Let’s Hang Out: Making (and Keeping) Friends, Acquaintances, and Other Nonromantic Relationships

By Chris Duffy

From neighbors whose faces we sort of recognize to baristas who know our order by heart to work friends to significant others, our lives are defined by social interactions — many of which we may not even be consciously aware of. Most of us know the benefits of the deepest relationships — close friends, romantic partners, and immediate family. But what about the momentary interactions we share with people whose names we hardly know?

In Let’s Hang Out: Making (and Keeping) Friends, Acquaintances, and Other Nonromantic Relationships, comedian, writer, and podcast host of How to Be a Better Human Chris Duffy shares why these types of connections deserve more recognition than they get and can change our lives. Diving in with extensive research while also analyzing both local and global views of community, Duffy shows readers that while an acquaintance may pack less of a punch on its own compared to a more intimate relationship, when we add the acquaintanceships together, they can have a profound effect on us (and even enhance our longevity and physical health).

In recent years, people have experienced increasing loneliness, so much so that the U.S. Surgeon General declared an “Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation,” as Duffy highlights in the book. After feeling this himself, Duffy began investing more time into expanding his connections with others — including stopping for brief chats with neighbors while out on walks, becoming a regular at a public pool, and joining a beloved local breakfast club. What he found was that when people take the time to get to know those around them and tend to these — often daily — budding relationships, they sow the seeds that can grow into a garden of potentially lifelong partnerships (which, if nothing else, add a whole lot of niceness to our day).

As a “passionate fan of acquaintances, a devoted social butterfly, a man whose entire week is made by even the faintest hint of recognition or familiarity from a stranger,” Duffy swings open the door in Let’s Hang Out to show us the value of community for all of the big (and little) ways we shape each other’s lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Everand Originals
• Release date: Jun 26, 2024
• ISBN: 9781094462530

Chris Duffy

Chris Duffy is a comedian, television writer, and radio/podcast host. Chris currently hosts TED’s hit podcast How to Be a Better Human. He wrote for both seasons of Wyatt Cenac's Problem Areas on HBO. He’s the host of the nationally touring comedy show Wrong Answers Only, where three comedians try to learn about science. Chris is both a former fifth grade teacher and a former fifth grade student.

Book preview

Introduction

If there’s one thing Ghostbusters taught us, it’s that the key question in life is: Who you gonna call?

Who you gonna call when:

You need help in the middle of the night?

It feels like things are falling apart?

You have great news and want to celebrate?

You just want to chat?

And, of course, who you gonna call when there’s something strange in the neighborhood?

The people you can call — the friends, the family… and the paranormal investigators — those are the most important people in your life. But unlike ghosts, they don’t just appear out of nowhere. Building relationships takes time and effort. This is a guide on how to do that work and how to make it fun.

As an extreme extrovert, a stand-up comedian, a podcaster, and someone who desperately wants everyone to like him, I spend most of my time thinking about how to connect with other people. And I think I’m pretty good at it! If we’re going to judge success purely by the numbers, then:

I’m in not one but two different book clubs.

Last year, I spent a frankly irresponsible amount of money attending seven different friends’ weddings.

And, I get near daily text messages from group threads dedicated to topics ranging from bread-baking to surfing to businesses with puns in their names (shout out to the Curl Up & Dye hair salon!).

If I’m being honest, though, I don’t think the breadth of our relationships is nearly as important as their depth. Having a dozen people who you text about sourdough or who you kind of know isn’t nearly as satisfying as having one person you deeply trust and feel seen by. But the good news here is that they’re not mutually exclusive! People are always moving up and down on our scale of emotional intimacy — strangers become acquaintances who become close friends. Some friends drift apart over time. My belief is that by focusing on the relationship funnel and embracing the easy, laid-back connections just as much as the deep, intimate ones, we can build a system that keeps us having fun and in a community throughout our lifetimes.

As I get older, socializing takes more effort (and requires coordinating schedules far in advance). Every time I’m fourteen emails deep in a thread, just trying to find a date that works for a dinner with friends, I contemplate giving up, moving to the mountains, and spending the rest of my life alone as a hermit. But I don’t! And when, two months later, I’m actually sitting around a table in person with the people I care about, I’m glad that I put in the effort rather than retreating into a cave.

Not all relationships require that kind of work, though. The easier, more laid-back connections are at the top of the funnel. One day, they might become the friends around the table, or your chosen family, or even your spouse. But when you first start out, they’re just a friendly face in the crowd. In my opinion, relationships anywhere other than at the very bottom of that funnel get paid far too little attention.

Book after book has been written about maintaining marriages or romantic relationships. There are magazine cover stories and TV specials and an unfathomable number of podcasts on the topic. Don’t get me wrong, those are high-stakes social bonds. But far less attention is paid to all the other people in our lives. I imagine that’s because each individual nonromantic relationship isn’t so crucial to our emotional and physical well-being. Cumulatively, these are bonds that have an enormous impact on the shape and quality of our lives.

If finding ways to build community and connection felt important before the 2020 pandemic, then it’s an even more urgent necessity now. Bonnie Tsui reported in The New York Times on how COVID-19 accelerated trends of isolation and disconnection.¹ She wrote that, during quarantine and lockdowns, we were living our lives siloed away online, missing many of the essential face-to-face experiences that are key to human interaction.

It’s only natural that many of us would feel fear and anxiety about returning to whatever normal life looks like postvaccination. Before Covid, this kind of post-isolation anxiety was most often suffered by people who re-enter the civilian world after prison, wartime deployment, humanitarian aid work or remote expeditions, she wrote. But now, that’s all of us.

As I dove into the scientific literature and spoke with experts for this book, I was surprised to learn that there’s an increasing amount of research on how important friends are for our health and happiness. In fact, one of those people — psychologist Julianne Holt-Lunstad — found that having strong social connections and friendships matter as much to our physical health as whether or not we smoke cigarettes.²

Dr. Holt-Lunstad looked at who lived and who died across 148 epidemiological studies (involving about 308,000 participants). The biggest determinant of patient longevity, by far, was relationships with other people. Even after a heart attack or stroke, those with more social