How to build stronger relationships

In 2019, my friend Alex and I got really into the idea of making a turbocharged “Contacts” app for desktop and phone. We wanted to solve a problem that we felt personally and observed widely: people have a hard time keeping in touch with close family/friends who aren’t part of their day-to-day.

Our hypothesis was that many people—ourselves included—had the time and motivation for more regular, meaningful connection, but didn’t have the right tools. In the absence of the right tools, many of us seek connection through social media, which cheapens/weakens bonds at least as much as it sustains/builds them.

Our first idea was a lightweight CRM for consumers: a contact management equivalent to Superhuman, a modern-day Plaxo, or what would eventually become Clay.

We did the usual startup stuff: we interviewed anyone who’d talk to us, we defined our ideal customer and the problem we were trying to solve, we researched the solution space and drafted our elevator pitch. But we soon arrived at two important findings/convictions:

• Keeping in touch sustains relationships more than it strengthens them
• Relationships are strengthened primarily through shared experience

This led to a pivotal question: to what extent did we want to focus on helping people sustain a wide set of relationships as opposed to helping them strengthen their closest ones?

In terms of our original vision—a tool that could help us sustain and “manage” relationships—we came to the conclusion that Apple and Google were the only ones who could build the seamless experience that we were looking for, and our absolute best-case startup “exit” would be a Big Tech acqui-hire. I still think this is true, but maybe Clay will prove me wrong.

Even if we’d been in a better position to succeed with our original vision, I realized I wasn’t interested in building a better contact management tool. I wanted to help people strengthen their closest relationships, and I became increasingly convinced that the most important tool for strengthening relationships was the one between our ears (🧠).

Technology can help—and if you want to know all the crazy things I do on my computer to try to be a better brother/son/friend/boyfriend, hit me up—but ultimately, it’s about personal prioritization: putting our favorite people ahead of other things, sometimes ahead of ourselves, and especially ahead of whatever quick hit awaits us on our phones. It’s about allocating time and headspace—shifting what it means to be a friend, partner, and family member. If we can do that, technology will do its part and the methods will reveal themselves.

Easier said than done, I know. The articles below helped me get in the right state of mind. Give them a look! If you’ve made it this far, they won’t disappoint you.

And if you want to nerd out and read a book about building exceptional relationships with me, let me know!

Related reads

Tim Kreider: The Anti-Kreider Club

The same thing that makes friendship so valuable is what makes it so tenuous; it is purely voluntary. You enter into it freely, without the imperatives of biology or the agenda of desire. Officially, you owe each other nothing.

Jennifer Senior: It’s Your Friends Who Break Your Heart

The problem is that when it comes to friendship, we are ritual-deficient, nearly devoid of rites that force us together. Emily Langan, a Wheaton College professor of communication, argues that we need them. Friendship anniversaries. Regular road trips. Sunday-night phone calls, annual gatherings at the same rental house, whatever it takes. “We’re not in the habit of elevating the practices of friendship,” she says. “But they should be similar to what we do for other relationships.”

When I consider the people I know with the greatest talent for friendship, I realize that they do just this. They make contact a priority.

Gene Kwak: The Last City I Loved

Though there’s so much overlap in our Venn diagram of life … , the only thing that really holds water is that no matter the time or distance that separates us, we all try. All put forth the effort. Because in any longstanding relationship, the tensile strength gets tested and stretched, sometimes on a day-to-day basis, but the friendships stay intact, still hold their shape, when you remember it’s less about what you’re being afforded than what you can afford. Not about what isn’t being done for you or to you, but what small gestures you can muster regardless of the turn.

Pick up the phone, set a date. Do the deed.

Francine Prose: That Gummy Jungle

With so many examples of the fragility of friendship, it seems all the more improbable and impressive that long friendships survive. Seneca was right when he called friendship a talent. Like any talent, it’s a gift. Some people have a gift for friendship; some don’t. Is it nature or nurture? No one knows.

Buzzfeed: A More Or Less Definitive Guide To Showing Up For Friends

Showing up for other people is hard to describe, but you know it when you see it, or when someone does it for you.