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Got chores to do but miss your friends? Invite them to a “chore hang” errand date

Getting things done alongside your bud is a win-win

@EliMcCann

Eli McCann's husband works on his garden while a friend keeps him company.

As you get older, it gets harder and harder to maintain friendships. It’s hard to make time for them as your family grows, bills pile up, and responsibilities keep cramming into your free time. It’s fairly common for plans to get canceled because you have chores that need to get done. However, a buzzworthy post on X stumbled upon a possible solution: invite your friends over for a “chore hang.”

Lawyer and humor columnist Eli McCann (@EliMcCann) shared online that his husband needed to get some gardening done, but wanted to catch up with friends at the same time. So he just invited them over in shifts! Not to ask them to pitch in, but to just keep him company and enjoy a popsicle as he weeded and planted in his yard.

This inspired hundreds of comments on X and Instagram:

“I love this! I’ve needed to go through a costly storage unit for years, but it’s creepy to go alone. So I haven’t done it. I don’t even want help. Just company 😆”

“We all need a friend who will just keep us company while we do our drudgery.”

“This is so me. Like please, sit in the kitchen area while I cook. No, you don’t need to do anything. Not a single thing but exist with me.”

This idea of hanging out with one friend while getting some needed errands or house work done comes at an era of mass loneliness in the United States. A 2024 poll by the American Psychiatry Association showed that one in three Americans are lonely every week. A study from Colorado State University showed that 40% of Americans that were surveyed didn’t feel as close to their friends as they wanted to be. In part, this is due to the fact, according to MSNBC and other sources, that most Americans are overworked, needing multiple jobs to make ends meet and using whatever little free time they have on necessary home tasks rather than leisure or hanging out with friends.

But we need to make time for our friends, not just to make us feel better emotionally and psychologically, but for our physical health, too. A 2023 study from the U.S. Surgeon General showed that a lack of social connection can negatively impact your heart and blood pressure while also increasing your risk of a stroke. That same study compared the lack of social connection as unhealthy as smoking 15 cigarettes per day!

While there are large society-based issues that need to be tackled to resolve this problem, there are small solutions that you can do to improve any loneliness you feel, increase your quality time with friends, get your stuff done, and decrease your risk of a heart attack. Similar to the “errand dates” trend on TikTok, a “chore hang” or whatever you’d like to call it can help achieve all of those issues.

If you have to get your clothes clean, grab a friend and give them a coffee to chat with while you wait for the dryer. If you need to clean out your shed, get a six-pack to share with a bud and offer them any items you were going to put up at a garage sale. Make a pizza and share it with a few friends friends while you dust and clean the rest of the apartment. The worst that could happen is that they politely decline and you end up doing your tasks alone anyway.

Life is a team sport, no matter how much of a solo journey it can become. All it takes to improve isolation is an invitation.

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friendship
Pop Culture

Why 'weak ties' are more important than best friends, according to a friendship expert

There's more to life than besties.

@thefriendshipexpert/TikTok

Go say hello to an acquaintance today

What is the cure for loneliness?

One might be tempted to say close, intimate relationships. Which is true to a certain degree, but as counterintuitive as it may seem firsthand, those more distant friendships can be just as meaningful.

In fact, according to friendship coach Danielle Bayard Jackson, those in our outer circle can contribute even more to our happiness than our besties.

Bayard Jackson is a go-to source when it comes to creating healthy, fulfilling platonic friendships. Her advice has been featured in the “New York Times”, “Wall Street Journal,” “Washington Post” and “Psychology Today,” just to name a few.

Being an expert in the realm of close bonds, it might come as a surprise that Bayard Jackson touted the benefits of what she calls “weak ties” in a recent video posted to her TikTok page. But she brings up some great points.

"There are close friends, and then there are... acquaintances, associates," she explains. "The sociological term for people who are not our besties, but with whom we have, like, pleasant enough relationships is weak ties. Those are people who you enjoy, but who you see more infrequently and you have less intimacy with."

For example—coworkers, parents you only see at certain school functions, neighbors, maybe even classmates. The NPCs of your life, if you will. We might not consider these people close friends, but they still play a vital role to our wellbeing, Bayard Jackson attests.

"According to research, people with more weak ties are happier and are less likely to have depression,” she said, adding that people with a lot of weak ties have more access to resources and critical information needed to improve their life.

@thefriendshipexpert

The beauty of “weak ties”

♬ original sound - Danielle Bayard Jackson

Not only that, but those with a bigger friend circle receive a wider variety of perspectives, “making them feel like their world is bigger,” as well as affirmation for the “various aspects of their intersectional identities,” meaning they probably “feel seen” more often.

In other words—“close friends are not the only kind of relationships that offer value to your life.”

Some of the research Bayard Jackson alludes to might include that of sociologist Mark Granovetter, who first began pioneering the theory that weak ties could strengthen job opportunities, since they introduce new ideas and broaden one’s social network.

Subsequent studies on the subject have confirmed that, regardless of nationality or age, weak ties also help one feel a sense of belonging, and contribute to a sense of emotional well being.

It’s an interesting take, especially coming during a time when it might feel like weak ties are all we have, thanks to social media. After all, most of us are probably much more likely to comment on an audience's Instagram post than we are to actually call up a close friend to have an hour long in depth conversation.

via GIPHY

But it’s also undeniable that outside of the social media watering hole, our weak tie friendships might have severely dwindled during the pandemic, and have probably continued to go unfostered as we’ve navigated a shift towards working from home. Maybe this is partially due to the fact that we haven’t acknowledged how important they are.

It’s not often that quantity trumps quality, but this seems to be one of those rare cases. If we really want to start feeling less lonely, and a little bit better about ourselves, we might want to consider putting the effort into strengthening those weak ties. Luckily, it doens’t have to be that hard.

As Bayard Jackson suggests, "stop giving a stank face to your neighbors and your coworkers and those people who stand next to you at the dog park, and instead, I need you to start saying hello. Because it will be worth it."

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psychology
Pop Culture

Woman gets emotional while admitting she feels 'so jealous' seeing girl best friends

Her tearful confession elicited a lot of responses from other women who felt a similar loneliness.

@via..li/TikTok

"It's a different kind of pain."

From the gal pals in “Sex & the City,” to besties Romy and Michelle, to even a casual scroll through #bffsforever on social media, we are inundated with images of female friendships brimming over with glamor, intimacy, laughter, connection…sort of like the grown-up version of sugar, spice and everything nice.

And while it’s lovely to see examples of women lifting each other up rather than putting each other down, it can feel painfully isolating for the many women who simply don’t have those types of friendships.

Loneliness is something that nearly every person deals with in some capacity due to our increasingly technology-driven, post-COVID world, but it’s the particular juxtaposition of girl squads constantly showing up in pop culture against the very different reality of many, if not most, women that is its own unique type of suffering. Friendships, friendships everywhere, but not a drop to drink lattes with.

This is why so many women are resonating with a TikTok NYC-based Via Li made after seeing two girlfriends chatting at a cafe and feeling intense longing for that type of platonic relationship.

“I just got to this cafe and I saw these two girls just sitting next to each other. You know, they had their laptops out and they were just smiling with each other,” Li says as her eyes well up with tears.

“Why am I crying? This is so embarrassing, oh my god!” she exclaims. It’s okay Li, we’ve been there.

She continues by describing how the two girls seem so comfortable around each other, giving her the inkling that they probably even live together. “I think it’s just so great to have this best friend that you can do everything with…It just seems so happy, you know?”

Meanwhile, Li is sitting there by herself and “literally about to have a mental breakdown.”

She then explains that seeing those two friends together is a “different kind of pain” than seeing a couple together. “When I see couples, I don’t even get jealous,” she says. “But when I see two girl best friends…I literally look at them and I just feel like I’m gonna start crying.”

@via..li

why tf am i so emotional today oh my god

♬ original sound - Via

Though Li felt alone while filming the clip, she is certainly not alone in her sentiment. Shortly after posting, several other women flooded the comments with similar feelings of this specific kind of loneliness, whether they once had a friend group and lost it or never seemed to belong to one.

“Same it’s hard to find someone who matches your energy, humor and morals,” one person shared.

Another added, “I miss having girl best friends. Everything was so easy omg this makes me sad.”

“I know exactly how you feel. I crave it so badly and never experienced the full thing” wrote another.

Feeling envy is part of being human. It’s a way of remembering that we truly care about something. Friendship envy is no different. And the good news is this thing we care about can be achieved with some effort and attention (though it still may never look like a well-crafted sitcom).

Psychologist and Forbes contributor Mark Travers suggests being proactive by initiating conversation with neighbors, organizing a movie night, starting your own book club, etc., and committing to creating your own community that way. He also emphasizes the power of being honest about your personal life with others in order to form connections. Even those who are more introverted can “start off small,” he writes.

Considering tons of viewers reached out to offer Li friendship after she was so vulnerable, perhaps there is something to this strategy. Regardless, her story is one that nearly all of us can relate to. You never really grow out of that desire to have a sleepover, paint your nails and share your feelings with a chosen tribe that feels like family.

Looking for more friend-finding tips? We actually have some here.

From Your Site Articles
community
Wellness

Juliette Lewis offers the perfect advice to a fan who 'feels alone'

commons.wikimedia.org

Yellowjackets actor Juliette Lewis.

Not that she ever really left the spotlight, but the iconic Juliette Lewis has recently reached a new chapter in her stardom thanks to her role of Natalie in Showtime’s obsession-worthy new series “Yellowjackets.”

Her social media is filled to the brim with excited fan theories, juicy behind-the-scenes questions and enthusiastic character appreciation posts. There’s no question about it; people love her performance as the tough, haunted, shotgun-savvy Nat.

But fun “Yellowjackets” trivia isn’t the only thing Lewis talks about with her following. She recently posted an Instagram Q&A with the caption, “I know some things ‘bout livin, love-ASK ME.”

One fan wrote, “ a lot of times I feel alone and like no one is there for me.”

Lewis’ advice for overcoming loneliness is something I think bears repeating.

“The only cure-all for this feeling- is being there for another,” the actress replied.


In times of helplessness, being there for someone else might feel impossible. Counterintuitive even. But research has repeatedly shown that acts of altruism can help us live longer, lift us from depression and fulfill our very basic psychological need to belong. There’s a reason why loneliness feels so awful, and why generosity is a gift that keeps on giving.

In other words, Juliette Lewis is onto something here.

Lewis really does walk the talk with this. It only took a few seconds of searching on Google to see that she regularly supports charities, including (but not limited to) Little Kids Rock, an organization dedicated to providing music education to disadvantaged schools.

But working with charity organizations isn’t the only avenue. Lewis added that a generous act needn’t be a grand gesture. Your act of kindness could be as simple as “show[ing] up for another in [a way] they’d like–a phone call, give food, give them kindness and show care/interest…chat with them…make them feel less alone…make them feel heard or happier.”

There’s an added benefit of making someone feel heard, too. According to a study published in 2017, by helping others manage difficult emotions, we enhance our own ability to self-regulate and therefore improve our own emotional well-being. Think of it as psychology's way of saying “what goes around comes around.”

As Lewis advises, the person you help can be someone you know or a complete stranger. The only real caveat here is that it should be “a person you are not trying to get something from in return,” to prioritize “connecting without expecting.”

Odds are, those words of affirmation you long to hear … someone else longs to hear them as well. That longing you have to be surprised with a random bag of goodies … someone else feels the same way. Fulfilling another person’s wish opens us up to our own power.

As Lewis writes, “once you know you can give love to another generously I assure you [that] you will open up this energy flow. And might even notice you are not ‘needing’ as much.”

Shifting our perspective to focus on others while at a low point might at first seem like pouring from an empty cup, but maybe the opposite is actually true. Maybe by realizing how we can affect the lives of others, our cups are then filled with the discovery of how influential we really are.

Next time you’re having trouble keeping your chin up, see how it feels to lift someone’s spirit. This article from Mental Health offers some great ideas to start. But odds are your heart already knows what to do.

Thanks Juliette Lewis for the sage wisdom.

… and seriously, what happened to Nat?!

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