This is Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby and you're listening to the Love, Happiness, and Success

podcast.

And welcome back to part two of our exploration of friendship.

Last time we talked to author Lydia Denworth about friendship and her research into why it

is so fundamentally important that we are all investing time and energy into our personal

relationships.

And that is of course not the whole story.

For many adults it is difficult to form positive relationships.

You know, when you're younger, it's easy to put a lot of time and energy into our social life.

Not so much when you have a full-time job and a house to manage and a primary relationship and kids to wrangle. It gets a lot

harder and many people struggle with feelings of loneliness. So our show today is going to explore

this topic from the other angle, which is really getting into the nuts and bolts and nitty-gritty

of how to develop not just

fun friendships, although that's great too, but the kinds of friends and friendships that we can

really count on when the chips are down, supportive friendships, friendships with people that we can

call when we need help and who are going to be

there for us, just like we're going to be there for them. So in service of that goal, today we're

going to be talking to author Val Walker about her book, 400 friends and no one to to call about how and why we all experience loneliness

and also not just like talking about it theoretically but she's going to share some very concrete

real world strategies for how to create those kinds of supportive relationships even now during

the era of social distancing. And not only can it be done, it is more important for us than ever

to do exactly that. Val, Val Walker, thank you so much for joining me today on the podcast. I'm excited to speak with

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