About a 8-minute read, just right for a cozy corner moment ◡̈
Find the TL;DR at the bottom!

As humans, we all seek connection and belonging. This drive is not just emotional or social, but biological. Humans are wired for connection, and feeling relationally connected plays a central role in wellbeing across the lifespan (Holt-Lunstad, 2018; Holt-Lunstad, 2024). Feeling connected helps us feel grounded, seen, and a little less alone as we move through the world.

Romantic and family relationships tend to get the most screen time when we talk about connection. We’re encouraged to think about how to support them, how to deepen them, how to navigate repair, and how to expect them to shift across different seasons of life as circumstances change.
Friendships play an equally powerful role in our sense of belonging, even if they’re not always talked about in the same way. They often hold shared history, emotional safety, and meaning. Friendships can be places where we feel most like ourselves, where connection feels more spacious, and where comfort and play live side by side. These relationships shape us, steady us, and often help regulate us more than we realize.

And yet, friendships don’t always come with the same shared language or guidance as other significant relationships. Even though they move through seasons, change over time, and offer opportunities for repair, deepening, appreciation, and celebration, we’re rarely taught how to talk about needs, boundaries, support, or change within them. As a result, much gets left unspoken or assumed, not because care is missing, but because many of us haven’t been given clear models for how to name these things in friendship.

Friendship as Belonging, Support, + Regulation

Friendships often become places where we feel known, chosen, and emotionally held, where belonging is felt rather than explained. Feeling supported and understood by close others is associated with greater emotional steadiness and wellbeing, especially during periods of stress, transition, or uncertainty (Holt-Lunstad, 2018; Reis et al., 2017).

These relationships don’t reduce stress by fixing or removing difficulty. Instead, they help us feel less alone inside what we’re carrying. When someone is present with us, responsive, and attuned, the nervous system often settles, even if the circumstances themselves haven’t changed. This is part of how co-regulation works. Connection softens the edges of hard experiences and allows us to stay connected to ourselves and to others at the same time (Porges, 2018; Dana, 2021).

Over time, friendships can become places where our systems learn what steadiness feels like in connection. Being with someone who listens, responds, and stays emotionally present can help the body settle, even when life is still demanding. Co-regulation shows up here not as a technique, but as a felt sense of being accompanied. When connection is responsive and attuned, it often becomes easier to breathe, think, and stay connected to ourselves, especially during moments of stress or uncertainty.

Friendships also quietly shape our sense of identity over time. Feeling valued, recognized, and reflected back in close relationships influences how we understand ourselves, in part because our sense of self develops through how we are met by others (Thoits, 2018). When friends see us clearly and respond with care, it supports a more stable and coherent sense of who we are.

Emotional steadiness grows here as the nervous system learns that it’s safe to be seen and to stay connected, even as feelings shift or life feels uncertain. In this way, friendships don’t just help us cope with life. They help anchor us in who we are and where we belong.

Friendship as a Secure Base

Many adult friendships function as a kind of secure base. From an attachment-informed perspective, a secure base is a relationship that offers enough emotional safety and responsiveness to allow for both closeness and independence (Johnson, 2019; Overall et al., 2022).

When friendships feel secure, people are often more able to be vulnerable rather than just honest, to show up imperfectly, and to trust that the relationship can hold change. This sense of safety creates room for laughter, play, shared enjoyment, and ease, while also making it more possible to lean on the relationship when difficult moments arise.
This kind of safety supports co-regulation over time, allowing friendships to be places where people can settle, recover, and reconnect, rather than constantly bracing for disconnection.
When appreciation and care are named over time, friendships often feel steadier, making it easier to trust that the relationship can hold both closeness and change.

Secure friendships don’t stay the same over time. What makes them steady isn’t sameness, but flexibility. Knowing that a friendship can stretch and adapt allows people to ebb and flow through different seasons without fearing that change itself means loss. In this way, security supports both connection and growth.

Why Tending to Our Friendships Matters

Friendships, like all living relationships, respond to stress, transitions, health, capacity, grief, joy, and timing. They shift as our lives shift, often in subtle ways.

Tending to our friendships isn’t about keeping things the same. It’s about staying connected to one another as the relationship continues to move and change. When attention is present, friendships often feel easier to inhabit, offering clarity, emotional safety, and a sense of being known, even as rhythms or availability shift.

In many friendships, change happens quietly. Needs evolve, energy fluctuates, and shared understanding sometimes lags behind lived experience. In those moments, connection can feel a little less clear, not because something is wrong, but because relationships are always in motion. Feeling emotionally responded to over time plays an important role in closeness and trust, especially as circumstances shift (Reis et al., 2017).

When Care Is Assumed Instead of Named

Many friendships tend to rely on assumed understanding, especially when there is shared history or long-standing closeness. While this can feel familiar and comfortable, it can also make it harder to notice when needs shift or when something tender wants attention.

When care goes unnamed, people may hold longings quietly, minimize their own needs, or carry questions internally about how to interpret changes in the relationship. Over time, this ambiguity can make connection feel less settled, even when affection and care are still present.

Feeling seen, understood, and valued plays a key role in closeness and relational security over time (Reis et al., 2017). Naming care and appreciation helps create shared meaning, reduces guesswork, and supports a clearer sense of connection between people.

In this way, care becomes something the relationship can feel, rather than something each person has to assume or interpret on their own.

In the Be.coming

Friendship isn’t a static achievement. It’s an ongoing process of being with one another as life unfolds.

Sometimes connection looks like conversation or reflection. Other times it looks like shared laughter, familiar routines, or simply staying present through a season of change. There’s no single right way to be in friendship.

What matters is the willingness to remain connected to the relationship itself as both people grow, shift, and become. Making room for that movement is part of the becoming.

For Those That Need The TL;DR

**Why friendship matters**
Friendships play a vital role in how we experience connection and belonging. They shape how grounded, seen, and accompanied we feel as we move through everyday life, even if they’re not always talked about in the same way as other relationships.

**Belonging, support, and regulation**
Friendships often support emotional steadiness by helping us feel less alone inside what we’re carrying. Through presence, responsiveness, and attunement, these relationships can support co-regulation, allowing us to settle, breathe, and stay connected to ourselves and others during stress or uncertainty.
**Secure base**
Many friendships function as a secure base, offering enough safety to allow for closeness, independence, vulnerability, and play. This steadiness makes it easier for friendships to move and change over time without the bond feeling threatened.

What tending to friendships offers
Staying connected as friendships shift can bring clarity, emotional safety, and ease. When attention and care are present, relationships are more likely to feel inhabitable and less shaped by assumption, even as rhythms or availability change.

Naming care and appreciation
When care and appreciation are named rather than assumed, friendships often feel clearer and more secure. Naming what matters helps create shared meaning and supports a felt sense of connection over time.

The be.coming
Friendship is an ongoing process of being with one another as life unfolds. Making room for change, presence, and mutual care allows relationships to remain flexible, meaningful, and alive.

References

Dana, D. (2021). Anchored: How to befriend your nervous system using polyvagal theory. Sounds True.

Holt-Lunstad, J. (2018). Why social relationships are important for physical health: A systems approach to understanding and modifying risk and protection. Annual Review of Psychology, 69, 437–458. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-122216-011902

Holt-Lunstad, J. (2024). Social connection as a critical factor for mental and physical health: Evidence, trends, challenges, and future implications. World Psychiatry, 23(3), 312–332. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.21224

Johnson, S. M. (2019). Attachment theory in practice. Guilford Press.

Overall, N. C., Pietromonaco, P. R., & Simpson, J. A. (2022). Buffering and spillover of adult attachment insecurity in close relationships. Nature Reviews Psychology, 1, 101–111. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-021-00011-1

Porges, S. W. (2018). The pocket guide to the polyvagal theory. Norton.

Reis, H. T., Clark, M. S., & Holmes, J. G. (2017). Perceived partner responsiveness as an organizing construct in the study of intimacy and closeness. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 12(1), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691616682564

Thoits, P. A. (2018). Mechanisms linking social ties and support to physical and mental health. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 59(4), 467–485. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022146518798698

Gentle Reminder

This blog is meant to be educational and it is not a replacement for therapy or professional care. If something here stirs big feelings, I encourage you to bring it to a trusted therapist or support in your community. You do not have to sort through it all alone.

Be.coming With Each Other, Part One: Why Friendship Matters