This week we have a man with a female best friend, but his girlfriend is getting jealous.

You probably know that adding people to your inner circle takes time, but how much time it actually takes to go from strangers to buddies has been somewhat of a mystery -- until now. A new study suggests you need to spend at least 90 hours with someone before they consider you a real friend.

Meeting new people and making good friends gets harder as you get older. You get less adventurous, fall into comfortable routines with significant others, and you don't have school to force you to interact with different groups of people any more. But if you have at least one friend, you do have an easy option for finding some fresh faces to spend time with.

Friends make you happy and healthy, and they will be there for you when the rain starts to pour. But how many of them do you need? Turns out the show Friends had the science all figured out.

You have problems, I have advice. This advice isn't sugar-coated - in fact, it's sugar-free, and may even be a little bitter. Welcome to Tough Love.

A few years ago an ex-boyfriend of mine got married. Our breakup was amicable and we both stayed friends with a lot of the same people. That meant when it came time for his wedding weekend, my Facebook feed was flooded with pictures of his rehearsal dinner, wedding and reception. Yes, I was happy for him, but not happy enough I wanted to see (literally) a thousand pictures of the festive event I wasn't a part of.

There's something magical about cancelling plans last minute - yes, I've heard the John Mulaney joke. You instantly get to do whatever you want and not feel beholden to anyone. True freedom is only a shameful text away. But flaking out is a slippery slope that can lead to a detrimental, and fairly rude, habit. Here's why you get such a rush of relief when your evening suddenly frees up, and how to stop yourself from becoming the person who always bails.

Have you ever had a moment of connection with a stranger? I'm not talking about a romantic or sexual connection (though those are nice too), but more of a quick smile as you pass on the street, or a one-off joke shared while waiting in the grocery-store line, or some other brief, shared experience that made you feel that stranger was actually special and could have, in other circumstances, been a friend? I love those moments, which are few and far between, because they make me feel like the universe of potential friends is bigger than I'd thought. I've always wondered why those moments happen - why they happen with one person and not another, or at one time and not another.

You talked about your plans with your friends face to face, you made a Facebook event page and invited them - but people still seem to flake out on you. What gives? Well, you're still not making it easy enough for them.

You have problems, I have advice. This advice isn't sugar-coated - in fact, it's sugar-free, and may even be a little bitter. Welcome to Tough Love.

Welcome back to Mid-Week Meditations, Lifehacker's weekly dip into the pool of stoic wisdom, and how you can use its waters to reflect on and improve your life.

Workplaces are funny little ecosystems. You spend all your time working and developing complex relationships with everyone from the security guard to your shared desk mate, but occasionally, these fragile work friendships can go south.

Davy Crockett is an American folk hero of mythic proportions, and was greatly popularised during the '50s and '60s thanks to Disney's TV miniseries and major motion pictures. But Crockett was a very real person in history, and he had a lot of wisdom to share.

You have problems, I have advice. This advice isn't sugar-coated -- in fact, it's sugar-free, and may even be a little bitter. Welcome to Tough Love.

Everyone does not have more friends than you, even though, as a study at UBC Vancouver indicated, plenty of people believe their friends all have more friends. Everyone is not going to parties you're not invited to, meeting a wide array of people across all backgrounds and slices of life, who come together in a rich tapestry of social circles that rivals the opening titles of Sesame Street.

Have you ever heard of emotional labour? The concept has been around since the sociologist Arlie Hochschild defined the term in 1983. It's essentially the work that we do, either professionally or personally, to regulate and present our emotions in a socially acceptable way -- and to care for the emotional well-being of others. An epic thread on Metafilter about emotional labour touched on the kinds of things that people (often women) are expected to do to maintain relationships: Make nice holidays and meals, shop for appropriate gifts for their families and often their partners' families, and -- here's the kicker -- send birthday cards.

When a tragedy strikes, the urge to reach out and offer support to your friends and acquaintances is strong. And you should!

Sharing a holiday rental with friends is a great way to cut down on accommodations costs and have a space to relax together after a long day sightseeing. But splitting a holiday rental doesn't always go smoothly -- we've all had that one friend who hogs the bathroom getting ready, spews their stuff all over the couch, or tries to skirt paying their fair share.

Remember how high school felt like one big popularity contest?