The best-selling author and self-confessed ‘friendship addict’ is back with a book full of insights into making – and keeping – those special bonds
ELIZABETH DAY
She’s a Sunday Times best-selling author who used her time in lockdown to reflect on her life, re-evaluating her connections with the people closest to her. And as she publishes her new book Friendaholic: Confessions of a Friendship Addict this week, podcaster Elizabeth Day delves into the wonderful things that her relationships have taught her over the years.
“[Friendship] is an amazing thing because it reminds us of what it is to be human. We feel less alone when we make that connection and that’s a beautiful thing,” says Elizabeth, 44, as she chats exclusively to HELLO!.
Explaining that she wants to “give friendship the same respect that for so many centuries we have given to romantic love” through books and songs, she says: “I really wanted to do an examination of why we do it, why we need it and where it comes from, through a personal lens.”
Using first-person accounts, the book comprises thematic chapters based on Elizabeth’s connections with five of her closest friends.
These include novelist Clemency Burton-Hill, who, after suffering a brain haemorrhage and learning how to walk again, helped Elizabeth understand how relationships can withstand big life shifts.
There’s a reflection on the role played by gender in friendships, prompted by journalist Sathnam Sanghera, whom she first met when they were set up on a date. And the book also features deep reflections on Elizabeth’s connection with a woman named Joan, who is 20 years older than her, as well as a dive into the nature of best friends with fellow podcaster Emma Reed Turrell.
The How to Fail podcaster, who coined the term “friendaholic” when the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020, recalls how, for many of us, the crisis “prompted a reassessment of how we were spending our time”.
“I realised that I had been going out every night and burning the candle at both ends, but actually, my closest friends were not necessarily the people I’d been spending my time with. I thought: ‘That has to change,’” she says.
“I had become co-dependent on friendship, and it was a borderline addiction in which I would get an immediate high when I forged a connection,” she continues, adding that her obsession with making friends began as a young girl, after she faced bullying at school in Northern Ireland, before her family mov
