Your friendships didn’t begin with your friends.
Without realizing it, patterns that influence the success, or demise, of our friendships were formed long before we even met them. Through original friendship research, real stories, and a national study of women, The Best Friend Project is investigating how childhood, family, attachment, and life experiences influence the way we connect—and disconnect with our friends.
Your friendships didn’t begin with your friends.
Without realizing it, patterns that influence the success, or demise, of our friendships were formed long before we even met them. Through original research, real stories, and a national study of women, The Best Friend Project is investigating how childhood, family, attachment, and life experiences influence the way we connect—and disconnect with our friends.
The Project
This friendship research started in a bathroom.
When her best friendship ended in a single text, Rachel Joy Swardson went to the bathroom. Hundreds of them. She taped postcards in women’s bathroom stalls across the country with a QR code asking the question she was too hurt and humiliated to say out loud: “How do you do friendship?”
Thousands of women responded. Ages 18 to 84, across political, religious, racial, and socioeconomic backgrounds, they shared remarkably personal stories — without an algorithm deciding who would see the question. What she discovered changed everything she thought she knew about friendship — and became The Best Friend Project.
The Discovery
Five Distinct Friendship Archetypes
Across thousands of women’s stories, the friendship research revealed common denominators — patterns in how we experience friendship, who we choose, how we connect, and what happens when things go wrong. Those discoveries became the Five Friendship Archetypes. They give us something romantic love has had for decades: a way to better understand ourselves in our relationships. Why we friend who we friend. The patterns we repeat. And what they mean for our platonic love — past, present, and future.
7,000 +
miles traveled collecting stories
5
Friendship Archetypes uncovered
18-84
age range of women surveyed
500+
bathroom stall postcards collected
Top 5%
ranked podcast, globally
the Best Friend Project Podcast
Listen While You Live.
New episodes every Tuesday. Bonus stories every Saturday. No experts, no advice — just the people who lived it. Make it part of your routine: on a walk, doing dishes, driving home.
Top Episodes
Have a friendship story?
You don’t need credentials. You need a story. If you’ve lived it, we want to hear it.
“Rachel’s talk made the whole room feel friendly.”
Rachel Joy Swardson is now booking 2027 keynotes, breakout sessions, and retreat workshops.