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Who We’ll Be After This
Why You Should Tell Your Friends ‘I Love You’
It’s as important to express love to your friends as it is your partner or family. Maybe more.
It hit my phone like a symphonic gong. “We should tell our friends that we love them as much as we say it to our partners,” my best friend, Carmen, texted me one day a couple years ago. The message was at once revelatory and, I thought, fundamentally correct. That it came from a friend who, unlike me, is married and a parent, made it all the more resonant.
That text was a turning point. I haven’t always been the most demonstrative friend, but making a point of routine love declaration changed not just how I see my friendship with her, but all the close relationships in my life. After two years of saying “I love you” to Carmen and other friends, I now see it as a daily or weekly contract for a relationship type not governed by a contract. It’s one of the only ways we have to commit to our closest friends — especially now, when we can’t see them in person the way we used to.
Call it wisdom if you want. As Father Time loosens my grip from the cliffside of Young Adulthood, and I plunge, screaming, toward the valley of How Do You Do, Fellow Kids, my gratitude for friendship has spiked. Or, at least…
