By Catherine Pearson, Photo: Getty Images, The New York Times, May 7, 2022
An ongoing argument my husband and I have — which has become more contentious during the pandemic — is about how many friends we should have.
We both have one or two close friends and siblings we like to spend time with. Plus, we are busy parenting two young boys who sap most of our energy. As a textbook introvert, this feels like plenty of friends to me. Excessive, even. But my husband is an extrovert who comes alive around other people. As we slowly emerge from the pandemic, I can feel him yearning for more.
He’s not alone. For years, friendship in America has been in decline, a trend that accelerated during the pandemic. Three decades ago, 3 percent of Americans told Gallup pollsters they had no close friends; in 2021, an online poll put it at 12 percent. About a year into the pandemic, 13 percent of women and 8 percent of men age 30 to 49 said they’d lost touch with most of their friends.
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