasures!
Thank you for sharing my ideas! I can’t stop smiling at the fact that you text “meow” to each other! That is such a precious cute idea! Do you remember how that started?