Have a third place, live near your buddies and other friendship lessons we've learned from 'Friends'

The TV series Friends is marking a major milestone this year: The NBC sitcom, which followed a tight-knit group of friends as they navigated life, love and everything in between, officially turns 30 on Sept. 22. (Cue Joey Tribbiani’s tears.)

The show’s enduring legacy isn’t just about the actors it turned into household names, or even its iconic scenes. (Don’t even get us started on the whole “We were on a break!” debate.) For many fans of the show, it’s the special bond among these six friends that makes them rewatch the series (currently streaming on Max) time and time again.

It should come as no surprise that the friendship group of Monica (Courteney Cox), Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow), Rachel (Jennifer Aniston), Joey (Matt LeBlanc), Chandler (Matthew Perry) and Ross (David Schwimmer) is so aspirational — there’s plenty of research that points to what these fictional pals got right.

Find a third place

The characters on Friends regularly spend time together at the coffee shop Central Perk, which can be considered their “third place.” Sociologist Ray Oldenburg first coined the term to describe a space outside your home or work — such as a café, bar, health club, etc. — that encourages socializing. Spending time in these places can make you feel more connected to your community.

Friendship educator and host of the Friend Forward podcast Danielle Jackson tells Yahoo Life that her clients regularly tell her they want a friend group like the one on the show. She notes that having a designated space that is “purely recreational and communal” to spend time together, as they do on Friends, is important because it “sets the tone for exchanging ideas and enjoying each other's company,” which can lead to more “depth in a friendship.”

Unfortunately, there is a decline in these third places in today’s world — partially, Jackson says, due to the economy of convenience. Instead of going to the library to get a new book, you can download one on your Kindle, or have dinner delivered instead of going out. While these things can save us time, skipping out on third places can ultimately make us more isolated from other people and therefore lonelier. As Jackson notes, “It’s important to have these spaces, like the coffee shop, to get us out of the home, so we can have serendipitous moments with strangers and [dedicate time] to friends.”

Create real bonds with the people you see frequently

Colleen Marshall, a licensed marriage and family therapist and the chief clinical officer at Two Chairs therapy group, tells Yahoo Life that, according to research, you’re more likely to develop closer bonds with people you see often and spend more time with — even if you don’t have a ton in common overall. This, she says, is why people may bond more with their college roommate than someone on a different floor of the dorm, even if they have a lot more in common with that person.

The characters on Friends aren’t just tight because of shared interests. In fact, they’re all pretty different — just look at polar opposites Phoebe and Ross. However, since these friends see each other often, due in part to their roommate or neighbor status, they’ve bonded over time and grown close.

“Having people nearby is definitely beneficial to social connection,” says Marshall. “And what we know from the research on social connection is that it's critical to our mental health.”

You can apply this to your own life by striking up conversations with the people you see regularly — like, say, your neighbor across the hall, or the mom you’re standing next to every day at school pick-up.

Don’t be afraid to get vulnerable

The characters on Friends aren’t afraid to show their emotions after a bad breakup or to ask for advice on a tricky workplace situation. This is critical for fostering deeper connections, says Jackson.

“One of the goals that people have for friendship is to find people who see them — they understand them, they can be comfortable, they can be themselves,” Jackson explains.

However, you don’t get to this comfortable place in a friendship without first taking some “social risks,” she says. On Friends, the pals see one another at their worst — like when Monica is fired from her job or Ross goes through (yet another) divorce after saying the wrong name at the altar. They know they can rely on one another for support, even in their most difficult times. (There’s a reason why their theme song is “I’ll Be There for You” by The Rembrandts.)

“In order to be able to show up authentically, it requires you to show up vulnerably — meaning I'm taking risks of how I might be perceived, knowing that you might look at me differently after I say this, or that I might seem weak, or uncool or incompetent,” Jackson says. “That’s required of any deep friendship.”

Share your life with friends

The friends of Friends don’t base all their social interactions around typical friendship activities, like going out to dinner or drinks. Instead, they spend much of their time running errands together and pairing the things they already have to do (like going to the bank) with hanging out.

According to Marshall, this creates a happiness boost, as it allows us the opportunity to share positive experiences with another person. “You can have a funny event happen at the grocery store, and now you're sharing that with a friend,” she explains.

This can ultimately lead to spending more time with your friends too. Jackson says that one of the things she hears most often from adults is that they don’t have the time to hang out with their friends due to obligations like work or raising kids. “When we’re living life in isolation or don’t have friends nearby, time with friends feels like a separate thing to do,” she says. “It becomes something you’ll get to on the weekend, or something you’ll make time for when you can spend 30 minutes driving to see them.”

Jackson says that it’s important to reframe how we see spending time with friends and separate it from the notion that hanging out has to be a part of “celebratory, occasional, extensive gatherings.” Instead of seeing your friends during a long brunch you may be able to attend only a couple of times a year, do as the Friends characters do and incorporate social time into your day-to-day schedule — whether you’re making a Costco run or walking for exercise.