Here’s a stat that’s going to mess with your head a little bit.
Researchers at the Harvard Gazette found that living within 1 mile of a friend increases happiness by 25%. Compare that to living with a spouse (an 8% increase) or living near siblings (a 14% increase). And if you and your friend are actual neighbors? That jumps to a 34% increase in happiness.
Let that sit with you for a minute…
The thing that’s supposed to be secondary in your life, the relationships you’re told to fit in “when you have time,” actually has the biggest impact on your daily happiness. More than marriage. More than family proximity. More than pretty much anything else we’re told to prioritize.
So why are we still pretending that friendship is just something nice to have instead of something essential to design our lives around?
The Autopilot Problem
Here’s the truth: most of us are on autopilot. We follow the path we’re supposed to follow. Get the education, climb the career ladder, find a partner, buy a house, maybe have some kids. And somewhere in there, if we’re lucky, we squeeze in some friendships.
But what happens when you wake up one day and realize you’re miserable? What happens when you’ve checked all the boxes, and you still feel empty?
The standard advice is usually some version of “self-care your way out of it.” Journal more. Meditate. Take up yoga. Get a therapist. And sure, those things might help. But what if the real problem isn’t that you need to fix yourself? What if the real problem is that you’re surrounded by the wrong people in the wrong place, living the wrong life for you?
That’s exactly what happened to my recent podcast guest, Jenna Myhre Deyle. And her solution? She completely reorganized her life around friendship.
When Someone Actually Puts Friendship First
Jenna’s story is going to sound familiar to a lot of you. She graduated from college, got married, moved to Dallas for her career, and climbed the corporate ladder. She was doing everything “right.” Then 2020 hit. She got divorced. Her company offered her a promotion that required moving to Washington State.
So she moved. Alone. To a place where she knew no one.
“I was absolutely miserable,” Jenna told me. “I like to say it’s a really great place to visit. It’s beautiful. That’s not necessarily a great place to build a life for yourself.”
Now, here’s where most people would have tried to tough it out. Maybe joined a gym. Downloaded some dating apps. Told themselves they just needed to adjust.
Not Jenna.
After 16 months, she called her vice president and said something that could have ended her decade-long career: “Hey, I made a mistake. I cannot be here. This is not good for me personally. I don’t feel like I’m giving the company 100%. And I’m ready to move back to the Midwest, specifically Kansas City, where my best friends live.”
She literally told her boss she didn’t care if she ever got promoted again. She wanted to move to Kansas City. To be near her friends.
Think about that for a second. When was the last time you heard someone say they were willing to potentially blow up their career to live closer to friends? When was the last time YOU considered that as an option?
The Radical Act of Designing Around Connection
What Jenna did was radical because it goes against everything we’re taught about adult life. We’re supposed to be independent. Self-sufficient. Able to thrive anywhere as long as we have the right job and the right partner.
But here’s what I love about her approach: she recognized that her support system wasn’t a nice-to-have. It was essential to her well-being.
“I just knew that my support system could fix it,” she explained to me. “John and Haley, my best friends who are married, had really stepped up to a different level supporting me through the divorce and the move. I knew they were in my life for a long time.”
In the full episode, Jenna goes much deeper into what it was like to wake up one morning and realize that being near the people she cared about wasn’t just a dream… it was a necessity. Her honesty about choosing connection over conventional success might completely shift how you think about your own life choices.
What It Actually Takes to Put Friendship First
Once Jenna made the decision, she didn’t just show up and expect everything to work out. She was incredibly intentional about building the life she wanted.
First, she temporarily moved in with John and Haley. Not because she had to, but because she wanted that daily connection while she figured out her next steps. “There’s part of me where I’m like, I’m 32, and I’m moving in with a couple of friends, like, am I failing as an adult?” she said. “But ultimately, it really helped me get back my emotional balance.”
But here’s the key part: she didn’t put all the pressure on one friendship. She deliberately diversified her connections. She joined professional women’s groups. She stepped into leadership roles in her community. She built what I like to call a friendship care team, rather than expecting two people to be everything to her.
“I tried to be very intentional with not just relying on them to be everything to me,” Jenna explained. “I definitely invested time and energy into developing other relationships and friendships and networks and communities outside of just them.”
This is what intentional community building looks like. It’s not just hoping friendships will happen. It’s designing your life so that meaningful connections are inevitable.
The complete episode explores exactly how Jenna built this diverse network of relationships and the specific mindset shifts that allowed her to prioritize friendship without apology. If you’re tired of feeling like you’re supposed to go it alone, her practical approach might be exactly what you need to hear.
The Permission You’ve Been Waiting For
Here’s what I want you to consider: what if friendship isn’t something you fit into your life? What if it’s something you build your life around?
What if instead of asking “How can I make friends in this city where my job is?” you asked “Where are the people I want to do life with, and how can I get there?”
What if instead of assuming you need to be happy wherever you land, you admitted that some places and some people make you fundamentally happier than others?
What if instead of trying to self-care your way out of loneliness, you reorganized your life around connection?
I’m not saying everyone needs to move across the country as Jenna did. But I am saying that most of us have never even considered friendship as a legitimate organizing principle for major life decisions.
We’ll uproot our lives for a job. We’ll move for a romantic partner. We’ll relocate for family. But moving to be closer to friends? That’s not even on the list of socially acceptable reasons.
Redefining What Success Looks Like
The thing about Jenna’s story that gets me most fired up is how it challenges our entire definition of success. She was climbing the corporate ladder. She had the marriage, the career trajectory, the fancy apartment. On paper, she was winning.
But she was miserable.
“I remember talking to one of our mutual friends,” she told me, “and I asked him, ‘Do you think I’m taking the easy path?’ And he was like, ‘Maybe you are, but that’s okay. It’s okay to take that easy pathway.’”
Think about that. We’re so conditioned to believe that struggle equals virtue that Jenna worried she was “taking the easy path” by choosing to be surrounded by people who loved and supported her.
How messed up is that?
What if the easy path, the path that leads to daily happiness, to feeling supported, to waking up excited about your life, what if that’s actually the right path?
What if we stopped making everything so hard and started designing our lives around what actually makes us happy?
Your Turn to Get Off Autopilot
So let me ask you this: Are you on autopilot right now? Are you following a path someone else designed, checking boxes they decided were important?
And more importantly: Where are your people? The ones who make you feel most like yourself? The ones whose presence in your daily life would increase your happiness by 25% or more?
What would it take to be closer to them? Not someday. Not when you retire. Not when everything else is “figured out.” What would it take to make that happen now?
Maybe it’s not moving across the country. Maybe it’s moving across town. Maybe it’s changing jobs to work remotely. Maybe it’s convincing your favorite people to all move to the same city together.
I share so much more in the full episode about what it means to challenge conventional success and build a life around authentic connection. Jenna’s journey from corporate climber to community builder goes way deeper than what I could cover here, and I think her perspective will give you permission to want what you actually want instead of what you think you should want.
The Friendship-First Life Strategy
Here’s what I know: you’re going to spend the next 20, 30, 40+ years of your life somewhere. With someone. Doing something.
You get to choose what that looks like.
You can keep following the script. Keep checking the boxes. Keep assuming that if you just work hard enough and achieve enough, happiness will eventually show up.
Or you can do what Jenna did. You can admit that connection isn’t a luxury – it’s a necessity. You can design your life around the people and places that make you feel most alive. You can make friendship a strategy instead of an afterthought.
The most successful life isn’t the one that looks good on paper. It’s the one that feels good to live.
Ready to design yours around what actually matters? [Listen to my complete conversation with Jenna here] and subscribe to Friendship IRL wherever you get your podcasts. Because the conversation about putting connection first is just getting started.
What would you be willing to change in your life to live closer to the people you care about most? I’d love to hear your thoughts, and maybe your own friendship-first success story.
