I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the concept of return on investment — not in a spreadsheet way, but in the more fundamental sense of what we invest our limited energy and attention in, and what we actually get back. Because there’s a version of modern friendship culture that has become almost entirely transactional and performance-based: the group chats that are more about keeping the appearance of closeness than cultivating its reality, the social events that tick a box without actually nourishing anything.
What I’m calling the Soul ROI is a different kind of accounting. It’s asking, honestly, which relationships and experiences return something meaningful — growth, joy, genuine connection, a sense of being known — and which ones are quietly costing you more than they give. It’s a framework for living intentionally, particularly as a woman navigating the particular pressures and opportunities of adult female friendship.
The Real Value of Deep Friendship
The research on female friendship is striking. A UCLA study from 2000 — still widely cited because it was so foundational — found that women respond to stress not just with fight-or-flight but with a “tend-and-befriend” response: a hormonal cascade (driven partly by oxytocin) that motivates women to seek and provide social support under pressure. This helps explain why friendships feel so essential to women’s wellbeing — they’re not just nice to have, they’re physiologically protective.
More recent research has extended this. A Harvard study that followed participants over 80 years found that the quality of close relationships was the single most powerful predictor of long-term health and happiness — more powerful than wealth, fame, or IQ. The women with the strongest close friendships lived longer, stayed mentally sharper, and reported significantly greater life satisfaction. The friendship that feels indulgent and irrelevant to your productivity is, in fact, one of the most important health interventions available to you.
Energy Protection: The Art of Not Giving Everything to Everyone
One of the most quietly radical things a woman can learn is that her energy is finite, and that protecting it is not selfish — it’s essential. The socialisation many women receive pushes in the opposite direction: be available, be warm, be accommodating, never let anyone feel you’re not fully present and delighted to be there. And there’s genuine beauty in warmth and generosity. The problem is when it becomes automatic and indiscriminate.
Research by psychologists on what’s sometimes called “compassion fatigue” — the depletion that comes from consistently giving emotional support without adequate replenishment — shows that it’s a real and measurable phenomenon, most commonly experienced by people in caring professions but also by anyone who is consistently in a giving role in their relationships. The symptoms look like burnout: emotional numbness, irritability, withdrawal, a sense of going through the motions.
Protecting your energy doesn’t mean becoming cold or withholding. It means being discerning about where your energy goes, and ensuring that the relationships and activities you invest in are ones that also replenish you. This is a different calculation for everyone, but it starts with honest observation: which people do you leave feeling energised, and which leave you feeling drained? Both answers are useful information.
Understanding the Different Types of Friends You Need
Not all friendships serve the same purpose, and one of the most liberating realisations of adult friendship is that this is okay. Sociologist Robert Weiss identified several different types of social provision — the needs that relationships fulfil — including attachment (the feeling of closeness and security), social integration (belonging to a community), reassurance of worth (feeling valued), and guidance (advice and information). Different friendships tend to fulfil different provisions, and a rich social life draws on several types rather than expecting one person to meet every need.
The friend you call when something falls apart is a different friend from the one who makes you laugh so hard your stomach hurts. The friend who challenges your thinking is different from the one who simply makes you feel known and accepted. Recognising this — rather than expecting every friendship to be everything — allows you to appreciate what each relationship actually offers, rather than measuring it against an impossible standard. This guide to the five types of friends every woman needs maps this framework in detail and is worth bookmarking.
Living Your Best Life: What That Actually Means
The phrase “living your best life” has become so overused that it’s nearly meaningless — a caption rather than a concept. But stripped of the Instagram connotations, it points to something genuinely important: the question of whether the life you’re actually living matches the life you actually want.
This alignment — between values and daily choices — is one of the strongest predictors of life satisfaction across cultures and methodologies. Research by Dr. Michael Steger at Colorado State University, who studies meaning in life, has found that people who regularly feel that their daily activities align with their deeper values report significantly higher wellbeing than those who feel disconnected from their values — regardless of external circumstances.
The Soul ROI calculation, applied to your whole life, asks: what am I actually investing in, and does it align with what I actually care about? Where is there a gap between what matters to me and how I spend my time? These are not comfortable questions, but they’re immensely clarifying ones. And if you’ve been feeling like your friendships — or your broader life — need a recalibration, reading more about how to maintain the friendships that matter when life gets busy is a good place to start practically. More broadly, building a positive mindset that genuinely sustains you through the ordinary days — not just the highlights — is one of the most worthwhile investments of all.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I know which friendships are worth investing in?
Pay attention to how you feel during and after time with different people. Friendships that leave you feeling energised, seen, genuinely known, and more yourself are worth investing in — these are relationships with strong Soul ROI. Friendships that consistently leave you feeling depleted, unseen, anxious, or somehow diminished deserve honest examination. Not every friendship needs to be abandoned, but the pattern of the investment and return matters. If you’re consistently giving and rarely receiving — across many interactions over time — that’s worth acknowledging honestly.
Is it okay to let friendships naturally fade as priorities change?
Yes — and this is one of the things adult friendship culture often handles with unnecessary guilt. Not all friendships are meant to last a lifetime, and many that were extremely meaningful in one life season aren’t the right fit for another. The question worth asking is whether a friendship is fading because it has genuinely run its course, or because you’ve both stopped investing in it through busyness or inertia. The former is a natural life process; the latter is sometimes worth addressing with a simple reach-out.
How do I make deep friendships as an adult when life is busy?
Deep adult friendships tend to be built through a combination of repeated exposure (seeing someone regularly, even briefly) and progressive self-disclosure (sharing increasingly honest and personal things over time). This doesn’t require dramatic vulnerability or a lot of free time; it requires consistency and genuine interest. Saying yes to small, repeated interactions — a regular walk, a standing coffee, a shared class — creates the conditions for depth to develop. And being willing to go first on honesty — to share something real before the other person does — accelerates the process significantly.
Rubie Le’Faine is the founder of Rubie Rubie and a writer specialising in emotional well-being, self-identity, and the psychology of modern relationships. She holds a Level 3 Certificate in Counselling Skills and has spent over eight years studying attachment theory, cognitive behavioural principles, and human development — first through formal study, then through lived experience that no course can replicate. After navigating a significant relationship breakdown, an identity rebuild, and the complex terrain of rediscovering herself in her 30s, Rubie began writing to make sense of what she had learned and to offer honest, human guidance to others going through the same. She founded Rubie Rubie in 2022 as a space for women seeking real answers, not platitudes. Based in Surrey, UK, her writing is grounded in research, shaped by experience, and centred entirely on the reader’s genuine wellbeing.
