Conversation card games can be entertaining at parties – and help us foster deep connections and intimacy, which can otherwise be elusive

Last summer I was at a friend’s barbecue when he pulled out a game called We’re Not Really Strangers. The small box contained cards featuring questions like “Do you think plants thrive or die in my care?” and “Do you think I’ve ever been fired from a job? What for?”

Prompted to share about ourselves or speculate about each other, we revealed funny, personal truths. During one round, everyone weighed in on whether or not they thought I was “a romantic”, which led me to process my love of love and simultaneous aversion to weddings out loud. Progressively, the cards became more probing: “What do you think my weakness is?” “What privileges do you think I have? Explain.”

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It sounds as if there might be something else at play here. Either way, I’d think seriously about whether you actually want the friendship to continue

I’m having a problem with my closest friend, who is refusing to speak to me.

We disagree on how acceptable it is to talk about sex : I think it’s something we should be able to talk about freely, but she doesn’t. After she recently told a mutual friend that she was “oversharing ” when sex was mentioned, I requested some clarity on her boundaries. She responded with anger, saying that my requests for clarity were exhausting, that it should be clear from past conversations.

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As platonic relationships receive more attention, both good and bad, we may be erring by trying to ‘optimise’ our friendships

My friend is having trouble with her friend – let’s call her Kelsey.

A few months ago, Kelsey made a thoughtless remark that hurt my friend’s feelings, and left her questioning their bond. After talking it over with her therapist, my friend came up with a plan to bring it up with Kelsey. But when they next met up, the timing wasn’t right.

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Many of us gravitate towards people who are similar to us. But as I recently discovered, there is delight to be found in our differences

In the UK, it’s quite rare to have a truly diverse group of friends. In 2018, a YouGov study found that one-third of white Britons didn’t have any friends from an ethnic minority background, while other research has suggested that people, including children, tend to gravitate towards those who have the same class background .

I’ve always prided myself on having a diverse array of friends, but recently I too realised that my circle was overdue a shake-up. As the number of people I talk to continually shrinks – as most people’s friendship circles do as they age – I’ve recognised some repeated patterns. My friends in the UK are mostly middle class (although plenty of us had working-class upbringings), earning a decent wage, and a mixture of ethnicities, but few are first-generation immigrants. Many of our experiences are shared and enough are delightfully different – but we are all coddled by having grown up in one of the world’s richest countries.

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Hazel was as much at sea as I was. But we were able to help each other and having her there meant the world to me

My daughter Tsubamé was born on 26 July 2013. I don’t remember what we ate for her first Christmas. I had to ask Hiraki, my husband, who we had over to eat it with. And as someone who now owns four boxes full of Christmas decorations, I don’t remember decorating a tree either.

What I do remember is the warmth that came from my mother’s friend, Hazel, being there too. I’ve known Hazel since I was born. Late November that year, she had emailed us to ask if she could come and meet Tsubamé and stay over. She was 61 and headed to Saxmundham, Suffolk, for a short course in care work and wasn’t sure where she’d then be posted for the three months of her stay.

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US students are relearning how to chitchat after lockdown damaged social skills. Maybe Rishi Sunak could take a course

Are you having a lovely weekend? Nice jumper, is it new? Did you see Doctor Who last night? You see, it’s not difficult. Yet the younger generation seems to be struggling with the ancient art of small talk. Speaking about nothing but doing it pleasantly is an essential social lubricant. Sadly it seems to be drying up.

Students in the US are taking lessons in “conducting chitchat” after losing these social skills during lockdown and no longer knowing how to start anodyne face-to-face conversations. College professors are giving tips such as “ask questions about their weekend plans, use people’s names and make eye contact”.

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Learn what your triggers to volatility are and be curious about other people’s opinions – without insisting that yours is right

The question Yesterday I paused to take stock of my life and counted all the people, both in my professional life and personal life, who I haven’t got along with. I have a list of 45 names. I start out fine and then somewhere along the way things turn bitter.

Why have all these professional and personal relationships soured? At some point these people stop looking me in the eye, stop talking to me, ignore me, stop calling me, start excluding me, start forming cliques around me, start isolating me. I am 40 years old and I do not have a single friend or a colleague with whom I have not had a bad relationship. I have just left another job, because I fell out with all my team. I have a new job lined up, but what’s to stop this happening again?

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Uncoupled doesn’t have to mean incomplete. Eight writers - from their 20s to 90s - celebrate single life as a destination of its own

When my friend Moya and I got out of the taxi in my home city of Leeds, there was a period pad on the pavement, which set the tone for the night out we ended up having. I wanted to get with someone, and I knew it would happen because I tend to have a lot more success in Leeds than I do in London – up there, guys like girls in fake eyelashes who ignore the rule: “If you have your legs out you can’t show your cleavage.” I thought I’d found him at the first bar, when this guy introduced himself to me. He had curtains and a cheeky smile, was big and broad. Nice, I thought, here we go.

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When Stewart told a talkshow she had cancelled Thanksgiving, she prompted panic. Her clarification is a lesson in the art of excuses

Martha Stewart, the queen of hospitality, has issued a retraction of her recent declaration on The Kelly Clarkson Show that she had “cancelled Thanksgiving” this year. In the US, it seems to have been an event as apocalypse-adjacent as the ravens leaving the Tower of London , causing widespread panic.

Her retraction, issued via a lengthy Instagram statement , was preposterously, wonderfully grand. I love every syllable. She did not cancel Thanksgiving, she wrote; she called off her own party “due to guest cancellations”. (I don’t know how this phrase manages to convey Arctic-level frosty disapproval at flaking on her in so few innocuous words, but it does.)

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