Welcome. I'm Kevin Miller, and here I have conversations with people that help us make better

meaning of our lives. In this episode, getting real with how friends can benefit your life or not.

So should you have lots of friends or not? Should you have just some really close ones?

I think before this question, we need to audit how we view friends to begin with.

What's the purpose of a friend? Is a friend a luxury or a necessity? What are the pros and cons?

We're in a day and age right now where we have fewer friends than ever, statistically showing,

and we feel more isolated than ever.

And yet we think of all the millions of people, I'm exaggerating, but so many people were, we say connected.

I'd say we're in contact with, but the point is that we are not very connected. So a few years ago, a book

came across my desk. Title was The Life Council, 10 friends every woman needs. Well, just the focus

on friends caught my attention to begin with. So as I started reviewing the book, I felt this is

entirely relevant for men and I think anyone.

So I invited the author on.

So the author is Laura Tremaine.

And I thoroughly, thoroughly appreciate her perspectives on friendships.

Some highlights for me from the book in our conversation was her looking at

having multiple friends for multiple purposes. She actually has 11 chapters in the book,

each going through 11 different types of friendships. And I found that some of those I've

fulfilled really well. And some of them I was maybe trying to fit in a category that wasn't a good fit for that

friend.

I found that there were some areas I was missing that I wanted to fulfill and that there

were some slots I didn't really care about.

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