Welcome to Platonic Vibes

This is a newsletter about friendship, written by me Alice. I am a Reuters journalist currently based in London.

I started this newsletter because I wanted to explore the intricacies of friendship, all the grey areas that have left me confused so many times. Through personal stories, essays, and reflections on friendship culture, my goal is to offer insights into how to create and maintain meaningful friendships. Ultimately, I’d like to help readers feel less lonely and more connected.

Because.

Unlike romantic relationships, there aren’t any guidelines for breaking-up with a friend. In friendship, there are only a few universal truths, and one of them is that your best friends are meant to be forever (literally what ‘BFF’ means). No one is ever going to contradict that because not being good at friendship is taboo. That’s why I want to talk about it.

Here, you will be both inspired and reassured.

Every two weeks, I will be writing essays and commentaries to help you answer crucial questions like: why some women prefer male friendship? or how to make friends as a new mum? or should friends be allowed to say sentences like ‘you can join if you want to’ (always gets me that one).

The idea is to look at life and culture through the prism of friendship.

As well as personal stories you can also expect things like book reviews or film suggestions related to friendship. I also want to tell the stories of successful projects initiated by groups of friends. Finally, I want to help you solve your friendship dilemmas. A sort of platonic agony aunt if you’d like.

Get in touch with your personal stories.

Loneliness is life-threatening, adult friendship is hard and fr-hosting (ghosting but for friends) is real.

Let’s talk about it.