Days before Elizabeth Day turned 40, she looked at her diary. Then she decided to blow up her life.

As Elizabeth Day stared down the barrel of turning 40 years old, she had a realisation. 

She was single. Again. 

A few years prior, she'd been married to another journalist. But after three years, two failed cycles of in-vitro fertilisation, she ended her marriage along with her desire for biological children. 

She'd found love again with a man nine years younger than her but a few days before her 40th, he broke it off.  

Day felt like a failure. 

But what she did have, in the dozens, was a lot of friends. In fact, too many.

Speaking on Mamamia's No Filter podcast, Day recalled the moment she knew she needed to blow up her life. 

Watch a snippet of Elizabeth Day's conversation with Mia Freedman on Mamamia's No Filter. Post continues after video. 

The moment came to her when the pandemic hit in 2020. 

"Our diaries emptied overnight," the journalist said. "When that happened to me, I was confronted by the truth of how I've been spending my time and I realised that I'd spent all of my time trying to meet the demands of people who I often liked but didn't know that well."

In short, Day described her larger-than-life circle was filled with acquaintances she had pursued until they'd become good friends. A colleague, a yoga partner, or even people she'd only "exchanged a few words with".

It took its toll over time. 

"I was trying to meet so many other demands that I wasn't spending enough time with the people who were the most nourishing to me," she explained. "Actually, those people who are in my inner circle who I am incredibly close to, who have known me for many years and who would never place obligations on my time because they know how 'busy' I am.

"And I thought, 'Well, there's something out of sorts there.' It felt like the equilibrium needed to be addressed."

That realisation was the beginning of Day's exploration into friendship and what it means. It eventually dawned on her she was a "friendaholic" — a term Day coined to describe an addiction to friendship. 

"At some point in my life, it became more important for me to be surrounded by people, to have a lot of what I would term friends rather than to spend the appropriate amount of time building up my own sense of self-worth or spending the appropriate amount of time focusing my energies and my love on a core group of people who were always going to have my back," she explained. 

Day linked her need for constant companionship to her terrible high school experience in Northern Ireland, where she was bullied and without friends. But when she moved a few years later to a new school, it became important for the author to "find as many friends as possible."

"It didn't matter who they were. I was making no judgment call. I just needed to feel that I was accepted by a tribe of people bigger than myself," she recalled. "I maintained that mindset of thinking, 'the most important thing is numbers because I can't be left on my own.'"

Of course, trying to accommodate all the people in her life, whom she had once ushered in with open arms, became unsustainable. Exhausting. More work than it was worth.

"When we try to spread ourselves so thinly so that we're trying to meet everyone's demands in our busy, personal and professional lives, what that means is you're not doing yourself a service and you're not doing those other people a service because you're not giving them your best self," she shared. 

So, she blew it up. All of it. 

Using the Dunbar Friendship Theory (best known as 'Dunbar's number'), which proposes people can comfortably maintain 150 relationships, Day was able to have the 'light bulb moment' where she knew she needed to change her life.

The author and journalist implemented the theory of layers that Dunbar argued worked well for relationships. On the inner, closest layer are five people who are most important in your life. These people deserve the most of your energy and your time. 

The second layer holds 10 people and is reserved for those you love and care for, but are comfortable not seeing every day or too often. They are special to you but not the ones you go turn to in an emergency. 

In the most outer layer are acquaintances — people you can most definitely have a connection with but won't reserve all the time in the world for. 

For so long, Day had muddled up where each of her friendships belonged and had attempted to mangle them altogether. 

"I realised that I'd been trying so hard to be the most perfect friend to everyone in my life but I misunderstood the fundamental nature of friendship, which is that there are different kinds [and layers of friendship]," she shares. 

Creating layers for her relationships also meant Day could still hold space for intimate moments with acquaintances or those who follow her online, without having to give them 'too much'. 

"It is something to adjust to," she said in reference to 'fans' who interact with her on social media. "Particularly for someone who is addicted to that adrenaline buzz of friendship... I now understand the difference between a connection that I make at a book signing or if someone sends me a really beautiful Instagram DM. 

"I now understand that it is a beautiful gift in of its own right? It doesn't have to be an ongoing relationship."

Listen to the full conversation between Elizabeth Day and Mia Freedman on No Filter here.

Feature Image: Supplied.

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