What Difference Does a Queer Friend Make? Exploring Familial-Related Benefits Across Friendship Types

Queer people are routinely advised to build a community with people of their same identity for social connection, support, and solidarity. This community often serves as a familial network and sometimes a proxy for traditional family connections. This study considers the advice of seeking similar others by exploring what differences in well-being and loneliness occur between queer people who have a friend of the same or similar sexual identity to those who do not. Two years of data from the American Friendship Project (N = 829) revealed that people with at least one friend of the same sexual identity reported greater life satisfaction and less loneliness on average. Queer people with a friend of a similar sexual identity also reported greater life satisfaction but higher loneliness. Findings suggest that friendship for queer people is particularly nuanced as it can simultaneously provide benefits and disadvantages to well-being.