#11: How to Be a More Supportive Friend + Georgie Guest-Edits the Weekly REPORT

A part of friendship that has gotten more nuanced over the years, plus Georgie guest-edits our Weekly REPORT and muses on nostalgia.

This is one of my favorite issues so far (and a long one, click ‘expand’ to view the full newsletter), because this is a topic that my friends and I often discuss. Also, I have another surprise GUEST today! A dear online friend of mine, Georgie (who you may know on Instagram or TikTok as @georgiemorley), did our Weekly REPORT, along with some fun quick-fire questions to get to know her!

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One of my best friends from college and I often wax nostalgic for the days of college, for one specific reason: how EASY it was to see your friends and be up to date on pretty much every gnarly detail of their lives, especially if you lived in the same dorm building, because you could barge into their room 10 seconds after thinking of something funny you wanted to tell them. The proximity, the lesser amount of personal adult responsibilities outside of your college bubble, and built-in social time through shared activities and parties; these factors all provided an effortless closeness that is much harder to achieve in adult life.

When you think about it that way, it’s understandable why a good amount of friendships begin to falter after college (or even if not college, a sport, a workplace, somewhere with a built-in community). Without the built-in socialization time and proximity, some friendships become harder to maintain and we begin to separate the friendships that were cherished for what they were, while they lasted, and the friendships that we give our efforts to keep building in a new setting.

A running joke on social media, but something a lot of us I’d wager genuinely ache for if it were possible.

But just like how being a supportive partner in a romantic relationship doesn’t always come by instinct, learning how to be a more supportive friend, as we all get older and traverse through various chapters of our lives, demands growth and refinement from us. Usually starting in our late 20’s, everyone starts diverging into their individual life trajectories, and that’s where we tend to fall out sync with each others life stages. Careers, geographical moves, breakups, loss of a loved one, marriage, babies, and so forth, so many changes happen— and it can be startling when you feel like you blinked, and your friend that you knew to dance on top of bars and corral the crowd into singing is suddenly an introverted mom to a newborn.