Cover of Friends After Forty by Oliver Mindwell

PDF · 29 pages · 6 × 9 in · printable worksheets

Friendships that went quiet · A Pattern Weaver guide

Friends After Forty
How a connecting mind loses people, and how to get them back.

Why a connecting mind loses its friends one at a time, the false assumption that keeps old friendships silent, and four moves for getting the people back, with twenty messages sorted by how long the silence has lasted.

$13 USD, plus VAT where applicable, shown before you pay

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Sold by Sanava LTD, Cyprus, published as Oliver Mindwell.

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What is actually in it

13 chapters, 29 pages.

Introduction: The name you just thought of.

  1. How you make friends
  2. The Orbit Problem
  3. The arithmetic of friendship
  4. Everyone shrinks; you shrink faster
  5. The assumption that keeps the silence
  6. Why it matters more than it seems
  7. The friendship audit
  8. Move one: the Second Anchor
  9. Move two: the Reconnection Message
  10. Move three: the Standing Slot
  11. Move four: the Wide Net
  12. The first awkward conversation
  13. Common objections

Conclusion: Still there. Then the Sources chapter, where every source named in the book is listed with a link, and a short note on the author.

The tools

Four moves, and the worksheets to run them.

The Second Anchor

One question per conversation about the person's life rather than the shared interest, written down and asked about next time. A friend whose father's illness you asked about twice will still be your friend when you have stopped climbing.

The Reconnection Message

Three sentences: a specific trigger, ownership of the silence, and an open door. Twenty variations, sorted by how long the silence has lasted, from a year or two to more than ten.

The Standing Slot

One fixed, recurring slot with one person, anchored to a date rather than a decision: the first Thursday, the same walk, ninety minutes. It has to be play, not productivity, because that is the time that counts.

The Wide Net

The Hollow Five is filled by promotion, not from strangers. Pick two people from the orbit map in your audit, send both the message, and offer the slot to the one who replies with the most warmth.

Sources

10 sources, every one a working link. Where a finding has limits or has been revised, the book says so. Not all of them are journal papers, and the chapter says which is which.

The first page

Read the opening before you pay for the rest.

Do this for me. Think of the friend you had at twenty-five. Not a partner. A friend. The one you talked to three times a week, the one who knew what you were obsessed with that month, the one who would have driven across the country if you had asked. From the video this guide was written for

Somewhere in the first minute of the video this book accompanies, you thought of a name. The friend you had at twenty-five. The one who knew what you were obsessed with that month, who you talked to three times a week, who would have driven across the country if you had asked. And then you were asked when you last spoke to them, and something tightened.

This book is about that tightening. It is written for the person with too many interests, who moves from one deep obsession to the next, and who has discovered, somewhere around forty, that the people did not come along. Not a few of them. Almost all of them, one at a time, and each time it felt like your fault.

That is the opening of 29 pages.

Before you buy

The questions worth asking.

Is this just the video in writing?

Partly. The video named the Orbit Problem, the Rebuild Cost and the liking gap, and gave each of the four moves a paragraph. The book links every study, adds two the video did not have, on deliberate pruning in later life and the Harvard study running since 1938, and does what a video cannot: a friendship audit to fill in, mapping your planets, your layers and the friendships held by one anchor, eight second-anchor questions, twenty reconnection messages sorted by length of silence, how to choose a slot that survives your calendar, and scripts for the first awkward conversation.

How long is it, really?

29 pages at 6 by 9 inches, about 4,500 words, 13 chapters plus an introduction and a conclusion. It is a short book and it is priced like one. It is not a 300 page business book and it does not pretend to be.

What do I get, and how?

One PDF. The download link appears on the confirmation page the moment the payment clears, and the same link is emailed to you with your invoice. No account, no app, nothing to install. The link does not expire, and if you lose the email you can have it sent again.

Can I print the worksheets?

Yes. The pages are laid out at 6 by 9 inches. The parts you fill in sit inside the chapters they belong to, so you can print just those pages, or the whole book.

Are the sources real, and can I check them?

Every source is named and linked in the Sources chapter, 10 of them in this one, and the links were checked when the book was built. Not all of them are journal papers: some are reference pages, talks, or news write ups of a study, and the chapter says which is which. Where a finding has limits or has been revised, the book says so rather than quoting the headline.

Something went wrong: the file will not open, or I was charged twice.

Reply to the email your invoice came in and it gets fixed, with a fresh link or by refunding a duplicate charge. To be straight with you, that is not a change of mind refund policy. Because the file is delivered the instant you pay, and you confirm that at checkout, the 14 day right of withdrawal does not apply. This is us fixing our own mistakes, which is a different thing.

Still there.

29 pages, four moves, 10 linked sources. One file, yours to keep.

Instant download, PDF. Secure checkout by Stripe.
Sold by Sanava LTD, Cyprus, published as Oliver Mindwell.

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