We Should Get Together: The Secret to Cultivating Better Friendships

by Kat Vellos

Overview

We Should Get Together is the handbook for anyone who’s ready for better friendships, now. 

• Have you recently moved to a new city and are struggling to make friends? 
• Do you find yourself constantly making plans with friends that fall through? 
• Are you more likely to see your friends’ social media posts than their faces? 

You aren’t alone. Millions of adults struggle with an uncomfortable and persistent ache: platonic longing, which is the unfulfilled wish for authentic, resilient, close friendships. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Making and maintaining friendships during adulthood can be hard—or, with a bit of intention and creativity, joyful.

Author Kat Vellos, experience designer and founder of Better Than Small Talk, tackles the four most common challenges of adult friendship: constant relocation, full schedules, the demands of partnership and family, and our culture’s declining capacity for compassion and intimacy in the age of social media. Combining expert research and personal stories pulled from conversations with hundreds of adults, We Should Get Together is the modern handbook for making and maintaining stronger friendships. 

With this book you will learn to:

• Make and maintain friendships when you (or your friends) keep moving
• Have deeper and more meaningful conversations
• Triumph over awkwardness in social situations
• Become less dependent on your phone
• Identify and prioritize quality connections
• Find time for friendship despite your busy calendar
• Create closer, more durable friendships

Full of relatable stories, practical tips, 60 charming illustrations, 55 suggested activities, a book club discussion guide, and 300+ conversation starters, We Should Get Together is the perfect book for anyone who wants to have dedicated, life-enriching friends, and who wants to be that kind of friend, too.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781734379730
Publisher:	Katherine Vellos
Publication date:	01/04/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	310
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

Kat Vellos is a trusted expert on the power of cultivating meaningful connections, the loneliness epidemic, community-building, and healthy work environments.

She's the author of We Should Get Together: The Secret to Cultivating Better Friendships which was called "marvelous" by BookLife, a subsidiary of Publishers Weekly, and which Kirkus Reviews compared to the work of Norman Vincent Peale and Cicero. Since its release in January 2020, it's been helping adults around the world heal from disconnection and loneliness.

Kat has twenty years' experience creating communities where people find belonging and authentic connection. A veteran facilitator, she founded Better than Small Talk and Bay Area Black Designers which was profiled by Forbes. Both groups have created community for hundreds of people across the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond.

She's also a seasoned researcher and UX designer. She's worked for Slack, Pandora, and multiple Silicon Valley startups. She's been a speaker for Design for America, Social Good Tech Week, the Transforming Loneliness Summit, and more.

With the publication of her new books, We Should Get Together and Connected from Afar, Kat has turned her UX expertise towards combating the loneliness epidemic, by helping millions of people experience greater wellness and fulfillment through thriving platonic relationships.

Table of Contents

Part 1: Why friendship matters and the elements of good ones

Introduction

How Friendship Got So Complicated

Hydroponic Friendship  

The Seeds of Connection

 

Part 2: The four main friendship challenges and how to overcome them 

Finding Belonging in a Hypermobile World:

Be Here Now

Make It Work

#MoNewFriends

Get Comfortable

Settle In

 

Fitting Friendship Into Your Busy Life:

Get (Un)Busy

Take Control of Your Time

Make Room for Spaciousness

Recontextualize Busy

Double Down on Showing Up

 

Blending Friendship with Partnership and Family:

Dude, Where’s My Friends?

The Lonely Parent

Parent Town

Keeping Everyone Happy

Outside Looking In

Remember to Breathe

 

Getting Better at Getting Closer:

Antisocial Media

Imaginary Friends

Ask Better Questions

So Awkward

Face the Music

Ask for Help

From Friendship to Community

 

Part 3: Bold new approaches for cultivating friendship, and next steps

Next Level: How to Accelerate Any Friendship:

Zero to Sixty in Two Weeks

The Friendship Incubator

 

Conclusion

Making It Real   

 

Appendix

Book Club and Discussion Guide

Acknowledgments 

Find Your Feelings 

Better than Small Talk: Conversation Starters

Notes

Editorial Reviews

"There is so much to love about this handbook. If every person who reads this book takes it to heart, there will be a lot more friendship in the world." - BookLife, Editor's Pick ⚡️

"The sheer amount of energy and inventiveness on display in these pages, engagingly written and illustrated by the author, will give even the most jaded some hope for more friendships in the future." - Kirkus Reviews

"Vellos powerfully and personally challenges the reader. Her tips are more like life coaching sessions, pushing her audience to defy awkwardness and ask thoughtful questions. Those reading this book to improve their friendships may end up improving themselves as well." - BookLife, Editor's Pick ⚡️

"You may not think you need it, but there's something for everyone in these pages." - Reedsy

"Tips, tricks, and a sense of comfort are what Vellos grants those who could use a little help in the friend department. She lays out key ingredients for how to stop the excuses and change your life." - San Francisco Book Review

"Deep and thorough in its exploration of all the facets of friendship. This book is truly a gift." - Laura Parker, MFT, founder of Transforming Loneliness

From the Publisher

2020-01-22
An analysis of the challenges of making friends in the modern world.

Vellos has trained as a facilitator and conducted hundreds of hours of workshops on building communities and forming adult friendships, and in her nonfiction debut, she attempts to break down the nature of friendship in the “always on” 21st century—its roots, its potential obstacles, its most familiar patterns, and some strategies for its improvement. The stakes have never been higher, she says: “the average American hasn’t made one new friend in the last five years.” And the price for this trend is steep: Loneliness and isolation place enormous stresses on the body and the mind. Vellos distills her wide reading and dozens of interviews on the subject into an assessment of what she terms “platonic longing,” the desire felt by increasing numbers of people for the simple joys of close friendship. She addresses her book to readers who’ve found they have nobody with whom to share moments of pain, confusion, or joy—to those, for example, who’ve gone on a dating app and wondered if it might work if they’re looking only for friendship or who have tried friend-matching apps too and found that the great connections they promised haven't materialized. She outlines many approaches to the complexities of friendship, from upping “your dosage” (simply trying to create more friendship time with friends you already have) to practicing greater honesty when meeting potential friends. Throughout she focuses on the basics of friendship that writers from Cicero to Norman Vincent Peale have stressed: openness, flexibility, and, most of all, commitment. “No amount of ‘I really like you too’s’ will convince someone that you want to be friends if you don't take actions to make time and space for them in your life,” she says. The sheer amount of energy and inventiveness on display in these pages, engagingly written and illustrated by the author, will give even the most jaded some hope for more friendships in the future.

A heartfelt and winningly optimistic guide to understanding—and finding more—friendship.

Kirkus Reviews