We have (almost) always underestimated friendship Not just boy drama and broken hearts: perhaps the greatest love story of our lives is the one with our friends

We grew up on the myth of grand romantic love: princes charming, rom-coms with happy endings, or heart-wrenching stories for a broken heart. So we learned to seek this: the love of a partner, at any cost. In doing so, we often forgot that, as journalist Natasha Lunn writes in her book Conversations on Love, "life is not a single love story, but many." And that doesn’t necessarily mean changing many partners, but that we can find that special form of connection also in our relationships with our parents, siblings, strangers we meet along the way, and most importantly, with friends.

The love we don’t talk about

Reading Lunn’s book - which explores love in all its forms - reveals how little space is given to friendship in the narrative of our emotional life. It is a steady presence, yet rarely celebrated. When we talk about love, we immediately think of a couple; when we imagine happiness, we associate it with a romantic “us.” Friendship, however, remains on the sidelines: quiet, but constant. Philosopher Alain de Botton, founder of the School of Life, speaks of a "tragic misalignment in the hierarchy of relationships." Yet it hasn’t always been this way: in early 19th-century Germany, he recalls, "having a good friend was considered more important than having a lover, because it brought you closer to the root of happiness." Aristotle also valued friendship highly, believing a good friend was the mirror in which one reflects to truly know oneself. So if this form of love is so precious, why do we often take it for granted?

Friendship in adulthood

Like any relationship, friendship requires daily effort. Especially in adulthood, when it stops being spontaneous and casual - the classmate, the roommate - and becomes something that must be chosen and nurtured every day. It demands presence, patience, uncomfortable conversations, and small acts of care, like any meaningful relationship. As Lunn puts it, it is a “form of love that is practiced.” A space of freedom and acceptance, requiring presence rather than exclusivity. Perhaps the freest form of love, because it arises not from need, but from the mutual choice to be there, even amidst the whirlwind of commitments and responsibilities that adult life (sob) brings.

Carving out moments to spend with friends amidst this frenzy has a nearly therapeutic power. Whether it’s dinner, an impromptu weekend, or a walk in the sun, that shared intimacy becomes a way to reconnect with oneself. As writer Diana Evans tells Natasha Lunn, "there isn’t much space for friendship when you’re trying to maintain a relationship, care for a child, and keep your professional and work identity." Yet it is precisely in this chaos that "friendships create a space where you feel free to be the person you are, the person you thought you were, or the person you want to be." In short, no matter how lost you may feel, it is friends who help you remember "who you are in the world."

Rewriting the grammar of love

Giving friendship the recognition it deserves means changing our emotional grammar: stopping the belief that "true" love is only romantic, or that it can only be found in a soulmate. In one of the most poignant passages of Lunn’s book, author Ayisha Malik notes that "no single person, not even your parents, can truly see you in your entirety." Instead, it’s about "finding all the people you can love and noticing the positivity each brings into your life." Every friend, every relationship, holds a fragment of our reflection. Together, they form a more complete image of who we are. Adult friendship is therefore not a minor chapter of love, but one of its forms. It is the one that survives moves, partners, and silences that last months. And if we learned to recognize it for what it is, we would discover we have been loved far more than we think.