Three years ago, about ten of my closest friends moved away within six months.
If you’re someone whose friendships are your main support system (like me), imagine if five of your siblings and their partners all told you they were moving across the country in the same timeframe. That’s the level of grief and disruption I experienced.
While I was genuinely excited for my friends’ new adventures, I was also devastated. How do you keep friendships alive when the foundation of your connection – spending time together regularly – suddenly disappears?
This question consumed me. I spent nights crying, mornings talking myself through the grief, and months obsessively trying to understand how friendships actually work. What makes them strong? What keeps them alive when circumstances change? How do you maintain connection when you can’t just drive over to someone’s house anymore?
Out of this crisis came what I now call my “friendship roots” framework – a way to understand the hidden architecture that holds our relationships together.
Why We Need Better Language for Friendship
Here’s the problem with most advice about friendship: it comes in bite-sized pieces without context. Someone posts “show up for your friends” and people respond “that doesn’t mean calling them every day!” – which is true, but misses the deeper question of what “showing up” actually means in different types of relationships.
We don’t have good language for friendship. Unlike romantic relationships (which have endless books, articles, and frameworks), friendship exists in this weird space where everyone assumes it should just happen naturally, but no one teaches us how it actually works.
So I created a framework. Think of your friendships like trees.
The Tree Metaphor
Trees start as seeds with no roots. You plant that seed in soil, provide nutrients, water, time, and attention, and slowly it grows roots. At first, those roots are delicate and need constant care. But over time, with proper nourishment, they grow stronger, deeper, with offshoots branching out in different directions.
The more roots a tree has, the more stable it becomes.
But here’s what most people don’t realize: even when a tree looks healthy above ground, the root system below is constantly changing. Some roots wither and die while new ones grow. Some get stronger while others get blocked and stop developing.
Most of us look at our friendships like we look at trees – we see the surface (hanging out, texting, having fun) but have no idea what’s happening in the root system underneath. When something goes wrong, we try random solutions without understanding the actual problem.
I want to help you become a master gardener of your friendships.
The Three Types of Friendship Roots
Every strong friendship is built on three types of roots that build on each other:
1. Shared Experience Roots
These are the activities, interests, and experiences you have in common with someone. They’re the foundation of friendship because they give you reasons to spend time together and things to talk about.
Let me give you an example. Imagine you’re in high school geometry class, and there’s someone sitting in the desk in front of you. That’s all they are – the person in front of you. Your only shared experience is that you both take geometry at the same school.
But this gives you easy conversation starters: “Did you do the homework?” “Do you like this teacher?” “Are you going to the assembly?”
One day, that person mentions they’re nervous about soccer tryouts. You’re shocked – you’re trying out too! Suddenly you have another shared interest. You both make the team and spend every afternoon at practice together.
Now you might suggest studying for that geometry test together, or ask if they want to ride with your family to the away game. These are what I call “offshoot roots” – variations on your existing shared experiences that feel less risky than suggesting something completely new.
Why shared experience roots matter: They’re what allow you to build all the other types of roots. Without things to do together or talk about, you can’t collect information about each other or develop beliefs about the friendship.
The adult friendship problem: This is where most adult friendships struggle. We get busy and stop creating new shared experiences, so our friendships become limited to “catching up” over dinner – just reporting on our separate lives instead of actually living life together.
2. Emotional Intimacy Roots
These are all the things you know about each other – the information you’ve collected by paying attention during your shared experiences.
There are several subtypes:
Small details: Their preferences, boundaries, perspectives. Maybe you notice your geometry friend always saves the chocolate donut for themselves. You learn they need to study alone the night before tests. You collect these details by being present and paying attention.
Memories: The experiences you’ve shared that you can both remember and reference later. That buzzer-beater goal at the state tournament becomes something you can talk about decades later, and no one else in the room will understand the significance the way you two do.
Shared/overlapping history: Maybe you discover your parents went to the same college, or you both grew up in military families. You understand parts of each other’s experience even when you weren’t there.
Big and small intimacies: The vulnerable things people trust you with. Big intimacies are the dramatic confessions – “I think my parents are getting divorced.” But small intimacies are everywhere and often overlooked – inviting someone to your house, offering a ride, introducing them to other friends, admitting you enjoyed spending time together.
The key insight: All emotional intimacy roots are based in the past. You collect them during present moments with friends, then file them away to use later. But if you stop having present moments together, you stop updating this information.
3. Story Roots
These are the beliefs you have about your friendship. “My friend cares about me.” “They’re always there for me.” “We’re best friends.” These beliefs set your expectations for the friendship.
There are three ways story roots develop:
Pattern of evidence: You spend time together (shared experiences), notice how they act (using emotional intimacy), and if their actions consistently meet your expectations, you develop beliefs. This is the strongest foundation.
Choosing to believe: You decide someone is your “new best friend” after hanging out twice. This can lead to fast friendship if you both act in ways that support the belief, but it can also crash and burn when reality doesn’t match your expectations.
Being told to believe: Society tells you that cousins are automatically best friends, or that “real friends” always have your back. If the actions don’t support these imposed beliefs, you end up disappointed and confused.
When Roots Die (And Why That’s Normal)
Here’s what nobody tells you: friendship roots are constantly changing. Some grow stronger while others wither and die, and this is completely normal.
Going back to our geometry/soccer friend example – when you graduate, you’re no longer in class together or on the team. Those shared experience roots die. You have two choices:
- Let the friendship become more distant – You might get together for dinner a few times a year and catch up, but you’re mostly just reporting on your separate lives rather than creating new memories together.
- Develop new shared experience roots – Maybe you start a weekly tennis game, join a book club together, or find other ways to spend present-moment time together.
When emotional intimacy roots die: Remember how your friend’s favorite donuts were chocolate? Four years later, they don’t eat gluten anymore. That piece of information you had about them is now obsolete. You need to learn new things about this updated version of your friend.
When story roots need updating: Maybe “best friend” in high school meant “will drive over when I’m sad.” Twenty years later when you live across the country, that expectation needs to change. Sometimes those big, vague story roots (like “best friend”) need to be replaced with more specific, realistic ones.
How This Changes Everything
Understanding these roots helps you:
Diagnose friendship problems: Is the issue that you don’t spend time together anymore (shared experience), that you don’t know each other well in your current life phases (emotional intimacy), or that your expectations don’t match reality (story roots)?
Be strategic about building friendships: Instead of hoping friendship will just happen, you can intentionally create shared experiences, pay attention to collect emotional intimacy, and develop realistic beliefs based on evidence.
Set appropriate expectations: A friendship built mostly on old memories and beliefs (like many long-distance friendships) can’t support the same expectations as one where you spend regular time together creating new experiences.
Appreciate different types of friendships: Your gym buddy might have strong shared experience roots but limited emotional intimacy – and that’s perfectly valuable. Your childhood friend might have deep emotional intimacy and story roots even though you rarely see them – also valuable, just different.
Your Next Step
Look at one of your friendships and try to identify the roots:
- Shared experience: What do you do together? What interests do you share?
- Emotional intimacy: What do you know about them? What memories do you share?
- Story roots: What do you believe about this friendship? What do you expect from each other?
If a friendship feels stuck or distant, which type of roots might need attention? Could you create new shared experiences? Update your knowledge of who they are now? Adjust your expectations to match the current reality of your relationship?
The goal isn’t to analyze your friendships to death, but to understand them well enough to tend them intentionally. Because the truth is, your closest friendships aren’t accidents – they’re the result of consistent care and attention to all three types of roots over time.
And now that you understand what’s happening beneath the surface, you can become the master gardener of your own relationships.
Which type of roots do you think are strongest in your friendships – shared experiences, emotional intimacy, or story beliefs? And which might need more attention?
