I’ll never stop trying, but parents and childfree people both have to work hard to maintain a community

We’d been riding our mountain bikes and chatting for a solid half-hour when my friend casually said: “Oh yeah, I’m pregnant.”

She said it the same way one might say: “I stopped by the grocery store” – although this was, in fact, a conversational hand grenade. My stomach dropped. No , I thought.

Continue reading...

Jimmy Carter and Gerald R. Ford faced off in 1976 in a bitter campaign but later bonded as few presidents have — and made a pact to speak at each other’s funerals.

Guardian advice columnist Annalisa Barbieri on strengthening bonds with the people who matter to us

We’ve all left a social occasion with someone feeling buoyed, or utterly deflated and angry. You can either blame yourself or the other person, but it’s often a combination of the two - or something you each bring out in the other. You can only take responsibility for your own behaviour, so look at your own responses; are you snippy? Do you answer back? Should you? It’s not that you shouldn’t retaliate, but you do need to see your place in things. If a relationship makes you feel better about yourself, cherish it and do the same for them. If not, think about why you’re still there.

Continue reading...

Resolutions are undeniably terrible when we make them for ourselves. But what about if we began making them for each other?

What’s the right age to realise new year’s resolutions are trash that won’t last until February? By about 12 years old, the data should be in: nothing is in any better order than it was this time last year and you’re a damn fool to think this year will be any different. Now give yourself a couple of decades’ leeway while you work other things out, such as who you are, and then you’ll realise that January is a time to relax and concentrate on keeping warm rather than making lists. This is something I should have learned many moons ago.

But January’s pull is irresistible. David Bowie is my earworm, crooning “ch-ch-ch-changes”, quietly, but not quietly enough. One tiny yet significant improvement must be manageable, surely? Yes, is 2025’s answer, but with a difference: I have decided that this is the year you should make resolutions for your friends.

Continue reading...

A woman related to my memoir so much, she offered to lend me her holiday shack. When we met in person, we couldn’t stop talking

• Find the rest of our series of stories on the kindness of strangers here

The email landed in my inbox late one Friday night in the middle of winter, 2023.

I was not cheerful. For weeks, I’d been wrestling with a difficult article I should long ago have submitted to an editor. As a freelancer, the longer I spent on it, the longer it would be before another cent would hit my bank account. I’d been to the dentist that morning. I’d booked a vet appointment for my dog that afternoon; I feared she might have yet another ear infection.

Continue reading...

Helen Pidd and Alexandra Topping have been close friends for almost 20 years. But struggles with fertility and new motherhood tested their bond to the limit

In the summer of 2006, Helen Pidd met her fellow Guardian journalist Alexandra Topping . It was “a little bit like falling in love”, says Lexy, as the pair bonded over their jobs, through chaotic nights out and on holidays together. Their similarities drew them together, explains Helen: “The two blonde babies of the Guardian newsroom, both from the north-west of England, both a bit gobby.” They told each other everything.

It was a friendship they both cherished, and it was only strengthened as their lives changed. They both fell in love, and Helen left the country and returned. They prided themselves on their ability to speak hard truths, safe in the knowledge that “the other person isn’t going to, you know, strop off into the distance and never speak to you again”.

Continue reading...

Criticising a person’s partner is a pretty good way to strain a friendship, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. There’s no benefit in keeping the moral score

• Read more Leading questions

My friend of 30-plus years has thrown her husband out and started a new relationship with someone I detest. I feel torn between this sense that she’s behaved appallingly towards her husband and the tenure of our friendship. I want to be honest with her about my feelings but feel almost too angry to do it in a constructive way. What do you advise?

Eleanor says: How much moral adjudication do we get to do of our friends? On the one hand you want to keep the bastards honest, and when you’re being a bastard, you want to be kept honest. On the other hand it does seem friendship involves keeping moral score of each other a little less than we ordinarily might.

Continue reading...

She isn’t young, and yet she remains outspoken, passionate, and alive to the world in ways that many aren’t

My friendships have mostly been with people of a similar age, but that all changed when my 85-year-old neighbour left a CD in my letterbox after hearing my young son drumming wildly in our garage. She wrapped the CD in a note written in her finest hand, explaining that she thought he might enjoy the sounds of her friend’s band, The Necks.

Others in our street had understandably complained about the endless noise because the sound reverberated through their walls, creeping into their quiet spaces, and ruining their days.

Continue reading...

My life’s markers may differ from those of my peers, but a year of freedom and fun has taught me to appreciate myself

From the ages of 18 to 21, I spent quite a lot of time crying in my local nightclub in the small town of Listowel in Ireland. My reason for weeping was that all my friends were pulling and I wasn’t. If I could go back in time, I’d give myself a stern talking to, hand myself a shot and say: “Of course no one’s trying it on – you’re wailing Céline Dion in the corner.”

Back then I was terrified of becoming the last single friend in the girl gang. I was petrified of being left behind, abandoned for a man who wore bootcut jeans with brown dress shoes. Every time a friend announced, “I have a date,” my body would seize up. Then I found myself in a relationship. While my friends were out on the town, living the free and single life, I was staying in, curled up under a duvet with my partner, eating takeaway and feeling smug because I didn’t need to be on a dating app.

Édaein O’ Connell is a freelance journalist

Continue reading...