Friendship concerns us more than ever. With no time for it or transformed, through affections, into the antidote against some antisocial phenomena, analyzed as an intimate connection between two people or as a temporary relief for loneliness with fewer complications than a couple, dissected in essays and fiction throughout the history of literature and genuinely responsible for much of the best moments and discoveries on the Internet, establishing and maintaining it has become a problem for many adults.
This is demonstrated by some recent editorial successes —My Friend, The Passion of Strangers or The Friend Who Left Me—, the reorientation of apps like Hinge and Bumble, which not only present users looking for romantic dates but also provide other types of connections, and thousands of expressions of online discomfort, with millions of users on forums like Reddit asking for advice —or help— to make friends once adolescence is over.
There is a contemporary anxiety around friendship because spaces and moments where it can develop are scarce. That is why, when summer arrives and it seems that some routines —even for those who continue working— relax, many adults feel it is a good time to look for new friends. In her essay Friendship, a social bond, French sociologist Claire Bidart confirms that summer, vacations, and their associated activities (such as camping, traveling, or new sports) are “especially favorable” contexts for establishing social bonds, as they take people out of their usual institutions, allowing freer and elective encounters.
“Survival in unknown territories bonds a lot. Traveling also accelerates conversations. There are confidences that in everyday life would take months to appear and that, during a trip, arise in an afternoon”Gabriela González
Some join organized trips, some go for walks, some take advantage of moments like on the train or plane, and some cultivate a certain familiarity with their towel neighbors until conversations arise more frequently. Although summer is usually associated with stormy and fleeting loves, or with those friendships consolidated during childhood that resume for a couple of weeks each year, this period is an exception that allows strangers to get closer.
Beaches, pools, and walks
Rafaela Sánchez (48 years old) takes advantage of her vacations to walk. “Absolutely yes: although it is not my goal, I have made many friends during my walks,” admits this woman from Cádiz who enjoys all kinds of walking routes, some in the company of companions she met almost ten years ago. “It’s a lottery and sometimes you get each individual. But you always have some freedom to change stage endings or different places to slip away; although other times, overwhelmed by the good vibes that appear from being on vacation and in special environments, you share everything.”
“Trips are great for making new friends,” confirms Gabriela González, author of Almost Adults. “Survival in unknown territories bonds a lot. Traveling also accelerates conversations. There are confidences that in everyday life would take months to appear and that, during a trip, arise in an afternoon,” continues the writer. Recent sociological studies show that the amount of time shared by two potential friends is fundamental for building their bond. Thus, it is possible to know a potential friend superficially for years (for example, a neighbor) without the relationship materializing, while if for some reason (such as a shared activity), one has been close to someone several hours a day, the friendship can be considered solid in about six weeks. Also, again according to sociologist Bidart, these timeframes are even shorter when a fortuitous event appears in an unstructured context —it does not have to be a risky or extreme experience, a shared surprise is enough— something that turns strangers into accomplices.
“In my town, a kind of summer commune is also established, because when you go to the beach you always end up putting yourself in the same spot, in the same area. You like to park in the same place because you already know it, a certain beach bar to then have a drink, where you know who goes, and in the end, you end up socializing with the same people,” continues Sánchez, who, when not walking, lives in a coastal town. That said: the small universe she describes is only for locals, because tourists will never establish those small regularities that end up becoming bonds. Perhaps that is why González thinks beach friendships are more related to childhood than adulthood: “They arise with games on the shore or around a soccer ball.” On the other hand, “pools are too small and quite selfish ecosystems, people are more focused on getting a good sunbed and disconnecting than on meeting other people. I think friendships in summer are made at the beach bar or the bar,” continues the writer.
“We live surrounded by very functional relationships: coworkers, contacts, collaborators, but true friendship usually arises when immediate utility disappears. That in late capitalism is very close to utopia. And precisely because of that, I also think summer is a time conducive to friendship”Vicente Monroy
Every May, memes about friends with pools reappear (to which, apparently, people only turn when the heat arrives). Most stories about pools associate them with a certain exclusivity compared to the beach, which is more horizontal: “The type of friends you look for because they have a pool are friends out of interest,” comments writer and film critic Vicente Monroy. “The pool is a coded space for a type of bourgeois relationship. Cinema has talked a lot about this: the unbeatable classic The Swimming Pool by Jacques Deray, with Alain Delon and Romy Schneider super sexy, which tells us about relationships totally perverted by the context. And we see a deeply hierarchical context because to have a pool you have to belong to a certain class. In contrast, the beach has that tacky, shabby, and democratic thing. It is one of the few contemporary spaces where bodies of all ages, social classes, origins… continue to mix,” he continues.
Pools generate communities around them so homogeneous that essayist Jorge Dioni considered that these facilities (usually in gated communities) serve to characterize an entire population segment, as he did in his book Spain of the Pools. If those who have a pool in our country are quite similar to each other (and, as Dioni discovered, vote for the same options), this homogeneity also manifests itself regarding friendship and is called homophily. Aside from pools, summer can function as a vaccine against that homophily that arises because social institutions (workplaces, neighborhoods, clubs…) group people with similar characteristics beforehand, limiting the “market” of possible friends to those who already resemble oneself.
This break from social inertia is precisely what several novels by Cesare Pavese explore (such as The Beach or The Devil on the Hills) or The Maritime Alps, a work by Vicente Monroy published in 2021 where the author develops the friendship of a working-class boy with several wealthy young people whom he accompanies during a luxury summer between Barcelona and the Costa Brava. “Interclass friendships are not necessarily doomed to failure. I think that if they occur more in summer, that reveals that for a few weeks we realize that many of the barriers that organize our life are not natural, they are social,” Monroy points out. “Summer vacation is a practice that can be revealing in sociopolitical terms. It shows us that many of the issues that organize our daily life in winter are purely social. And this also has to do with the nostalgia with which we remember certain summers, especially adolescence, when one is not yet exhausted from working.”
No friendship in a hurry
Beach Pleasure (Cielo Santo, 2025) is a novel by British writer Helen Palmer set during a single June night in the seaside city of Blackpool (a kind of Benidorm a few miles from Liverpool and Manchester). The protagonists are two girls whose friendship, amid drugs and stifling heat, turns into romance. The author herself explains to ICON that, in her opinion, the connection between friendship and romance is not a binary opposition, much less during summer, when there is an intensity “very conducive to sex, romance, and flirtations.” “There are good reasons why people talk about summer loves, immortalized of course in Grease. It is true that inhibitions are left behind and we allow ourselves to be more present in our own bodies during the summer months, connecting more with desire, even if it is not forever.”
Although “summer love” is another of the promises contained in the myth of summer, authors like Palmer argue that precisely because summer is a hybrid and promiscuous time, it does not make much sense to separate it from other feelings like friendship: “This is the general function of the carnivalesque, in which everything is always in the process of becoming something, nothing is ever just one thing, and hedonism, representation, intensity, and extremes are celebrated,” Palmer explains.
But the promises of summer are not always fulfilled or, if they are, they rarely consolidate. Returning to a more practical ground, journalist and broadcaster Laura Piñero recalls that few summer friendships survive: “I know quite a few people who, since they cannot coordinate schedules with their lifelong friends, are signing up for shared vacations with strangers. At first, it was embarrassing to admit it, but now it is quite common. What I have noticed is that during the trip they have a great time and develop a very pleasant bond with the promise to continue later, but I know few cases where that friendship after the shared trip has consolidated.”
So behind the urge to take advantage of summer to make friends is the same phenomenon that prevents making or keeping them during ordinary months: acceleration, optimization, and lack of time. “We live surrounded by very functional relationships: coworkers, contacts, collaborators, but true friendship usually arises when immediate utility disappears. That in late capitalism is very close to utopia. And precisely because of that, I also think summer is a time conducive to friendship,” concludes Monroy. It remains to be seen if this summer we will find time to make friends.