Why is it hard to make and keep friends as an adult? Even if you finally find time to see each other, can you connect more deeply than just catching up over coffee? How many do you count as ride-or-die pals who’ll always show up with effervescent banter and deep conversation — your “chosen family?” Widespread loneliness reflects a world of crappy jobs and unaffordable housing that makes it almost impossible to have close, interwoven friendships. A dwindling social safety net takes a toll on us and on our relationships. Particularly for queer people, friendships can be crucial relations of equality, constancy, and care. Still, we disappoint each other and fall into irreparable conflict. A less lonely world is possible. Through interviews, research, and personal narrative, this book shows how people build tight connections despite living in the austere conditions of colonial capitalism — boldly weaving a new social fabric as this one unravels. The book is arguing that the reasons people are struggling with our friendships and with loneliness are not mostly because of individual failures, but because of the consequences of living in a neoliberal austerity hellscape that is making every good thing increasingly difficult, and the ways that people are building more interconnected lives in spite of that, while also working on structural political change.