The boring friendship
The best friendships are boring. Not boring in the sense of dull — boring in the sense of unremarkable. You do nothing special. You walk. You drink coffee. You sit on a couch. You've done it a hundred times. You'll do it a hundred more.
This is the goal — not the failure — of friendship.
Why boring is good
- Boring means safe. You're not performing. You're not impressing. You're just being.
- Boring means recurring. The friendship has a rhythm — the same walk, the same coffee, the same time. The rhythm is the maintenance.
- Boring means deep. The big conversations happen in the boring moments — on the walk, on the couch, in the car. Not at the big event, but in the nothing-special.
- Boring means lasting. The dramatic friendships — the intense, exciting, high-energy ones — often burn out. The boring ones endure.
The culture of exciting
We're culturally biased toward exciting friendships — the ones that look good on Instagram, the ones with big stories and dramatic moments. But the exciting friendships are often the shallow ones. The boring friendships — the ones with no story, no drama, no highlight reel — are the ones that hold your life together.
How to build a boring friendship
- Find a recurring slot. A weekly walk, a fortnightly coffee, a monthly call.
- Keep it low-stakes. No agenda, no performance, no pressure to "make it count."
- Let it be unremarkable. Don't try to make every catch-up special. The specialness is in the regularity, not the content.
- Share your link. Mark the slot. Let the boring plan happen automatically, week after week.
Frequently Asked Questions
Isn't boring a bad thing?
Not in friendship. In friendship, boring means comfortable, safe, and lasting. The friendships that change your life are the boring ones — the ones that are just there, reliably, for years.
What if I want excitement too?
Then have both — exciting friendships for the big moments, boring friendships for the everyday. But if you have to choose, choose boring. The exciting ones fade; the boring ones stay.
How do I turn a new friendship into a boring one?
Recurring, low-stakes contact. A weekly walk for 6 months. The friendship becomes boring — and that's when it becomes real.