Friendkeeping: The Hard Work of Sustaining Adult Friendships

No matter what life stage you are in, it is worth considering the well-being of your friendships. In my own case, I have lived in eight different U.S. states and moved across country several times, including as I retired. Most people regard friends as part of our convoy of life, much like long-haul truckers or ships that travel together. Some members of our life convoy are there for the length of our lifespan, others join in periodically, and others may exit.

Each of us makes choices about maintaining friendships and support boundaries (Johnson, 2025). My observation is that some people seem to find it easier to let friendships lapse, especially when we change jobs, move, graduate, find a new church or sports team, join new families, or see friends move on. Others find a way to sustain friendships beyond those times when we have regular contact. It certainly has become easier to maintain and renew friendships via digital and social media. However, most people will have times they need additional support or to hook into a local friendship community.

I have thought about and studied the role of people who are called family kinkeepers (Braithwaite et al., 2017; Rosenthal, 1985). These are people who “help enable and assist family communication. Kinkeepers plan family gatherings or help the family keep in touch with one another by providing updates on issues such as graduations, birth of a baby, or publicizing support needs if a family member becomes unemployed or is having surgery” (Braithwaite, 2022). My research teams have studied how people who play this kinkeeper role communicate and what they do and say to help families stay connected.

The Friendkeeper Role

The relationship “keeper” role is not just relevant to families. Gallagher and Gerstel (1993) pointed to what they called “friendkeeping,” which refers to a role dedicated to building and maintaining friendships. For many people, friendships may be as important, or even more important, than blood and legal families to provide help and social support. This can range from visits, transportation, errands, in-person care, accompanying to medical appointments, raising funds, organizing meals—any number of actions. Other important types of social support involve finding and sharing information and advice, encouraging emotional solidarity, and connecting a person to other support networks. Friendkeepers may provide the support themselves or help organize a response from among the friendship group.

Work of the Friendkeeper

Initiative

In many cases, someone needs to step forward as the friendkeeper of a particular pair or group. I have often functioned in the friendkeeper role—for example in recent years, for one of my college musical groups, faculty and students from my doctoral program, a small group of high school friends who live nearby, and a larger group of people who were members of a former church. Like kinkeepers, friendkeepers tend to step forward and undertake the role, rather than being assigned or voted in. What we learned with family kinkeepers is that they recognize they are playing the role and others look to them and identify them as kinkeepers. The same appears to be true for friendkeepers.

If you want to see a friendship pair or group continue over time, you may want to consider stepping forward as a friendkeeper and do the work, such as sharing information, assistance, planning events, etc., whatever it takes to maintain friendships and meet needs. Or you may certainly encourage another person in that role or plan for rotating responsibilities. Some people express frustration with always being expected to take the lead (it can be a burden as well as a joy) and balance that frustration against the cost of letting friendship relationships lapse.

Organizing

The organizing role of friendkeepers can be broad. It is important to do what will benefit members of the friendship group, looking for what is needed to keep relationships together if that is the goal. Don’t be afraid to step forward and ask friendship group members to describe what they’d like to see.

Tasks can include managing communication—for example, creating and keeping a contact list, social media site, or newsletter, or sending notes, gifts, or other messages of encouragement. Friendkeepers are usually instrumental in organizing regular events like a holiday celebration or monthly outing, or one-time events, trips, or reunions.

Friendkeepers and members of the friendship group may benefit from seeking help with organizing. This is also a way to increase interest and commitment of the friendship group. Friendkeepers are likely in the best position to hear when friends have news or needs (e.g., lost a job, experiencing illness, birth of a child, loneliness). They can get the word out and provide or coordinate a response.

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Challenges of the Friendkeeping Role

Friendkeeping roles are not without challenges.

Accepting Friend Support. One potential difficulty is that some people may not be used to, or willing to, open themselves up for significant help from friends over family. That works if they have realistic expectations and experience of their family coming through. However, people who live far from family or do not have close family ties may not be able to depend on family to step forward in times of need. In these cases, support from friends may be a learned behavior. The more success a friendship pair or group experiences providing support to one another, the more their track record of support will help them going forward.

Privacy. A second challenge is dealing with expectations of privacy. As friendkeepers often manage personal information, they need to consider who is included. If they manage the group's contact list, they need to be careful how it is used. For instance, I ran into a complication with friendkeeping when one member did not agree with how another person had presented a new name on the contact list and wanted changes.

The friendkeeper must thoughtfully consider what information is acceptable to share. I developed my own rule not to share information before checking with the person(s) whose needs I am hoping to address or with their closest person or relational partner if they are unable to communicate directly.

Place of the Family. A third challenge to friendkeeping is how the bio-legal families may react to close friendship relationships that may augment or replace families at some point. Family members may feel embarrassed or resentful when friends step in to help. Friendkeepers can easily find themselves caught in the middle between people who need support, their family, and the friendship group.

Friendkeeping Over the Years

We know that building and keeping friendship ties over the years can be challenging. However, friendship represents efforts worth making as it is difficult, if not impossible, to build support networks in an emergency, or in later life when friends may be experiencing limitations and health issues.

The friendkeeper role has the potential to be helpful in building and maintaining friendship networks, and having people prepared and able to step up when the unexpected happens. People will know who to call to get the ball rolling. This does not mean that the friendkeeper is solely responsible for providing all the support, but in the best of circumstances, they can communicate, get the word out, and help coordinate support when the need arises.

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