Won’t you be my neighbor?
If we want to live close to friends, why TF aren't we friending the people who already live closest to us?
In the hypermobility chapter of We Should Get Together, I tell the story of how I met two of my besties, and the proximity that made it possible:
1️⃣ With the first, we became roommates shortly after I graduated from college. We were introduced by my existing roomie when we were trying to fill the empty third bedroom in our apartment. Roomie said, “I think you should meet my coworker, I think you two would really get along and he's looking for a place.” So Roomie and I went over to their workplace and we hung out with Coworker. Coworker and I became instant friends, he moved in, and the rest is history. Over the next two years, we shared vegetarian cooking competitions, activist organizing, book trading, silly pranks, heated laughter-full debates, and lots of adventures. I expect that we'll be friends until we're dead and then we'll be friendly ghost homies in the afterlife.
2️⃣ In the second story, I ended up renting a room across the street from an acquaintance that I'd met when we both volunteered at the same nonprofit organization. We became fast friends and instantly started sharing kitchen hangouts and living room conversations. When she needed to move out of her apartment, she was committed to staying on the block, so she found a new apartment two doors down from me, renting the apartment upstairs from another neighbor she was also acquaintances with. The sunny barefoot porch hangouts, Mad Men popcorn nights on the couch, and after work whiskey-ginger heart-to-hearts continued without a hitch.
👉🏾 In both cases, we've been friends for many years longer than the couple of years we spent living within arm's reach of each other. And I'm the dummy who moved away each time! (To be fair, one or both of us would have needed to move on eventually because Life Stuff, so even if I'd stayed firmly in place, continual proximity wasn't a lifetime guarantee.)
😍 It's hard to fully describe the immense joy that comes with having a bestie within shouting distance:
The comfort of a friendly voice to comfort you on tough days and cheer you on when you're celebrating...
Feeling at home around their familiar smiles, laughs, movements, habits...
Knowing what their house smells like…
Knowing that a buddy would come to your aid if that weird noise you heard in the middle of the night is really a serial killer…
Much has been written about the benefits and bliss of living near our friends. Some of my favorite pieces on this topic include:
Anne Helen Petersen's recent essay about the fact that we'd all be happier living closer to friends — and yet we don't.
The Cut's Allison Behringer describes the heartbreak she felt when her best friend moved from NYC to Washington State.
Valery Navarrete, producer of the Life Without Us podcast, moved to live closer to friends and it worked well until they had to move away because of partner/parenting realities. To this conversation, she says, “I would add a big piece around conflict literacy and how our collective move away from interdependence (toward hyper individualism) has reduced our ability to feel comfortable enough in our friend / community relationships to take the leap and do projects like this.”
Get a Move On?
Transplanting a friend to our block (or moving ourselves to their block) can jumpstart Joy Level 5, as evidenced in Priya Rose's story about how she got dozens of friends to move to her Brooklyn neighborhood. Newsletter subscriber Nivi also shared her story about creating a thriving community in her apartment building in this Washington Post story.
When you ask people why they can’t live near their friends, you hear answers like:
The unavailability of affordable housing in the exact location you wish for it, and the constantly rising cost of housing
The generally astronomical cost of living almost everywhere in the U.S.
Career demands and lack the option to work remotely from anywhere you want
Having kids in schools you like and don't want to remove them from
Our society's general lack of understanding and lack of support for friendship as one's primary relational priority
If you're BIPOC, queer, trans, disabled, or otherwise marginalized, there's a lot of places in this country where the locals don't want you to feel safe or welcome
…to name a few. This conversation reminds me of the May 2017 episode of the Harvard Business Review podcast “Why Doesn't More of The Working Class Move For Jobs?” One reason: A lot of people in the working class don't move for jobs because they have strong social support networks right where they are and if they move to take a new job, they'll have to give that up. Without endless supplies of cash to buy necessities (like childcare), moving to a city where you know no one is much more risky endeavor.
For those who can swing it, living close to friends realizes a dream, unlocking a new level of life fulfillment. And for those who want it and can't make it happen, it feels like a special brand of loneliness that seems to have no attainable cure.
And there's another part of the conversation that isn't happening, and it's this question:
Assuming that each of us is an awesome person worthy of friendship, and acknowledging that most of us are capable of (or currently engaged in) maintaining one or more meaningful friendships with people who live far away, then why don't we assume that this is true of the other 20-200 people who live on our current block, thus making the people physically nearest us excellent contenders for friendship?
Or, put more succinctly: If we want to live close to friends, why TF aren't we friending the people who already live closest to us?
Chime in below
I'd love to hear your answer to the highlighted question I posted above, and anything else you'd like to share on this topic, eg:
How open are you to making friends on your block or in your apt building?
What's worked or not worked for you?
Have you moved to live closer to a friend, or vice versa? How did it go?
If you have a concrete plan to live closer to your friends (instead of just sending them Zillow pics of dreamy compounds you can form together), what does that plan look like?