Collocations for relationships and social life

By: Collocations.org Admin
Date: 7 July 2026

Language at the heart of human connection

Relationships — with friends, family, colleagues, and romantic partners — are central to human life, and they are also central to language. English has a rich set of collocations for describing the full range of social and personal connections, from forming new friendships to navigating conflict and expressing love. Mastering these combinations will make your English much more natural when you talk about the people in your life and the experiences you share with them.

Collocations for friendship

• Make friends, strike up a friendship, build a close friendship, maintain a friendship
• Lose touch with someone, drift apart, grow apart over time
• Have a lot in common, share the same interests, get on well with someone
• Be there for someone, stand by a friend, support someone through difficult times
• Fall out with someone, patch things up, bury the hatchet, make amends

Collocations for romantic relationships

• Fall in love, develop feelings for someone, have a crush on someone
• Start a relationship, be in a relationship, commit to someone
• Pop the question, get engaged, tie the knot, start a family
• Have a rocky relationship, go through a rough patch, work things out
• Break up with someone, end a relationship, go through a divorce, move on

Collocations for family relationships

• Raise a family, bring up children, support your parents, look after elderly relatives
• Have a close-knit family, come from a broken home, be an only child
• Take after your parents, follow in someone's footsteps, be the black sheep of the family
• Spend quality time together, keep in touch with relatives, gather for the holidays

Collocations for social activities

• Go out for dinner, meet up with friends, throw a party, host a gathering
• Catch up with someone, have a get-together, organise a night out
• Break the ice, get the conversation going, liven up the atmosphere
• Feel welcome, fit in with a group, be the life of the party

Learning relationship collocations through real language

Fiction — novels, films, and television dramas — is arguably the richest source of relationship collocations in natural use. Stories are fundamentally about people and their connections, which means the full range of relationship vocabulary appears constantly in narrative contexts. Pay attention to how characters describe their relationships with one another, and note down the collocations that appear around key emotional moments. This kind of contextualised learning is highly effective for vocabulary that is personal, emotionally resonant, and therefore memorable.