Friend request

A friend request on Are We Friends? is the formal mechanism to ask another member to be your friend. You send a request from a match card, a profile page, or a swipe deck right-swipe. The recipient gets a push notification and a row in their /requests inbox.

Until the request is acted on, the relationship is "pending" — the requester counts as a fan of the target (see /glossary/fan). If accepted, both members become each other's friends and the fan row clears. If declined, the requester is still a fan but cannot send a follow-up request for 30 days.

Friend requests can include an optional 280-character note to give context — "we matched at 92, want to grab coffee?" The note is plaintext and visible to the recipient before they accept.

Mutual swipes (both members right-swipe each other on the matches deck before either has sent an explicit request) auto-accept into friendship without a pending step. This is the "It's a match" path.

Active friend requests max out at 50 outstanding per member at a time. Once you have 50 pending, you have to either get some accepted/declined or wait for them to age out (auto-decline at 90 days).