In the last few months, my Instagram feed has been full of videos advising single women out there to make a list of all the qualities they are looking for in a boyfriend or husband, in order to manifest their partner. However, the thing I struggled with the most in the past year was realizing that a lot of my friends didn’t have the qualities that I was asking for in a partner, like empathy, ambition, or self sufficiency.
I recently stepped back from a friendship because our values and opinions on politics, immigration, and racism were polar opposites. She seemed to align with far-right conservatives, and believed that people of color are perpetually playing victims and that racism doesn’t exist. As a woman of color, this hurt to hear.
My friends aren’t something I have intentionally chosen, it’s something that happened to me as I moved around spaces in my early 20s. Some friendships were formed because we always saw each other at work, while others because we were in the same class in university. I had never picked someone specifically to be my friend because they inspire me, or because I admire their emotional intelligence and character, or simply because I aspire to be where they are at life.
So, late last year, I sat down and made a list of all the qualities I’m looking for in my friends as a New Year’s resolution. In my 30-point, bulleted list, I wrote things like loyalty, honesty, availability to invest in a friendship regularly, capacity to listen to my experiences and validate me without jumping to offer advice, reliable and not exploitative. It also made me appreciate some of the qualities that my existing friends do have.
Once I wrote down the list, I stopped “catching up” with friends or acquaintances that I would see once or twice a year. I realized I no longer wanted friendships where I needed to catch up with someone. I stopped reaching out to people who never reached out to me to initiate plans or check-in. In one instance, I had a full break-up conversation with a friend on voice notes for over three days before we parted ways.
We are in a loneliness epidemic, despite largely living in densely populated cities with vast opportunities to connect. I called Jack Worthy, licensed psychotherapist and faculty with Gestalt Associates in New York, to learn more about the importance of intention. “Year over year, we should know ourselves better and better. Meaning, we should improve at predicting what will make us happy consistently and across time,” he told me. Just as we begin to notice how certain romantic relationships don’t serve us, we can notice how certain friendships do not serve us.
“If you’re willing to set a limit such as, ‘I will no longer be available to a man who reaches out for a date last minute,’ is it such a stretch to say, ‘I won’t make time for friends who don’t make me a priority’?” Worthy asked. As social animals whose survival has depended on belonging, and who are hard-wired to seek connection, curiously, we are choosy about the connections we seek. This is why making a friendship list was so crucial for me.
Once I made the friendship list, I started seeing my relationships through a different lens and vowed to only invest in friendships in 2025 that aligned with the list. A few friendships naturally faded, and a few ended dramatically. For instance, a close friend who turned out to be an anti-vaxxer and whose worldview increasingly clashed with mine, wrote me a five page letter ending the friendship. She had a meltdown when I was totally fine with that decision. Then, she sent me 45-minute voice notes in which she was crying because she assumed I didn’t care about her, because I didn’t have a strong reaction to our friendship ending. It wasn’t an abrupt falling out, but more a realization that our values no longer aligned.
Another friend, I realized, was clearly social climbing through me by trying to befriend all of my glamorous acquaintances who I had introduced her to at events. Every time we hung out, it was always me who initiated plans or checked in. I haven’t heard from her since last year when I introduced her to a socialite at an event, and now I see them hanging out every month on social media.
At the same time, I found myself attracting friendships that reflected the qualities on my list like ambition, kindness, and emotional maturity. I found friends who wanted to spend quality time regularly over a dance class, tennis, or yoga, rather than go to a restaurant or a bar every six months. We synced our calendars to make sure we saw each other once a week. During times when we weren’t able to meet up in two weeks or more, we treated it as an urgent matter, like a bomb that needed to be diffused. I met my new friends through activities and hobbies that I regularly showed up to, such as run clubs, meditation classes, or acting classes, where seeing the same people every week made it easier to start friendships.
Read more: How to Make Friends as an Adult—at Every Life Stage
Interestingly, writing the list didn’t just help me manifest new people, it also made me more intentional about how I showed up in friendships. I consciously wanted to be a better friend. I forced myself to be vulnerable in my friendships, and also demonstrated my availability to invest in that friendship. I would send a quick voice note to my chosen friends asking them their opinion on something, or simply narrating a mundane thing that happened to me that week, instead of just sending memes on Instagram. I also stopped responding to friends whose method of staying connected was only through meme-sharing.
It’s been a surprisingly introspective process, a sort of emotional decluttering that reshaped how I define connection and belonging.
