Hi {{first_name|there}}, it’s Thomas

I recently caught up with a former coworker I hadn’t spoken to in over 15 years, and what had been a delightful 90-minute reconnection ultimately left my blood running cold.

We were coworkers for years, but when I left the job, our connection faded, as many do when you stop seeing each other daily. We slowly and quietly became old and cold connections.

So, when I saw she’d recently visited my LinkedIn profile, I took it as a sign to reach out, and we set up a coffee.

While it’s hard to recap 15 years of living before your coffee gets cold, we did our best. We rediscovered our shared interests as we retold the highlights of our time apart, including the births, deaths, and divorces.

And then I learned she’s getting ready to retire at the end of the year, but with no real plans for what she’s going to do. She’s just looking forward to not working anymore, because her work has been all-consuming, especially after her husband died several years ago.

Oh, no.

My heart sank as I realized she’s running headlong off the edge of a cliff into a vast expanse of loneliness, and our rekindled friendship took a sudden turn toward urgency.

See, there’s a quiet assumption many of us carry through adulthood: that the relationships we have today will still be there tomorrow.

Work provides a steady rhythm of interaction. Communities form around shared routines. Conversations happen because proximity makes them easy. And over time, it’s tempting to believe those connections are stronger than they actually are.

But life has a way of testing that assumption.

Retirement is one of the clearest inflection points. Whether it’s yours, your friend’s, or even your parents’ retirement. When the structure disappears, so do many of the relationships that depended on it. What remains is not the full list of people you spent time with. What remains is the subset of relationships that were built on something deeper.

This is where the idea of social wealth becomes more than a metaphor.

Just as financial wealth determines your options later in life, your social wealth determines your resilience. Research across sociology and psychology consistently shows that the quality of relationships is one of the strongest predictors of long-term health, well-being, and longevity.

In previous issues of this newsletter, I’ve shared countless studies summarized in journals like Personal Relationships and large-scale meta-analyses on social isolation and mortality point to the same conclusion: a few meaningful connections outperform dozens of superficial ones when it comes to protecting against loneliness.

The question, then, is not whether you have friends.

It’s whether you have the right kinds of friends.

Start with a simple test: if the shared context disappeared, would the relationship survive? My coworker and I shared six years of context, and that didn’t sustain our friendship, but the bones of the relationship were still intact.

Many friendships are built on context. Work. School. Kids’ activities. A shared gym. A weekly routine. These are not trivial connections, but they are often fragile. Remove the context, and the interaction fades because nothing is actively sustaining it.

In contrast, friendships built on connection operate differently. They are driven by curiosity about the other person, not just the environment you share. The conversation extends beyond the immediate setting. You talk about what you’re thinking, what you’re wrestling with, what you’re learning.

These relationships are not dependent on proximity. They are sustained by interest.

As we age, this distinction becomes critical. Contexts change. Careers end. Children grow up. What remains are the relationships that were never reliant on those structures in the first place.

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One of the most reliable ways to assess a friendship is to look at what happened during periods of change.

Did the relationship survive a career shift? A move? A difficult period? A disruption in routine?

Transitions reveal what stability conceals.

Research on life course transitions consistently shows that social networks contract and reorganize during major changes. The friendships that persist are those where both parties actively choose to stay connected, even when it requires effort.

If someone remained present in your life when it would have been easy for them to drift away, that is not accidental. That is an intentional connection.

Those are the relationships that compound over time.

Another useful lens is depth of awareness.

Do you know what is actually happening in your friends’ lives beyond the surface? Do they know what is happening in yours?

Many adult friendships operate at a comfortable but limited level. You exchange updates. You share opinions. You maintain a rhythm of light interaction. But the conversation rarely crosses into anything that requires vulnerability.

That works, until it doesn’t.

Psychological research on belonging and emotional well-being shows that perceived understanding is a key driver of connection. It is not enough to spend time together. You need to feel known.

If you cannot name something real that your friend is dealing with right now, that may be a signal that the relationship is running on autopilot.

Autopilot does not hold up when life gets complicated.

There is also a practical test that often gets overlooked: effort.

Have you made plans together that required intention? Not default interactions, but something that someone had to initiate, coordinate, and follow through on.

Friendships of convenience happen because you are already in the same place. Friendships of value require someone to act.

This aligns with what sociologists describe as maintenance behaviors in relationships. Without intentional acts of connection, even strong ties weaken over time. The absence of effort is rarely neutral. It usually signals a gradual drift.

If every interaction you have with someone is incidental, that relationship is unlikely to survive when the incidental disappears.

None of this is an argument for cutting people out of your life or reducing your network to a narrow circle. Diversity of connections still matters. Weak ties provide access to new ideas, opportunities, and perspectives.

But when it comes to long-term well-being, depth carries more weight than breadth.

And when you realize that life circumstances have left you with neither depth nor breadth, start with just one.

One of my favorite reminders is that the best time to plant a tree was thirty years ago, and the second-best time to plant a tree is now.

Such is it with building your friendship network. It’s never too late to make a new friend or rekindle an old and cold connection.

A circumstantial connection can become a meaningful one. But it requires intention.

Ask a better question.
Share something real.
Make a plan that requires effort.
Follow up when there is no immediate reason to do so.

These are small actions, but they compound.

And over time, one by one, they transform your network from a collection of contacts into a foundation of support.

Before next week’s newsletter hits your inbox, take inventory of some of the older connections in your relationships through a simple exercise.

Identify three people in your life where things might feel a little one-sided:

Then act on that awareness.

Re-engage one of these relationships by initiating a plan to reconnect that requires effort on both your parts.

You may not be successful with each, but even one reconnection can set a life on a new trajectory.

Social wealth is not something you build all at once. It is something you invest in, one interaction at a time.

The earlier you start, the more resilient your and their life becomes.

What’s been your experience reconnecting? Do you have something you think could help others do it better? Just hit reply — your email goes straight to my inbox. 🙏