None of my friendships have anniversaries. I can tell you exactly when my elementary school crushes started and where I was when various boys asked me to be their girlfriend, but I can’t tell you where I was when I first met my best friends. We’re doing friendships all wrong.

A Pew Research Center survey found that 61% of U.S. adults say friendship is important to a fulfilling life. Only 23% say this about marriage. Yet we often invest more time and energy into our romantic relationships.

We clear our schedules to date. We plan romantic weekends. When the holidays roll around, we debate whether to bring our significant others home with us, but never our friends.

In adulthood, friendship is shunted into monthly happy hours or an occasional brunch. We might maintain friendships from high school or college but struggle to make new ones. Who has the time?

As a result, Americans have fewer close friendships than we did a few decades ago and interact with or rely on those friendships less. The author, at high school graduation with one of her oldest friends. (Courtesy Tove Danovich) As a little kid, it was easy to take friendship for granted.

I saw the same people every day at school and, inevitably, a synchronized rolling of the eyes in class evolved into inside jokes, then sleepovers and late-night phone calls to trade gossip and stories of heartbreak. We spent so much time together that acquaintances easily became friends. As adults, we might become close enough with coworkers to exchange texts and get after-work drinks, or we chit-chat with that person who signed up for the same 9:00 a.m. exercise class, but finding true friendship in adulthood is rare.

Dating apps are so ubiquitous that I'd argue it’s easier to find a romantic someone (if not the one) than it is to find new friends at this stage of life. I tried for years after I moved to Portland, Oregon, a city where I knew no one except the husband who came here with me. I invited people I met to get coffee or drinks.

I bought extra concert tickets and offered them up. But none of these efforts produced friendships. The friend-dates ended with a vague, “Let’s do this again sometime” rather than “What are you doing on Monday?” There were days when I cried because I didn’t have anyone but my husband to spend time with.

My only friends lived in other states; we could catch up on the phone or during occasional visits, but the role I played in their lives felt too small. Sometimes I wondered if I just wasn’t likable anymore. Maybe the only friends I’d ever have were the ones already grandfathered in.

It took me five years of going to birthday parties and networking events and pretending to be more outgoing than I am to find my people. One day, I was added to an email chain for a potluck and decided to go, despite not recognizing any of the names on the invite list or even knowing who had decided to include me. That party is where I met my first real Portland friends.

We were all writers of roughly the same age. Maybe that mattered, maybe it didn’t. The main difference was that they reached out to make plans with me as often as I reached out to them.

We made space for each other in our lives. When we couldn’t see each other in person, we texted updates back and forth. From those first friends I met others in their circle and still more after that.

(If the enemy of my enemy is my friend, the friends of my friends are often friends, too.) Advertisement The author in her Brooklyn apartment in 2010 with high school friends who became her roommates. (Courtesy Tove Danovich) Still, until I got divorced a year and a half ago, I didn’t prioritize these friendships.

Travel was reserved for my romantic partner. If I was invited to an event, I defaulted to asking my husband to be my plus-one. I saw my friends more often when he went out of town or on nights when he was busy.

But when we started the process of divorce, I noticed how these friends called to check in, how they let me stay on their couches and in their guest rooms, how they helped me move heavy furniture up the stairs or got me an IKEA gift card so I could set up my bachelorette pad. I was grieving the end of a 10-year relationship. I wondered if I’d ever find another life partner — and then I realized I already had.

Lots of them. I don’t know how long a boyfriend might be in my life, but I know my friends will still be there in five or 10 or 20 years. I’ve known my best friends since I was 15 — over half my life.

If we were in a romantic relationship, people would be asking us for the secrets to making it work for so long. Maybe the reason we don’t celebrate friendship anniversaries is because, unlike a romance, we rarely assume our close friendships will end. They are less precarious so we think they’re less precious.

The author, left, with friends during her freshman year of high school. (Courtesy Tove Danovich) Instead of taking friendships for granted, we should celebrate them more. To that end, I’ve been trying to take the lessons I’ve learned about being a good romantic partner and apply them to friendships.

I travel with friends now, giving them the gift of time. (Research shows it can take over 200 hours together to turn an acquaintance into a close friend: weekends away help you log those hours!) I tell my friends that I appreciate them and why — in person or by writing a letter and sending it in the actual mail.

I buy them presents for no reason and even treat them to dinner when I can. If we can put our best foot forward on dates with complete strangers, why not do that for the people who are always there for us? Every friendship, at its heart, is a love story.

The kind that can last a lifetime. Follow Cog on Facebook and Instagram. And sign up for our newsletter, sent on Sundays.

We share stories that remind you we're all part of something bigger.