The Friendship Salon Secret
So you’ve just made a new friend, and you’re bubbling with excitement over how cool they are and how you seem destined for friendship heaven. But you’re afraid that this friendship will fizzle out just like it did the last time… with that bubbly girl from yoga class, or that hilarious guy from ultimate frisbee, or that neighbor that you were certain you’d become besties with (you live in the same apartment building for god’s sake). But each of those friendships fizzled out and faded away like steam escaping a latte that was left out in the cold. It sucks. But it doesn’t have to be this way!
To write my book on adult friendship, We Should Get Together, I spent five years studying what makes friendships succeed or fail, and today I’m giving you one of the best tips I’ve found for keeping a new friendship going. You ready? Here it is…
To keep your friendships going strong, take a lesson from the salon:
💅🏾 Book your next appointment before leaving your current one.
Never let a conversation or hangout end with an open-ended "let's connect again soon! 👋🏾." Nope. Take out your calendars and commit to your next date before you say goodbye.
One of my newest friends, S, and I are super committed to this practice. We recently chatted about the factors that helped our new friendship form strong roots. Aside from having lots of things in common, a similar sense of humor, similar creative practices, complementary curiosities, and never running out of stuff to talk about, we ascribe to The Friendship Salon model of prioritizing friend time.
If we hang up in a hurry or accidentally say goodbye without booking our next hangout time, we text a follow-up within a couple of hours with proposed dates for our next hangout. Once we confirm a date and time, one of us sends the other a calendar invite to ensure that the time slot doesn't get forgotten or snatched up by something else.
Bonus: When your next hangout is already scheduled, it gives you something to look forward to, and it keeps the momentum of your friendship energy rolling onward. This practice is especially useful with super busy, super flaky, or super spacey friends.
