Almost nothing is better than the feeling we have when things move along with ease in our friendships, when we feel listened to and understood, cared for and loved, by people we’ve treasured. With our friends, like with a romantic partner, we may make plans far into the future, and we may also fall into spontaneous adventures with no plans at all.

A key difference is that in friendships, people may tend to feel more awkward about asserting their needs and desires. This seems especially true for women as women have been socialized to develop and maintain relationships often at any and all expense to themselves. As a result, it can become more challenging to articulate one’s preferences, limitations, or need to change one’s mind about something for fear of upsetting the other person. But what happens when that’s almost unavoidable? Is it possible to encounter these disruptions without it interfering with the ease, flow, and depth of a friendship?

Let’s look at two cases.

Take Lisa for example. She's a 26-year-old physical therapist who, since finishing school, has been living with her parents to save money. Now really wants to launch out on her own and live independently. The thing is that she and her friend Emma had been planning to live together, but the area is expensive with few affordable rentals and every place they saw came up short for one reason or another. Eventually, they narrowed down their search to a few key areas and had a couple of possibilities to check out, which seemed quite promising.

Suddenly, there were........

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