My best friend travelled to stay with my family last weekend. when she arrived, she went straight to the kitchen and, without asking, ate some dried fruit. She wasn’t being rude. I knew she would do this. We’ve known each other for almost 20 years. She can eat anything she wants from my kitchen. Indeed, I bought her favorite fruits and snacks at the shop that morning.

Our long weekend together was simple. I was recovering from surgery and couldn't go to shopping malls, We passed the time running errands（差事）, but there's never been a quiet moment. We’ve lived in different cities for almost a decade, Reunions demand conversation.

Our personalities are matched, to be sure，and a shared history is indescribably（难以形容地）valuable. We were competitors at high school before bonding. Then we discovered the many interests that we had in common. Our friendship developed itself quickly. We stayed companions and supported each other through law school and through our first jobs. Ours is a friendship for the ages.

There is something special about friends who know everything about you. They are rare. They have seen your bright lights of achievements, the depths of desperation（绝望的境地）and the boring routine of the in-between. It's special to unpack feelings without wasting time filling in the blanks. As my long weekend shows, with such friends we don't have to “do”, but we simply have to “be”. We drop the act, the performance, the public version of ourselves, The special friendships are those which never fail to delight, whose continuation is worth the extra effort, despite distance and difference in our separate lives. I had the very great joy of this reminder last weekend. I'm lucky to have found this friend, and to see a future where her companionship remains. Being together is perfection.

Adults tend to have stronger cognitive, social and emotional skills, which allow them to better identify with, offer advice to, and otherwise support friends. Many young adults enjoy this emotional depth along with an abundance of free time before family and career responsibilities pick up in midlife. It’s no wonder that this age is a high-water mark for friendship. Those who go to college get a few extra years of living near their peers. Later in adulthood, though, people have more demands on their time: work, romantic partnership, and caregiving all compete for their attention.

Plus, when adults enter the workforce full-time, potential new friends don’t constantly surround them the way they did in school or while living in dormitories. Though some continue to carve out time for their social lives. Bagwell said, friendship tends to become “a luxury rather than priority.”

Under these new circumstances, many people see friends less frequently — and they tend to spend the time they do have together differently. For efficiency’s sake, they might pair socializing with other activities, like sharing a meal. Though grabbing dinner with a friend can be engaging, it’s a far cry from well-planned forest ceremonies. Friends could choose to tell each other secrets at a meal, but the activity doesn’t bring about the type of natural openness that play can.

This pursuit of efficiency and the safety of following routine can come at the cost of pleasure. An efficiency mindset risks having friendships feel like making a trade, as if each meeting should be “worth it.” But squeezing time for short and rare meetings is unlikely to feel fulfilling. If you haven’t seen each other in a while, focusing on chatting about old days is natural. However, looking back on important events in life can feel like exchanging notes while joint adventures create memories—the foundation of close friendship. As the sociologist Eric Klinenberg put it, “You tend to enrich your social life when you stop, stay longer and waste time.”

If you want to convince the boss you deserve a pay rise or promotion, the solution could be simple --- eat the same food as they do. Psychologists have discovered managers are much more likely to instantly trust us if we choose the same dishes as them.

During experiments, discussions over wages and work conditions were much more successful if both sides chose to snack on the same treats. And shoppers were much more likely to buy a product advertised on TV by someone eating a similar food to them at the time.

The reason is thought to be the so–called similarity attraction theory --- where people tend to like others who have similar tastes or habits to themselves. But this is believed to be one of the first studies highlighting the role of food in this relationship. Researchers at Chicago University in the US conducted a series of experiments to examine food’s role in earning trust.

In a test, participants were told to watch TV --- where someone pretending to be a member of the public praised a certain product. The volunteers were given Kit Kat bars to nibble, while the TV people ate either a Kit Kat or grapes as they talked.

The results showed viewers were much more likely to express an interest in buying the product if the TV showed the other person eating a Kit Kat too. The researchers added, “Although similarity in food consumption is not a sign of whether two people will get along, we find consumers treat this as such. They feel more trusting of those who consume as they do. It means people can immediately begin to feel friendship and develop a bond, leading to smoother transactions from the start.”

Harley Street psychologist Dr. Lucy Atcheson said it was already known that wearing similar clothes could instantly create trust. But this was the first report that food had the same effect. She said, “This is really interesting. It makes sense as people feel they have common ground and can trust the other person. That means negotiations are more likely to be successful.”