Ein Freund, ein guter Freund, ist das Beste was es gibt auf der Welt [A friend, a good friend, is the best thing you can have in this world]. ―The Comedian Harmonists

I dedicate this essay to my friend Gerhard Almstedt, who was taken from us in 2023.

Friendship is an underappreciated topic in psychological research, although having good friends is one of the cornerstones of a successful and rewarding social life. It is a source of happiness (Pezirkianidis et al., 2023). The 1930 song by the Comedian Harmonists is one of the few odes to friendship—beloved in Germany then, but almost forgotten now.

Like romantic love, friendship comes with a mystique, an aura of incomprehensibility. If all goes well, it seems to just happen, it seems like a gift of the gods. To think of friendship as an evolved capacity (Seyfarth & Cheney, 2012) or as something that requires work to be found, cultivated, and maintained (Sanchez et al., 2018), seems to spoil the enigma. There is a vigorous literature we can consult to understand friendship from a scientific perspective (Hojjat & Moyer, 2016), but, alas, folk psychologists won’t show much interest. Science is a downer, and even poetic expression, like the one offered by the Comedian Harmonists in 1930, makes some people cringe. Friendships among men, in particular, are rarely the object of rhapsody, perhaps for fear of homophobia.

With a nod to positive psychology, we realize that most of us have room to grow in the friendship department. With a little mindfulness, intentionality, and effort, we can reap more........

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