Friendaholic: Confessions of a Friendship Addict

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There’ll be scenarios in this book that you’ll recognise, many of us probably did learn something about relationships during the repeated lockdowns.

This made me very reflective and there were some really strong chapters (the one on fertility/managing female friendships around parenthood in particular).Nor does it reveal her astonishing, self-effacing honesty about her own shortcomings, past and present, in dealing with her relationships. Este livro aborda vários tipos de amizade sempre baseados na experiência pessoal da autora, o que lhe dá um cunho muito próprio, mas também com muita informação estatística e científica. My only real problem with this book (other than the fact that I didn’t think it was possible for a person to have THIS many friends), is the amount of tangents and metaphors packed into each chapter.

Yet you persist with the friendship, driven by the belief that letting it fade would be pretty much a crime against humanity. This one really digs deep, is bravely revealing and makes me reflect on my own friendship habits, issues, and culture. It's a testament to the popularity of Friendaholic that I put it on hold at the library as both a hardback and an audiobook. This is a very personal and relatable account of cultivating and maintaining friendships throughout challenging times and phases of life - not always a smooth or rewarding process, which will resonate with many readers, as with myself. It seems like a sad indictment of society that we even need to try and analyse friendships but the author sums it up herself….There are some neat observations- I particularly liked the references to the solar system - but these are buried beneath a marshmallow of slightly self-indulgent waffle. My cleverest friend thinks you should cultivate loads of them, do all the emotional stuff on sosh media and throw one party a year to control the spend.

I couldn’t take much from it as most of the case studies seem to be about the author feeling overwhelmed by keeping up with friends (which isn’t the case with me! I loved how Day approach this concept, from her early years through to today, and how her friendships (and many of the readers - well certainly me! From exploring her own personal friendships and the distinct importance of each of them in her life, to the unique and powerful insights of others across the globe, Elizabeth asks why there isn't a language that can express its crucial influence on our world. Or, as Day’s friend “Sathnam” puts it, hanging on to friends you don’t like is hardly a compliment to the people you do since “it means you’ll be friends with anyone who’ll have you”.As I immersed myself in this book, I felt the urge to complement it with her "Best Friend Therapy" podcast, and I must confess that it created a full circle experience.

Then, when a global pandemic hit in 2020, she was one of many who were forced to reassess what friendship really meant to them – with the crisis came a dawning realisation: her truest friends were not always the ones she had been spending most time with. Reading this book and the experiences Day shares, made me feel seen and reinforced the idea of it being perfectly, fine (and healthy) to set boundaries.My preference is for once-a-month meet-ups with an option to consider a mini-break in Prague if things go well. Contudo, não vou negar que esperava que o livro abordasse ainda mais vertentes da amizade, algo que só não é possível porque lá está, é baseado na experiência pessoal da autora. For some reason, probably to do with your own fear of abandonment, you carry on going through the motions with what Day dubs “White Wine Wednesdays”.