The friendship recession: what it is, and what gets women out of it

Fewer of us have close friends than ever, and successful women feel it in a very particular way. I've spent 20 years watching women get out of it, one table at a time.

What is the friendship recession?

It's a name for something most of us already feel. We have fewer close friends than our parents did, and the ones we have, we see less.

The numbers are hard to argue with. In 1990, 3% of Americans said they had no close friends. By 2021, it was 12%. Women went from 1% to 10%. And the people with a big circle shrank too: a third of Americans said they had ten or more close friends in 1990. By 2021, it was 13% (Survey Center on American Life).

Nobody had a fight. Nobody got dumped. Friendships just got squeezed out, one busy year at a time.

Why it hits accomplished women

The women I meet at our dinners are doing everything right. Big jobs. Kids. Boards. And friends are usually the first thing to go, because friends never send a calendar invite.

Here's how it happens.

• The career eats it. Your calendar is full of people, and every one of them is about work. You're ON all day. By the time you're free, you just want the couch.
• The kids eat what's left. Weekends become soccer, homework and other people's kids' birthday parties. You see the other moms. You don't really know them.
• You move. The promotion is in another city. Or his is. Every move resets your social life to zero.
• Success makes it lonelier. The higher you go, the more people know your title and the fewer know you.

Christine Raschke, a Wonder Women member in Marin, described the women at her table as "women who've lived a lot of life… moves across the country, raising children, the personal growth and the adventures." That's exactly who gets hit. Women with full lives and not enough time for the people who make it fun.

What I've seen work

Twenty years ago, Wonder Women was four friends at a restaurant in New York. We were successful, and we didn't want to talk about work after work. We talked about parties, kids, whatever your life is about, and laughed our asses off the whole dinner.

Today it's 20,000 women at 5,000 dinners. Here's what I've watched actually rebuild friendships, over and over.

1. Keep it SMALL. Twenty women around one table beats three hundred in a ballroom. You can't make a friend in the thirty seconds between handshakes. In New York you can go to ten events a night and still go home knowing nobody.
2. Make it repeat. One great night doesn't make a friend. I learned early that to keep a relationship, you need to catch up at least monthly. That's why our dinners happen every month. The next one is already on the calendar.
3. Do it in person, in a home if you can. When someone first offered to host at her house, I noticed how differently people behaved walking into a home. Some brought gifts. They got comfortable. The vibe changed.
4. Laugh first. Everyone walks in with their walls up. Laughter is how they come down. Funny is sticky. It's why every dinner starts with something Google doesn't know about you.
5. Talk about more than work. You're a mom, a DJ, a tennis player, a terrible golfer. That's who people bond with. Your resume never made anybody a friend.
6. Keep the cadence. Friendship is a priority, or it fades. Put it on the calendar like everything else that matters.

I wrote a whole piece on how to make friends as an adult woman. The short version: it starts with a laugh and lives or dies on showing up.

Small, repeat, in person. That's the whole cure, and it's a lot more fun than it sounds.

Women already know the fix

Nobody had to convince our first table to come back. We invited more friends. It got out of hand. Everyone loved it. When New Yorkers moved, they took the dinners with them to Atlanta, Chicago, Miami and San Francisco.

We're not the only ones. In London, the Lonely Girls Club started as a brunch for five women and grew to more than 35,000 members, with four to seven in-person events a month (Scripps News).

Four women at a restaurant. Five women at brunch. That's how it starts every time. Women are hungry for this. They just need a table and a date.

Why it matters more now

We spend all day on screens, and now AI is doing half the talking. Human connection matters more, not less.

Friends are who you laugh with. They're also who picks up the phone when you lose the job, the marriage, or the plot. If you don't have those people, no app is going to find them for you. Small and tight is good.

Questions women ask me

What does "friendship recession" mean?

It means adults have far fewer close friends than they used to. Since 1990, the share of Americans with no close friends has gone from 3% to 12%, and the share with ten or more has dropped from about a third to 13%.

What are the friendship recession statistics for women?

In 1990, 1% of American women said they had no close friends. By 2021, it was 10%, according to the Survey Center on American Life. That's ten times as many women with nobody close.

Why is it so hard for successful women to keep close friends?

Career, kids and moves eat all the time you used to spend on friends, and nobody schedules friendship for you anymore. The higher you go, the more people know your title and the fewer know you.

How do you get out of a friendship recession?

Find a small group that meets in person on a regular schedule, at least monthly. Laugh together, talk about more than work, and keep showing up. Friendships come back in the repeats.

Dr. Yao Huang founded Wonder Women more than twenty years ago with a table of four friends in New York. Today it's 20,000 women and 5,000 dinners in 30+ cities. She is also the founder of The Hatchery and a three-time TEDx speaker.