Friendless: Friendship, Love, and Loneliness in the Modern Age

In our fifth episode of friendless, I invite you to join my family over a casual lunch as we discuss friendship experiences and opinions in a multi-generational context. We discuss whether ghosting friends is actually the best invention of this coming generation (according to my Dad, he thinks yes). Do we have obligations to our friendships? Where does faith come into all this? (my mom weighs in) and more. A big thank you to all our listeners as our podcast reached 250 downloads t...

To have a friend, you have to be a friend—easier said than done. In this solo episode of Friendless, I (Stephanie, Certified Emotionally Focused Couples Therapist) unpack what people actually want in close friendship and how to practice it today. Drawing on Roberts-Griffin’s 2011 study—where thousands answered “What qualities do you look for in a close friend?”—we move past the myths of proximity, popularity, and sameness and zero in on the real glue of closeness: trust, honesty, and dependab...

On this episode of Friendless, I sit down with my close friend Natalie Walker—a biblical counselor with a gift for gentle truth-telling—to unpack why adult friendship feels so hard. We get honest about unspoken expectations, the fear of being “too much,” the temptation to stay “low maintenance,” and the insecurity of feeling replaceable—and we make the case that curiosity is love in action: when you truly want to know how a friend is doing (not just checking a box), you ask better questions, ...

What makes someone a really good friend? And what, exactly, makes someone… not? In this episode, I sit down with my husband and best friend, James Cox, to ask the question thats central to this podcast: What makes a good friend? We talk about: The difference between fast friends (party pals) vs. slow friends (the kind you can just sit around with on your worst days)Why being a good listener might be the most underrated friendship skill (and the rarest) How friendship can thrive (or flop)...

Welcome to the very first episode of Friendless: Love, Friendship & Loneliness in the Modern Age. I’m Stephanie Cox — therapist, writer, and fellow human figuring out relationships — and today, we’re diving into a question so many of us are quietly asking: Why do we feel so lonely, even when we’re surrounded by people? In this episode, I break down why friendship feels harder in adulthood, why connection in the digital age isn’t cutting it, and why loneliness has become an actual public ...