We Should Get Together

1. What is "We Should Get Together" by Kat Vellos about?

• Focus on Adult Friendship: The book explores the challenges and solutions for cultivating meaningful, lasting friendships as an adult, especially in urban environments.
• Personal and Research-Based: Kat Vellos combines her personal experiences with extensive qualitative research, including interviews and surveys, to uncover why adult friendships are so difficult and how to overcome common obstacles.
• Practical Guide: It offers actionable strategies, exercises, and conversation starters to help readers build, deepen, and maintain friendships.
• Addresses Modern Barriers: The book examines how factors like busyness, hypermobility, technology, and life transitions (like parenthood or moving) impact our ability to connect.

2. Why should I read "We Should Get Together" by Kat Vellos?

• Relatable Struggles: If you’ve ever felt lonely, struggled to make or keep friends as an adult, or wondered why friendship feels harder now, this book provides validation and solutions.
• Actionable Advice: The book is filled with practical exercises, reflection questions, and real-life examples to help you take concrete steps toward better friendships.
• Research-Backed Insights: Vellos draws on both academic studies and hundreds of interviews, making her advice credible and widely applicable.
• Empowering and Hopeful: The tone is encouraging, focusing not just on the problems but on the possibilities and joys of cultivating deep human connection.

3. What are the key takeaways from "We Should Get Together" by Kat Vellos?

• Friendship Takes Work: Building and maintaining adult friendships requires intentionality, effort, and vulnerability—it's not as effortless as childhood or college friendships.
• Four Main Challenges: The book identifies hypermobility, busyness, blending friendship with family/partnership, and the shrinking capacity for intimacy in the digital era as the biggest obstacles.
• Seeds of Connection: Proximity, frequency, compatibility, and commitment are the four essential ingredients for successful friendships.
• Quality Over Quantity: Deep, meaningful connections matter more for happiness and health than the number of friends you have.

4. How does Kat Vellos define the "Seeds of Connection" in "We Should Get Together"?

• Proximity: Physical closeness or the ability to meet face-to-face, which fosters spontaneous and regular interaction.
• Frequency: How often you interact, which helps build familiarity and intimacy; regular contact is crucial for deepening bonds.
• Compatibility: Shared interests, values, communication styles, and socializing preferences that make spending time together enjoyable and harmonious.
• Commitment: Mutual investment in the relationship, shown through openness, caring, trust, dedication, and reciprocity.

5. What are the main challenges to adult friendship discussed in "We Should Get Together"?

• Hypermobility: Frequent moves and a transient population make it hard to form lasting connections, especially in big cities.
• Busyness: Overloaded schedules and the glorification of being busy leave little time for nurturing friendships.
• Partnership and Family: Romantic relationships and parenting often take priority, leading to the neglect or loss of friendships.
• Digital Era Intimacy: Technology can create the illusion of connection while actually reducing opportunities for deep, meaningful interaction.

6. What is "hydroponic friendship" as described by Kat Vellos?

• Accelerated Connection: Hydroponic friendship is the idea that, like plants grown in nutrient-rich water instead of soil, friendships can be fast-tracked through concentrated, high-quality interactions.
• Quality Over Time: While traditional wisdom says it takes 200 hours to make a close friend, Vellos argues that vulnerability, self-disclosure, and immersive experiences can speed up the process.
• Intentional Design: This approach requires strategic, passionate effort to create the right conditions for friendship to flourish, even when time is scarce.
• Modern Necessity: Given the pace of modern life, hydroponic friendship is not just possible but often necessary for adults seeking meaningful connections.

7. How does "We Should Get Together" by Kat Vellos suggest overcoming the challenge of busyness?

• Audit Your Time: The book encourages readers to track and reassess how they spend their time, identifying and reducing "time-sucks" like excessive social media or TV.
• Prioritize Friendships: Make friendship a non-negotiable part of your schedule, just like work or exercise, and protect that time fiercely.
• Embrace Spaciousness: Practice saying no to unnecessary obligations and create unscheduled, spontaneous time for connection.
• Combine Activities: Integrate socializing with everyday tasks (like errands or meal prep) to make time for friends without overloading your calendar.

8. What practical strategies does Kat Vellos recommend for making and deepening friendships?

• Be Proactive: Reach out to acquaintances, neighbors, or coworkers and invite them to do something together, even if it feels awkward at first.
• Use Small Groups: Organize small group outings or activities to multiply opportunities for connection and reduce the pressure of one-on-one interactions.
• Invite People Home: Hosting friends in your personal space fosters intimacy and comfort, even if your home isn’t “perfect.”
• Double Down on Showing Up: Set reminders to check in with friends regularly and follow through on plans to build trust and reliability.

9. How does "We Should Get Together" address the impact of technology and social media on friendship?

• Illusion of Connection: Social media can create a false sense of closeness, replacing real conversations with likes and comments.
• Parasocial Relationships: The book discusses how following people online (even celebrities or acquaintances) can feel like friendship but lacks true reciprocity.
• Intentional Sharing: Vellos suggests sharing updates directly with friends instead of broadcasting to an audience, and using technology to facilitate, not replace, real connection.
• Podcast Analogy: The rise of conversational podcasts is seen as a symptom of our hunger for real conversation, which should inspire us to seek more meaningful interactions offline.

10. What advice does Kat Vellos give for handling awkwardness and vulnerability in friendship?

• Embrace Awkwardness: Awkwardness is often just fear; facing it head-on and practicing social courage helps desensitize you to discomfort.
• Be the First to Open Up: Vulnerability is contagious—sharing your true feelings or struggles can invite others to do the same.
• Ask Better Questions: Move beyond small talk by asking open-ended, self-revelatory, and follow-up questions to deepen conversations.
• Practice Mindfulness: Use grounding techniques to manage social anxiety and focus your attention on the other person rather than your own performance.

11. How does "We Should Get Together" by Kat Vellos suggest maintaining friendships through life transitions like moving, relationships, or parenthood?

• Acknowledge Change: Recognize that life transitions often disrupt friendship routines and require extra effort to maintain connections.
• Three-Sided Balance: For those in relationships, intentionally balance time between mutual friends, each partner’s friends, and solo time with friends.
• Stay in Touch: Use regular check-ins, phone calls, or group chats to maintain long-distance friendships and keep the context alive.
• Include and Adapt: For parents, involve friends in family life, seek out hyperlocal connections, and be open about the challenges and needs that come with new roles.

12. What are some of the most memorable quotes from "We Should Get Together" by Kat Vellos, and what do they mean?

• "Loneliness is the emotional pollution of our time, and it’s all around us." – Highlights the widespread, often invisible nature of loneliness in modern society.
• "We should get together like it really matters. Because it does." – Emphasizes the importance of prioritizing real human connection.
• "Cultivating friendships requires a lot of effort, energy, and time. You have to be willing to put yourself out there and expend that emotional energy because you’re investing in your future happiness." – Reminds readers that friendship is an investment with long-term rewards.
• "Home is not where we live. Home is where we belong." – Suggests that true belonging comes from relationships, not just physical location.
• "The best way to have a friend is to be a friend—to yourself first and foremost." – Encourages self-awareness and self-compassion as the foundation for healthy friendships.