February 9, 2023 • 49 mins
One of Ali’s most requested topics from our listeners has been how to make friends as a big person. And here it is! Dr. Marisa G. Franco has written the book we've all been waiting for, Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make - and Keep - Friends. Franco explains our connection programming, otherwise known as attachment styles, and how knowing yours can help develop and maintain those crucial friendships. She explains the importance of platonic love, how it creates identity and builds character, and why she calls friendship the underdog of relationships. Perhaps mostly importantly, she lays out the steps for how we can make more.
If you have questions or guest suggestions, Ali would love to hear from you. Call or text her at (323) 364-6356. Or email go-ask-ali-podcast-at-gmail.com. (No dashes)
**Go Ask Ali has been nominated for a Webby Award for Best Interview/Talk Show Episode! Please vote for her and the whole team at https://bit.ly/415e8uN by April 20, 2023!
Links of Interest:
Dr. Marisa on Instagram
Dr. Marisa’s Website: here you can take a quiz to assess your strengths and weaknesses as a friend
Also mentioned in the episode:
ACE: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex
Credits:
Executive Producers: Sandie Bailey, Alex Alcheh, Lauren Hohman, Tyler Klang & Gabrielle Collins
Producer & Editor: Brooke Peterson-Bell
Associate Producer: Akiya McKnight
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to go Ask Ali, a production of Shonda Land
Audio and partnership with I Heart Radio. Rolling on the full.
Loafing is a thing I can. I've seen you know,
We've all seen people do it. I've done it, I've
kidding For me now, the work is to want what
I have, even kind of shinny stuff. You know, that's
my work. It's it's imperfect. So let me ask you
(00:21):
a question about actors because you are yeah, me too.
We are old, funny duddies. We go to sleep at ten,
we wake up at six, we go to bed at eight,
So there are more funny duddies than you. You are
the funny duddiest. Yes, welcome to go ask Allie. I'm
Ali Wentworth Now. One of the most requested topics by
(00:44):
listeners is making friends as adults. So for all you
listeners out there, today's your lucky day. As important as food, oxygen,
and water. Friendship, you know everybody has struggled with friendship,
how we attach ourselves to people, how we detach ourselves
(01:07):
to people. I know for me that my friendships are
as meaningful and integral to my life as my husband
and my children and everything else. And friendship is a
very big subject in my house for me because I
hold my friendships so dear. But also I have two
(01:27):
teenage daughters who are constantly trying to chart the waters
of friendship and all the pain and elation that goes
with it. And my mother, who at eighty eight years old,
has found herself a widow and with many of her
friends deceased. So how do we maintain friendships? How do
(01:48):
we make new friendships? My guest today is Dr Marissa G. Franco.
She's a psychologist, professor, and author of Platonic, How the
Science of Attachment can help You Make and Keep Friends.
She writes about friendship for Psychology Today and has been
a featured connection expert from major publications like The New
York Times, The Telegraph, Advice. Marissa is a professor at
(02:12):
the University of Maryland and speaks on belonging at corporations, universities,
and more. Welcome, Marissa, So happy to be talking with you.
I am so glad you're here because I find that
female friendship is such an integral part of all of
(02:33):
our lives. And I take my friendships very seriously, and
I have to say that my my friendships have caused
me even more pain than my love relationships in the past.
So I just ate your book right up, Platonic how
the science of attachment can help you make and keep friends,
(02:53):
because there's so much there, and there's so much there
that I want to give my daughters too, because is
obviously they're younger than me, and they're dealing with friendships
in a different way that I am as an old lady. Now, um,
but the most important the theme in your book is
really attachment and the whole theory of attachment. So let's
(03:15):
let's just dive into that right away. Yeah. Well, first
of all, Alliam, I'm so honored to hear that you
want to share it with your daughters. That really touches me. Oh,
I sent your book Platonic to my daughter in college
because I feel like they're always struggling with friendships, and
you know, from from kindergarten on you're you're constantly dealing
(03:37):
with how you attached to people. So let's start with
attachment theory. So attachment theory is basically the idea that
in our early lives with our parents, we begin to
develop a certain template for how people will treat us,
and after that we we developed that template, we engage
in like confirmation biases, where we see people interacting with
(03:59):
us in ways that match that template and almost ignore
times that they don't write. And then we build a
number of strategies in reaction to these assumptions that we
think people in reaction to these ways that we think
other people will treat us. So, you know, what does
that mean in a more practical way, If you're anxiously attached,
your template says people are going to abandon me unless
(04:19):
I cling cling cling close to them, right, And so
you know, anxiously attached people, they often misspire and think
they're being rejected even when they're not. They often give
too much in friendships because again they need they feel
like they need to to feel worthy to feel like
they'll keep other people around. They don't stand up for themselves,
(04:40):
they don't have boundaries, they don't bring up conflicts again
fear that other people are gonna abandon you. Sometimes they
can also be quite demanding because of the sense that
I need you to do this to prove that I
am worthy to me right, And and sometimes they don't
necessarily consider other people have different needs outside of them,
or reacting to them in ways that aren't necessarily personal. Right,
and then you have avoidingly attached people. Their template their
(05:03):
early childhood was usually I got food, I got water,
I got shelter, but there was nothing emotionally. It was
sort of like emotional neglect. I was told to handle
things on my own, you know, be a big boy,
be a big girl. And what that means is that
avoidingly attached people are very uncomfortable with emotions, very uncomfortable
with intimacy. Their template says, other people can't be trustworthy,
(05:27):
so they tend to invest less in friendship. They tend
to not be as vulnerable in friendship, they tend to
ghost more. Um, you know, people that are friends with
them feel like I've known them for so long, but
I don't feel like I really know them because they're
not necessarily vulnerable. Or I don't feel reciprocity. I feel
like I'm putting in all this effort but the other
person isn't. Because avoidingly attached people fundamentally enjoy friendship less
(05:51):
because they see it as a liability or responsibility. Right.
And then you have securely attached people who have learned
in their relationships. And again, it's it starts with your
parents or caretakers. But it evolves, right, so it's not
just your early relationships, and they trust that they can
build relationships with people. They trust that other people like them.
(06:14):
They are comfortable being vulnerable, but in a way, that's
that oversharing, right. If someone withdraws from them or doesn't
like them, they kind of walk away instead of work harder,
which you tend to see with more anxiously attached people,
they're better at initiating friendships, less likely to dissolve friendships.
Their friendships are are very stable, right, And that's why
I call them like the super friends of connection. And
(06:34):
I think what we learn from attachment theory and what
I argue in Platonic is that our personality is fundamentally
a reflection of our past experiences of connection. Whether we
are open, warm, trusting, critical, aggressive, you know, generous, all
of these are predicted by whether we've connected well in
the past. But not only that, then who we are
(06:54):
affects how we connect. The people that are best at
connecting now typically have healthier history of relationships, which have
given them the template that other people are trustworthy, that
they can connect with people that allows them to continue
to connect whereas if you've had a very difficult history
that you haven't processed, it can lead you with a
set of beliefs and a set of strategies that actually
(07:14):
make it a little bit more difficult to form relationships
and friendships in the future. Okay, So, can somebody be
born with anxious attachment just sort of based on their
personality or is it environmental? Yeah, this is a great question, um,
something I want to clarify because I tell people about
attachment theory and they're like, good for those people with
(07:37):
healthy parents, Like, Okay, you know I'm at a luck then,
And I don't think that's what I'm trying to convey,
especially for me as someone who's gone from anxious to
more secure. Your attachment can fundamentally change over time. Some
research finds that it's more likely to change than stay
the same after you, you know, you have different relationships
that that kind of adjust your sculpture template over time. Right,
(07:57):
And I think knowing about our attachment style isn't deterministic
that we're going to be doomed because we had doomed
relationships in the past, but instead it allows us to
instead say nobody can be trusted, you know, everybody's gonna
abandon me. And if you feel like that is the
truth that's out there in the world, you have no agency,
You're just powerless. Right. But when you know how your
(08:19):
own behavior can influence people in ways that make it
more likely that your fears are going to come to
fruition because you sort of behave in ways that make
these behaviors more likely to be true, then you can
change your behaviors and you can develop really good relationships
with people. So I hope that it can be more empowering.
But related to your question, Ali it there is a
genetic component to attachment. Um. There's this theory and psychology
(08:42):
called the orchid hypothesis, which is basically the idea that
some of us are more vulnerable to our environments, whether
good or bad. Right. So if these these more sensitive
folks um genetically right, are in a good environment, they're
going to thrive. If they're in a bad environment, are
going to be devastated. Right. Others of us are kind
(09:03):
of like we have less of a range, Like we're
gonna be kind of similar. We're not as affected by
our environment, so our outcomes are going to be like
sort of similar ish whether we have really good environment
or a bad one, right, And so there is that
genetic difference which is partially how much are we absorbing
our environment that that differs between a lot of us. Yeah,
(09:25):
because I think, you know, for instance, I'm thinking about
one of my daughters, who, you know, the second she
came out in the hospital, she was mommy, mommy, mommy,
and she was a clingy baby. She wouldn't let anyone
else hold her. And you know, I think she falls
under the category of anxious attachment, and it's it's, you know,
(09:47):
maybe I coddled her too much, But I don't look
at it as oh, did we not give her enough love?
Did we not you know, nurture her enough. We did
in huge amounts. She literally was born like that, like
as a baby, whereas my other daughter was like, hey,
put me in the crib, I don't care, I'm fine,
(10:07):
And she has, you know, she has more of the calmer,
kind of less attached personality, and so in some ways,
I do think it's genetic. Yeah. Yeah, I think what
you're talking about is a temperament and the psychology, which
is like we're kind of born with a certain temperament
that then can sort of interact with our environment in
(10:28):
certain ways, right, because temperaments are also going to draw
something different out of a parent, right. Yes. Absolutely, you
might react to your babies differently because they have they're
reacting to you differently. Right. So it's it's really interesting
how these two things can intersect. Yes. And so one
of the things I am fascinated by in your book
is the idea of, in terms of friendship, platonic love. Right. So,
(10:51):
platonic love is the love I have, let's say, for
my girlfriends, and even though they lack sex and fashion,
they feel to me just as integral to my life
and as strong as a romantic relationship. Yeah. Yeah, And
(11:12):
actually I think in platonic I was interested in learning
the lines between romance and friendship because Angela Chen she
she has this really great book Ace, and she kind
of talks about how, you know, in the a sexual community,
there's very much a distinction between being sexually attracted someone
and romantically attracted to someone, right, And so sexual attraction
(11:35):
as I want to have sex with you, Romantic attraction
is I'm passionate about you, I idealize you, I think
you're amazing, you feel like my soul ate right. And
so when we look at relationships between woman friends in particular,
we see them saying things like you are my soulmate
and all I want to do is spend my time
with you, right, And that is sort of sounds like
it's kind of on the romantic spectrum. And in fact,
(11:57):
throughout our history, um, you know, in the early seventeen hundreds,
there was the sense that the genders are so distinct
that you can only find this true and deep intimacy
with your friends who share the same gender as you,
kind of like romance being more of a part of
friendship than it was marriage. Right, And so at that time,
(12:18):
friends were holding hands, friends were sharing beds, friends were cuddling,
right because all of that, m oh, that was normal
at that time. Now, of course, our script for friendship
is a lot more limited. Right. But I think if
we look at if we can differentiate or take a
fine tiof comb between the differences between all these different
forms of love, we can see that romantic relationships romantic
(12:39):
feelings are kind of I would argue, even normal without
a lot of particularly close and intimate friendships. Okay, so
let me ask you this, because this is advice that
I've given my friends, and you can tell me it's
probably wrong, and I'll make sure I edit this part out.
But um, I say to my girlfriends that they shouldn't
(13:05):
expect their partner to be their best friend, because I
feel like they are setting themselves up let's say when
they first lived with somebody or marry them, because I
have found the game changer in my marriage, which is
a very good marriage, was that when I would go
to my husband for a lot of kind of scaffolding,
(13:26):
he he just wasn't the person like I never was
satiated by what I got back from him. But if
I went to my girlfriends, you know, they like to
chew on some of the stuff I like to chew
on for a lot longer. And yet my life path
is with my husband and sort of the big issues
I deal with with my husband and obviously have sex
(13:47):
with my husband. But my girlfriends I've sort of kept
for a lot of the other emotional stuff that I
sometimes think it's too inundating for my husband. Meaning I
say to my girlfriends, don't necessarily go into marriage with
this idea that this person is your all, your best friend,
your lover, or your everything. Am I right or am
(14:09):
I wrong? I agree with the idea that your spouse
should not be your everything, and in fact I argue
that being in a healthy romantic relationship or healthy marriage
really requires you to have people to support you outside
of that marriage, because the research finds that when you're
(14:31):
in conflict with your spouse, it disrupts your stress hormone
release in unhealthy ways unless you have quality connection outside
that marriage. That when you make a friend, not only
are you less depressed, your spouse is less depressed too.
Um that people that you know, related to what you said, Alie,
engage in emotion ships, which means you go to different
people to help you work through different emotions, they have
(14:52):
higher overall well being. That women who have close friends
out of the marriage are more resilient to strife within
the marriag much whereas people that only rely on a spouse,
they're very devastated when things go wrong. Right their mental health,
according to the research, is just more impacted by the
natural ebbs and flows in that relationship. And what that
(15:14):
means is that if something goes wrong and you're completely
off kilter, it's harder to heal from it, Whereas if
something goes wrong, and you go out and you get
some support, you return to your relationship in a centered
place to be like, we're not enemies, let's work this out.
I've process of my feelings. I'm not in a reactive
place that is such a great resource for your marriage.
And so I definitely agree with you that this has
(15:34):
been a truth throughout our entire species that somehow we've
forgotten in recent decades, that we've always needed an entire
community to feel whole. And so I hope that my
message of friendship is really really important while I came
to it going through breakups and feeling like I feel
so bad in these breakups because I feel like romantic
love is the only love that makes me lovable, and
(15:55):
I'm questioning whether that's true because I see how much
my friends love me. Right. But I think this message
of we have to maybe see love unless of a hierarchy,
so that we can value and put effort into our
platonic partnerships just like we do our marriage, right, I
think it benefits all of us, whether we're single or
whether we're married. I would go so far as to
say that in the past what I found was so
(16:17):
kind of helpful to my well being, And you talk
about a wellness group at the beginning of the book.
UM was I've had versions of that. I've had lunch clubs,
I've had book clubs. UM I have basically now a
like a menopause club with a group of women my age.
That is, so the sole purpose is to support each other.
(16:41):
And you know, when somebody's parent dies or a divorce,
or you know, any kind of life shift, we kind
of circle the wagons and and I think it's so important.
And I think that there's something about the group of
women that kind of quilt together, the kind of support
that is impossible to find anywhere else. Yeah. I also
(17:06):
love a group, you know, monthly Spanish speaking group and
a bi weekly dinner club. And you know, I talked
about the world this group. I love having groups for everything.
But what we're doing when we create those groups is
that we are creating the infrastructure for friendship to happen organically.
So this sociologist Rebecca Adams, she argues that for friendship
(17:26):
to happen organically, we need repeated, unplanned interaction and shared vulnerability,
which is school Jim lunch recess, right, But as adults,
we don't often inhabit those environments unless we seek them
out intentionally. Because work, we're not often vulnerable at work,
So we're seeing each other repeatedly, we're only showing a
(17:46):
professional quote unquote side of ourselves. We don't actually know
each other. Right, So if we rely on that template
from childhood, we are going to be lonely and in
fact as adults. A study found that people that think
friendship happened without effort are more lonely five years later,
whereas those that see it as taking effort are less lonely. Right.
And so when we create these groups, right, we are
(18:09):
giving ourselves continuous, unplanned interaction and shared vulnerability. We are
creating the ingredients for our friendships to sort of take
off and strengthen on our own without us having to
continue to product them in the same way. And it's
interesting because I have my mother now, who is in
her late eighties. She was somebody that had very strong,
(18:30):
incredible friendships in her lifetime, and she's at a point
now and you talk about widows in your book, but
she's at a point now where her husband is dead
and all her close female friends are dead. And one
of the things that she and I talked about a
lot is how she at can find community now, you
(18:52):
know what I mean, because she's not even out and about.
And I said, I know that this sounds simplistic, but
you know you should invite people over to play. You know,
you know there art classes and groups like and it
used to those sort of things when you would hear
people say it sounded so kind of perfunctory and like,
(19:12):
oh yeah, okay, I'm not going to join a group.
But as I get older, I realized, yeah, yeah, you
kind of have to, you know what I mean. And
for her well being, she needs to figure out a
way in her late eighties now to find friendship. In
mind that and as much as she you know, needs
to get her heart checked and bone density, all of
(19:34):
it exactly. There's a lot more to come after the
short break and we're back. It's funny what you were
saying to earlier about vulnerability, because I have found that
(19:56):
and and this is not gender prejudice, just in my
in my life, I have noticed that a lot of
my male friends have a fear of vulnerability, and therefore
their friendships aren't as close. And even my husband, I
would say that that's true with him. Yeah, and you
(20:17):
are right that vulnerability. First of all, um, men are
about half as likely to to access support within their
friendships in a given week than woman and that that
really does hinder men's friendships. You know, men men have
tend to have these more companionate friends where you're hanging
out around an activity, and that is a great form
of friendship to write, but it has its limitations. We've
(20:40):
seen that in the pandemic right. If you have friends
that you're just hanging out with to to play golf
and you can't see each other, someone moves or you
have a pandemic, right, which hopefully doesn't happen again. But
you know, if people move or they become long distance,
then obviously your ability to maintain that connection is very limited.
And fundamentally, being vulnerable, it does increase the depth and
the closeness. We know from the research that people that
(21:01):
intimately self disclose are liked more than other people. People
that express negative emotion. Although we think, you know, friendship
is positive vibes only, they actually are more likely to
make friends in their traditions in their transition to college.
And we also know that it's very necessary for our
mental health and well being. Right. That throughout the book,
I think you'll see that all of the things that
(21:22):
we do that create connection also tend to improve our
mental health and well being, vulnerability included. Right, So, people
that conceal tend to be more concealing of information about themselves,
they experience more depression, more suicidality. One study that looked
at a hundred and six factors that predict depression found
that having it a confidance, someone you're confiding is is
(21:43):
the number one factor that prevents depression. And so I
think in the in the American culture, we kind of
have this very false ideal that to be strong means
I never need anyone and I'm handling things on my
own at all times. Right, And the research binds that
people that are like that, they tend to experience more
physical health issues. They're not releasing their emotions, so they
(22:04):
manifest physically. They experience more you know, headaches, more gas
through intestinal issues. It's not that they go away or
those emotions aren't there, it's just that they're they're kind
of wreaking havoc on you physically. It's even if you
don't if you can't necessarily be aware of it, mentally right.
And so when we see the people that actually are
the most resilient, it's the securely attached people. And that
(22:26):
security comes from I shared myself with other people. They
responded in a loving and accepting way, and I internalize
that into being part of my sense of self. But
I would say with the anxiety attachment, and I can
speak for myself, but with anxiety attachment, there's obviously the
fear of vulnerability. But what happens when you are vulnerable
(22:49):
with somebody else You express a secretive part of yourself
or you know, vulnerable party of yourself, and it freaks
them out or it causes them to pull away. Then
you you it's like it's more damage than if you hadn't. Yeah, No,
you're absolutely right, and you're right that it's actually better
(23:12):
to not be vulnerable if the other person isn't safe.
But you don't know that, right, Yeah, and you don't
know that. But I also want to differentiate between oversharing
and vulnerability. Um anxiously attached people, right, they're they're afraid
that other people are going to reject and abandon them.
So often their vulnerability can come from a place of
I want to test you to see if you'll abandon me,
(23:34):
rather than I feel safe with you, and as a
reflection of that relationship, I am then going to be
vulnerable with you. Right, And so it isn't as authentic
because it's like I'm doing this to test you and
see your reaction and decide whether you'll stay around, whereas
a vulnerable act is more like I'm discerning that I
feel safe in this moment, and that is what is
pushing me to share my internal world with you. And
(23:56):
so I think how we understand ourselves, whether I'm being
vulnerable or over hearing. Is is this coming from a
place of fear? Right? Is this coming from a place
of fear that you're going to pull away from me?
Versus when I'm vulnerable? Is this coming from a sense
of safety? Right? Two different things that differentiate those two acts.
But I also want to say avoidably attached. There was
a study that looked at people answering, you know, thirty
(24:18):
six questions. It was even gotten to the New York
Times thirty six questions to fall in love. When I
read that study, I found that in general, if we
go through these thirty six questions of deepening into the
sy with each other, like when's the last time you cried?
People feel more connected to each other, right, it generates
a lot of closeness. But we found is that when
someone was avoidantly attached, that didn't happen. The voterability did
(24:41):
not create connection. And that's another important thing to recognize.
Sometimes your vulnerability didn't land and it wasn't necessarily because
of your issue per se. I mean, it could be right,
we just talked about oversharing, but it could also be
because of someone else's baggage, Like they're not really able
to sit with feelings like avoidingly attached people, they're not
able to sit with emotions. They're not able to be
(25:03):
open to connection without feeling overburdened or without feeling like
people are putting all this pressure on them and that
comes from their path. So I think it's also important
to recognize sometimes our vulnerability may not go right, and
that's not necessarily our faults. What we can do in
those moments is observed, take note, and decide in the future,
(25:23):
I'm going to be vulnerable with someone that does make
me feel safe. Well that's a great point, So tell
me what you mean when you say friendship is the
underdog of relationships. Yeah, yeah, I mean that in so
many ways, our cultural messages have focused around I'm going
to say romantic relationship because that's the standard language for doubt, right,
(25:44):
But we know you know the complexities of that, right.
You know, people always ask you when are you're going
to get married? Right? When are you going to find
the one? When are you gonna find your soul? Many
when you gonna find your person? When we talk about friends,
it's like we'll say things like we're just friends, signifying that, oh,
if we're friends not involved sexually romantically, then it's an
inferior relationship, or let's be more than friends, signifying again
(26:05):
that there's this hierarchy that we have to relationships. And
if people decide to center their life around friendship, it's
single people. There's a stigma attached to that. Right. While
marriage does improve well being, single people who socialized well,
who are well socialized, who have a larger social networks,
are actually happier than the average married person. And so
(26:27):
I'm interested in, i guess, disrupting this hierarchy because I
think it would allow all of us to be a
little bit more creative and ask ourselves, what are the
forms of connection that I do want in my life,
what makes me feel fulfilled, right, instead of feeling this
pressure to I'm gonna get married to this person and
we're gonna become very insular. Right, it's just gonna be
this nuclear unit. Right, Like, we get these these strong
(26:48):
cultural messages, and they're so strong that they kind of
they fundamentally alter how we relate to our friends, where
I think we see friendship as inferior and it becomes
a self fulfilling prophecy because as we're less vulnerable, we
invest less time, we're less affirming, we're not as intentional
than we would be with a spouse. Inevitably, that relationship
is going to be inferior. It's not because friendship is
(27:09):
in fear. It's because you're treating that relationship differently because
you have this understanding. And so I think, you know,
in the society where we are so so lonely, we
just can't afford to throw a morsel of connection away.
And I think so much, so often we're just throwing
friendship away. We're not being intentional, we're not putting in
the effort, we're not making it a priority. And I
think it would benefit us all, especially from this very
(27:32):
disconnected state that we're in. If we started to see
friendship for the value that it could really bring to
our lives, well, especially because you say that, you know,
friendship helps us figure out who we are, so which
is you know, if you're saying that friendship through your
life is like the building blocks of creating your character,
(27:54):
then you know you should both have great friendships and
fail at friendships, to have friendships that don't go well
or you know, break up or you know, all those
things in order for you to figure out sort of
your own character, and ultimately, I would say your adult attachment. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
(28:19):
I do argue that, you know, I think there is
this intimate link between the self and how we form friendships.
And you know, our friends, as they advertise different ways
of being in the world to us, show us who
we could be, right, show us all of the options
that are available to us for how we could be
in this world. And I think when we're just around
one person, we shrink. I mean I felt this in
(28:39):
the pandemic, being with a partner at the time, that
I felt like my relationship with myself had shrunk in
some way. It was like my my identity had sort
of thinned out, right, Like I had one experience of
myself because each person calls forth a different experience of yourself.
Right around this person, I'm like this. I'm around this person,
(28:59):
I'm like this, And so just being around one person,
it was it was kind of like straight, straight jacketed
version of my own identity. And so I think being
around a community helps us develop a more dimensional, a
richer sense of our own identities and our own selves.
And do you think you know, just because of age
and experience, can you outgrow friendships? I mean, you talk
(29:22):
about creating new friendships when you're an adult, absolutely, can
you also let go of friendships? Yeah? So this is
going to be the reality that even if you are
comfortable with your friendships now, chances are there will be
another time in your life when you might have to
create friendships again. Um, some people move, obviously that can
be disruptive for friendships. But another study just found that
(29:44):
every seven years we lose about half our friends. Um,
so that just sort of means yeah a lot. Yeah,
that the friends that we have now may not be
the friends we have seven years from now, or so
the have yet being the longer that you've kept a friendship,
the more likely it is to keep going. And so
the newer friendships, the younger friendships are a lot more
(30:07):
likely to shed. And I think it is important to
realize first of all, that that's natural and normal, right,
because I think a lot of us can feel shame
around this. You can feel very isolating, like here's this
person I thought would always be my person and they're
not anymore. But everybody's going through this, not just you
and um. But also the other point that I want
to make is that your friendships will also ebb and flow,
(30:30):
and so there could be an EBB period and if
you don't assume in that period that the friendship is over,
it's going to make it more likely to continue. There
is a study on long distance friends that found that
perceiving them as flexible and not fragile, like oh, maybe
we don't talk for a few months, but I still
assume that I could reach out at any time, right,
that that actually promotes the friendship being maintained and continuing.
(30:52):
So I think that's also important. There are two different issues,
like we have incompatibility, which is contributing to our separation,
and but we also have normal EBB and flows of relationships,
and in those cases when it's not driven by major
jarring incompatibilities, then we can maintain hope for the friendship
returning at a later time in life when we both
(31:14):
have the availability for it. All Right, So let's go
through the different steps of making a new friend in
our adulthood. Yeah, So first I would tell you, Ali,
I hope you know that friendship and adulthood does not
happen organically, and if you believe that, you're more likely
to be lonely. So I want you to know that
(31:34):
you're going to have to try, and you're going to
have to put in an effort. Here's what might be
coming up for you. That sounds very scary. I'm worried
I'll be rejected. Here's what I want to share with you.
We're less likely to be rejected than we think. When
strangers interact and they're asked how much do you think
the other person likes them, their estimations tend to be
(31:55):
inaccurate and more negative than the truth. So this is
called the liking gap. Right, we we erroneously think people
like us less than they actually do. Right. The other
thing that I'm going to say, to prepare your mindset
for going out there and interacting is to assume people
like you. Reason being, this is a self fulfilling prophecy
called the acceptance prophecy. The acceptance prophecy is the finding
(32:19):
that when researchers told people they go into a group
and be accepted or liked based on their personality profile,
this was a lie, by the way, but they found
that people became warmer, open, and friendlier, and they actually
were more likable. So I want you to start assuming
people like you, right, And now that your mindset is right,
(32:39):
I think we can go two different avenues. One reconnect
with people from your past, because the research finds first
of all, that people appreciate that reconnection text more than
we assume, but also that when we reconnect with people
from our past, we have more trust, so the relationship
moves more quickly. Okay, right, So is there anyone you've
fallen out of touch with who you would have preferred
(32:59):
to stay in touch with? Right? Can you reach out
to them? But the next thing I tell you to
do is to pursue a hobby in community with other people.
The reason being that when people are pursuing hobbies and
community they are, they tend to be more open to friendship. Right.
One of the reasons that we tend to pursue these
hobbies and community is to meet people. It's like our
covert way of saying, I what friends. As I joined
(33:21):
this kickball league or this arn't class, right, I didn't
do it alone for a reason. And joining something that's
repeated over time, which is not not a workshop, but uh,
you know, a class that's more repeated, you're going to
capitalize on something called the mere exposure effect, our unconscious
tendency to like people who are more familiar. So when
these researchers planted women into a psychology class, students didn't
(33:45):
remember any of the woman, but they like the woman
who showed up for the most classes about more than
the woman that didn't show up for any And so
what that tells us is that when you first joined
this group, it's going to be awkward. You're not gonna trust,
You're gonna feel weary as refect has not set in.
But as you stay in this group for two to
three months, those feelings are going to change. They're gonna
(34:06):
like you more, You're going to like them more. Right.
I also suggest when you join that group, you're overcoming
something called overt avoidance, which is our tendency to not
show up because we're scared. But you also have to
overcome covert avoidance, which is our tendency to show up
physically but check out mentally. So I want to make
sure that when you get to that group, you're not
just on your phone, that you are actually introducing yourself
(34:29):
and saying, Hey, I'm Marissa, it's great to meet you.
How have you liked this hiking group so far? Remember,
you're assuming people like you here, and then lastly, generating
exclusivity with someone in the group, finding someone in the
group who you like, asking them to hang out outside
of the group so you have particular memories and experiences
with that person that you don't share with the rest
(34:50):
of the group. That is what builds friendship. Yeah, I
like to. I mean, I actually have made a lot
of new friends in my adulthood. Um. And I've found
also that the older I get, I'm much bolder about
pursuing friendships than I was when I was young. You know.
Now I'm just like I got nothing to lose, you
know what I mean? Like what And I also find
(35:11):
that what you said before earlier, they people are more receptive.
Like you think you're going to reach out and they're
gonna be like, what is this fucking stalker doing, you know,
but yet they're like, I would love to go for
a walk, you know. I love to like I'm always
surprised when I'm received that way, you know, because you're
you're always, you know, kind of your fourth grade self,
(35:32):
no matter how old you are, when you're sort of
reaching out and making a friend and it's time for
a short break. Welcome back to go ask Alli. You
talk about intentional generosity, which is something that I've tried
(35:56):
to always feed and water in myself. Um, and one
kind of friend I like to be is a creative friend.
So I make my own sort of holiday cards. I
love to bake people's birthday cakes. I love. I have
found that it has given me immense pleasure to be
an intentional, intentionally generous friend. I guess you would phrase
(36:19):
it that is really lovely. And um, I think what
we're really getting at here is something called the theory
of inferred attraction, which is the idea that people like
people that they think like them. So anything that you
do that shows people I care about you, You matter
to me, You're important. Those are going to generate friendship.
(36:40):
And I think for me when I was younger, I
have this misconception that to make friends I have to
be entertaining. I have to be insightful, I have to
say something funny all the time, right, And in fact,
people report this entertaining piece being the least important value
they look for in friendship. You, I'm screwed. Well, you
(37:00):
do do the most important thing, which is making people
feel like they matter, especial people want. It's called ego support.
And you know, I think humor can be a way
into that right of making people feel like they matter.
And so the more I think when we feel really
insecure about belonging, we get into this place that's a
little bit self centered because we're in pain. I think
pain is inherently self centered. We don't have the resources
(37:22):
to think of other other people. Where we think have
they reached out to me? Have they welcomed me? Have
they initiated with me? Whereas people who are really good
at friendship, they think a lot more about what they
have they done for others? Have I made them feel welcome?
Have I initiated with them? Have I made them feel
cared for? Right? And they don't expect that people are
going to invest in them if they see themselves aren't
(37:45):
haven't been accountable for that same level investment. So I
think sometimes we need to gently, kindly empathically check ourselves. Right,
if our friendships aren't working out? What have I done
to make other people feel loved and valued? Right? Rather
than what have people done for me to make me
feel loved and value? Because it starts with I'm making
them feel loved and then it tends to be a
(38:06):
sort of more reciprocal cycle. How do you feel about
the term best friend? Like, when you're young, it it's territorial,
and but when you get older, I've noticed that women
my age have a very strong reaction to the term
best friend. You know, I think we need quality, deep
intimate connections. Whether that has to include the label best
(38:27):
friend or not. I don't think it's completely necessary, but
I will say the value of it is that friendship
is so freaking ambiguous. We don't know what we can
expect from our friends. We don't know how invested they
are with us. There's no formal ceremony right, set of
expectations that come with being a friend, and friend can
be anywhere from someone who's nearly an acquaintance that you
met for coffee once. I mean, Facebook further diluted our
(38:50):
perception of what it means to be a friend. And
so we're all working from such different definitions, which means
we all have different expectations from each other that come
out of these different definite and those different expectations is
what part of what can create problems in friendship. Right,
So what I like about best Friend is that it
clarifies some of those expectations. It says, Okay, we are
(39:12):
going to make each other a priority. Maybe we are
gonna gauge in mutual support seeking. When I have a need,
I know I can feel comfortable reaching out to you.
That allows us to kind of calibrate our expectations of
each other a little bit. Yeah, I think that. Yeah,
I also think um. I did this interpersonal exercise and
what was kind of interesting about it was to see
(39:33):
how much time we give the toxic people as compared
to a lot of the people that are so close
to us. Wow, there's as much air time for these
people that make me feel bad as this circle around me,
and it it actually seeing it visually made me kind
of readjust you know, my my own landscape of friendship
(39:54):
in general. Yeah, I think two things in relation to that.
I don't know which is often kind of passive in friendships,
not necessarily discerning. Um. You know, this is what I've
realized to having a large network of friends, I begin
to ask myself, who do I want to invest in
more deeply? Right, it can't be that whoever reaches out
to me I'm going to go along with, because then
I'm not able to cultivate and curate my friendships in
(40:17):
the ways that I want. Right, And so that I
think is very often occurrence that we hang out with
people who it's easiest to rather than who we want
to go deeper with. Um. And so that requires some discernment.
But I also say for anxiously attached people, there are
many different stress mechanisms that we might use fight flight, freeze,
(40:38):
but also fawn. Fawn is if someone is threatening to me,
I try to get them to like me, and anxiously
attached people tend to experience this more so. They actually
are attracted to people that are less engaged with them,
that like them less because oh this triggers my fond response.
So now I'm going to engage more and try to
(41:00):
hang out with them more and try to get them
to like me right. And that's part of the template
of the anxiously attached that I am going to have
to earn love right. Anxiously attached people can sometimes feel
like someone just likes me. What do they know? What
do they know? This is weird? You know, it's suspicious
almost right, Whereas securely attached people, if someone makes them
feel bad, they walk away instead of working harder. So
(41:23):
our attachment style could play into that as well. I mean,
I wonder if sometimes it's very simplistic, But one thing
I say to my daughters when it comes to friendship
is find the people that make you feel good. M exactly. Yes.
I also think that when I'm I want to not
(41:44):
go to assisted living. I actually want to get a
house and live with my girlfriends because I think I'll
be happier. I truly believe this. I'll be happier and
I'll live longer if I already create a community um
of people that make me feel good. Now, I love that,
(42:04):
and I just love thinking more creatively about the potential
of friendship. There's been more talk about people who physically
in gen z choosing friends as life partners, right, and um,
just being a lot more creative around what we think
friendship can do. Because, aside from sex, most of the
things that you might look for from a spouse you
can also look for from a friend. There's really no
(42:25):
reason not to, aside from like a lack of creativity. Right,
So what sort of life do you want to live?
What sort of connections do you want to have? What
feels good for you rather than what is the script
for how we are supposed to live? Right, I think
that is just going to fundamentally allow for our needs
to be met and for us to feel so much better.
And so I think that just requires us to see
(42:45):
friendship so much more expansively and and richly than how
we have historically seen it. Yes, and I inspiration is
one of my criteria for friendship. And so I guess
we're going to be friends, Merissa, because you really inspired
me on this podcast. Thank you so, Marissa. In the
(43:09):
spirit of friendship, it is now your turn to ask
me a question about anything. I love this to the
tables him turn. Yeah, you know, also a psychologists I'm
always wanted to ask questions. You could listen, you can
go deep if you want. I'm ready, thank you. I
am wondering what's something that you learned about friendship that
(43:29):
you didn't understand ten years ago. I ten years ago,
I didn't understand my worth in a friendship, meaning I
I always felt so lucky that this person was my friend,
and I didn't look at it like, well, they're lucky
that I'm their friend, you know what I mean. I
(43:50):
didn't see it as an equal relationship. Um, And I
think it caused me a lot of pain, and I
think it caused me to make bad decisions about who
I spent my time with and who I did all
those creative things for. Because I find in friendship when
(44:12):
you are one of my quote unquote people, I am
an endless well of love. I love to do things
for my friends. It makes me so happy the way
it does, you know, when I do things for my
daughters and so they because some of them became so
one sided that I had to move away from them,
(44:36):
And it was usually somebody else saying like, why are
you friends with that person? They don't treat you well,
they don't, they don't call you on your birthday, you know,
And so I started to realize, oh wait a second,
where am I in all this? Whereas now I'm very
good at that. And I also reach out to new
friendships the way we talked about with somebody that I
(44:58):
can already tell through just through experience and living life. Oh,
this is a person I can tell who will be
reciprocal and open and vulnerable with me. I love that, Ali,
I'm so proud of you. I don't know if I
can ask questions, but you can. I mean, as he'll
(45:19):
turn into a therapy at this session and he'll be like,
oh my god, Okay, what a quick question. Yes psychologists, Yes, yes,
like having sense of self worth so important for our
friendships because we have to take risks in friendship, like
reaching out to someone. Right. If we don't feel worthy,
we're not going to want to take those risks because
we think people don't want to hear from us. Right.
My follow up question is how did you develop that
(45:42):
sense of worth in yourself? How did I develop the
sense of worth? I think it was a few things.
I think it was almost like sexual relationships in the past,
you know, of being heard a bunch of times of
trying different types of people. I think the same can
be said about friendship. There are certain types of people
(46:03):
that I just could innately like just feel on a
visceral level. Oh, I know what type of person that is,
and I sort of get a sense of how they
are as a friend. I also think that there are
certain things that I am attracted to and friends. There's
a bunch of things that I learned, and I think
(46:25):
I learned it by befriending all different types of people.
And I feel like now in my fifties, I had
the greatest group of female friends, more so than I
did when I was forty year thirty like, and a
few of them are are from many many years that
we just sort of live life together, I guess, as
(46:45):
the kids call it, ride or die, and I still
seek new friends out. Yeah, I really like your answer, because, um,
we develop our sense of self not in isolation from people,
but when we experience loving people. That are if we
begin to feel more worthy. Right. Oh, absolutely, absolutely, Okay
asked that with the foul up questions. Though I could
(47:07):
ask more, I know you could, I'd be I'd be
in therapy for the next four days. Thank you so much.
This was so Your book is so great and insightful,
and I did get two copies for my daughters, and
I think everyone should read it because I think we
tend to focus more on the sexual relationships more than
our romantic friendships. And they exactly and they are like
(47:30):
oxygen and food and water. We need them. So thank
you so much, thank you so much, thank you for
listening to go ask Ali now Dr Marissa Franco's book Platonic,
How the Science of Attachment can help you make and
keep friends. I gave you but a sliver of the
(47:50):
book that it is so full of interesting insights and information.
So do yourself a favor and get the book. Because
my producer Brook would not let me do a four
hour podcast, but I could have now. If you would
like to follow Dr Marissa, she is on Instagram at
Dr Marissa g Franco and her website Dr Marissa g
(48:12):
Franco dot com, and you can take a quiz to
assess your strengths and weaknesses as a friend. If you'd
like more info on what you heard in this episode,
check out our show notes and be sure to subscribe,
rate and review the podcast, and follow me on Instagram
at the Real Ali wentworth Now. If you'd like to
ask me a question or suggest a guest or a
topic to dig into, I'd love to hear from you,
(48:32):
and there's a bunch of ways you can do it.
You can call or text me up three to three
three six four six three six, or you can email
a voice memo right from your phone to Go Ask
Glli podcast at gmail dot com. And if you leave
a question, you just might hear it. I'm go Ask Alli. Yeah,
(48:56):
Go Ask Gali is a production of Shonda land Audio
and partnership with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from
Shondaland Audio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to go Ask Ali, a production of Shonda Land
Audio and partnership with I Heart Radio. Rolling on the full.
Loafing is a thing I can. I've seen you know,
We've all seen people do it. I've done it, I've
kidding For me now, the work is to want what
I have, even kind of shinny stuff. You know, that's
my work. It's it's imperfect. So let me ask you
(00:21):
a question about actors because you are yeah, me too.
We are old, funny duddies. We go to sleep at ten,
we wake up at six, we go to bed at eight,
So there are more funny duddies than you. You are
the funny duddiest. Yes, welcome to go ask Allie. I'm
Ali Wentworth Now. One of the most requested topics by
(00:44):
listeners is making friends as adults. So for all you
listeners out there, today's your lucky day. As important as food, oxygen,
and water. Friendship, you know everybody has struggled with friendship,
how we attach ourselves to people, how we detach ourselves
(01:07):
to people. I know for me that my friendships are
as meaningful and integral to my life as my husband
and my children and everything else. And friendship is a
very big subject in my house for me because I
hold my friendships so dear. But also I have two
(01:27):
teenage daughters who are constantly trying to chart the waters
of friendship and all the pain and elation that goes
with it. And my mother, who at eighty eight years old,
has found herself a widow and with many of her
friends deceased. So how do we maintain friendships? How do
(01:48):
we make new friendships? My guest today is Dr Marissa G. Franco.
She's a psychologist, professor, and author of Platonic, How the
Science of Attachment can help You Make and Keep Friends.
She writes about friendship for Psychology Today and has been
a featured connection expert from major publications like The New
York Times, The Telegraph, Advice. Marissa is a professor at
(02:12):
the University of Maryland and speaks on belonging at corporations, universities,
and more. Welcome, Marissa, So happy to be talking with you.
I am so glad you're here because I find that
female friendship is such an integral part of all of
(02:33):
our lives. And I take my friendships very seriously, and
I have to say that my my friendships have caused
me even more pain than my love relationships in the past.
So I just ate your book right up, Platonic how
the science of attachment can help you make and keep friends,
(02:53):
because there's so much there, and there's so much there
that I want to give my daughters too, because is
obviously they're younger than me, and they're dealing with friendships
in a different way that I am as an old lady. Now, um,
but the most important the theme in your book is
really attachment and the whole theory of attachment. So let's
(03:15):
let's just dive into that right away. Yeah. Well, first
of all, Alliam, I'm so honored to hear that you
want to share it with your daughters. That really touches me. Oh,
I sent your book Platonic to my daughter in college
because I feel like they're always struggling with friendships, and
you know, from from kindergarten on you're you're constantly dealing
(03:37):
with how you attached to people. So let's start with
attachment theory. So attachment theory is basically the idea that
in our early lives with our parents, we begin to
develop a certain template for how people will treat us,
and after that we we developed that template, we engage
in like confirmation biases, where we see people interacting with
(03:59):
us in ways that match that template and almost ignore
times that they don't write. And then we build a
number of strategies in reaction to these assumptions that we
think people in reaction to these ways that we think
other people will treat us. So, you know, what does
that mean in a more practical way, If you're anxiously attached,
your template says people are going to abandon me unless
(04:19):
I cling cling cling close to them, right, And so
you know, anxiously attached people, they often misspire and think
they're being rejected even when they're not. They often give
too much in friendships because again they need they feel
like they need to to feel worthy to feel like
they'll keep other people around. They don't stand up for themselves,
(04:40):
they don't have boundaries, they don't bring up conflicts again
fear that other people are gonna abandon you. Sometimes they
can also be quite demanding because of the sense that
I need you to do this to prove that I
am worthy to me right, And and sometimes they don't
necessarily consider other people have different needs outside of them,
or reacting to them in ways that aren't necessarily personal. Right,
and then you have avoidingly attached people. Their template their
(05:03):
early childhood was usually I got food, I got water,
I got shelter, but there was nothing emotionally. It was
sort of like emotional neglect. I was told to handle
things on my own, you know, be a big boy,
be a big girl. And what that means is that
avoidingly attached people are very uncomfortable with emotions, very uncomfortable
with intimacy. Their template says, other people can't be trustworthy,
(05:27):
so they tend to invest less in friendship. They tend
to not be as vulnerable in friendship, they tend to
ghost more. Um, you know, people that are friends with
them feel like I've known them for so long, but
I don't feel like I really know them because they're
not necessarily vulnerable. Or I don't feel reciprocity. I feel
like I'm putting in all this effort but the other
person isn't. Because avoidingly attached people fundamentally enjoy friendship less
(05:51):
because they see it as a liability or responsibility. Right.
And then you have securely attached people who have learned
in their relationships. And again, it's it starts with your
parents or caretakers. But it evolves, right, so it's not
just your early relationships, and they trust that they can
build relationships with people. They trust that other people like them.
(06:14):
They are comfortable being vulnerable, but in a way, that's
that oversharing, right. If someone withdraws from them or doesn't
like them, they kind of walk away instead of work harder,
which you tend to see with more anxiously attached people,
they're better at initiating friendships, less likely to dissolve friendships.
Their friendships are are very stable, right, And that's why
I call them like the super friends of connection. And
(06:34):
I think what we learn from attachment theory and what
I argue in Platonic is that our personality is fundamentally
a reflection of our past experiences of connection. Whether we
are open, warm, trusting, critical, aggressive, you know, generous, all
of these are predicted by whether we've connected well in
the past. But not only that, then who we are
(06:54):
affects how we connect. The people that are best at
connecting now typically have healthier history of relationships, which have
given them the template that other people are trustworthy, that
they can connect with people that allows them to continue
to connect whereas if you've had a very difficult history
that you haven't processed, it can lead you with a
set of beliefs and a set of strategies that actually
(07:14):
make it a little bit more difficult to form relationships
and friendships in the future. Okay, So, can somebody be
born with anxious attachment just sort of based on their
personality or is it environmental? Yeah, this is a great question, um,
something I want to clarify because I tell people about
attachment theory and they're like, good for those people with
(07:37):
healthy parents, Like, Okay, you know I'm at a luck then,
And I don't think that's what I'm trying to convey,
especially for me as someone who's gone from anxious to
more secure. Your attachment can fundamentally change over time. Some
research finds that it's more likely to change than stay
the same after you, you know, you have different relationships
that that kind of adjust your sculpture template over time. Right,
(07:57):
And I think knowing about our attachment style isn't deterministic
that we're going to be doomed because we had doomed
relationships in the past, but instead it allows us to
instead say nobody can be trusted, you know, everybody's gonna
abandon me. And if you feel like that is the
truth that's out there in the world, you have no agency,
You're just powerless. Right. But when you know how your
(08:19):
own behavior can influence people in ways that make it
more likely that your fears are going to come to
fruition because you sort of behave in ways that make
these behaviors more likely to be true, then you can
change your behaviors and you can develop really good relationships
with people. So I hope that it can be more empowering.
But related to your question, Ali it there is a
genetic component to attachment. Um. There's this theory and psychology
(08:42):
called the orchid hypothesis, which is basically the idea that
some of us are more vulnerable to our environments, whether
good or bad. Right. So if these these more sensitive
folks um genetically right, are in a good environment, they're
going to thrive. If they're in a bad environment, are
going to be devastated. Right. Others of us are kind
(09:03):
of like we have less of a range, Like we're
gonna be kind of similar. We're not as affected by
our environment, so our outcomes are going to be like
sort of similar ish whether we have really good environment
or a bad one, right, And so there is that
genetic difference which is partially how much are we absorbing
our environment that that differs between a lot of us. Yeah,
(09:25):
because I think, you know, for instance, I'm thinking about
one of my daughters, who, you know, the second she
came out in the hospital, she was mommy, mommy, mommy,
and she was a clingy baby. She wouldn't let anyone
else hold her. And you know, I think she falls
under the category of anxious attachment, and it's it's, you know,
(09:47):
maybe I coddled her too much, But I don't look
at it as oh, did we not give her enough love?
Did we not you know, nurture her enough. We did
in huge amounts. She literally was born like that, like
as a baby, whereas my other daughter was like, hey,
put me in the crib, I don't care, I'm fine,
(10:07):
And she has, you know, she has more of the calmer,
kind of less attached personality, and so in some ways,
I do think it's genetic. Yeah. Yeah, I think what
you're talking about is a temperament and the psychology, which
is like we're kind of born with a certain temperament
that then can sort of interact with our environment in
(10:28):
certain ways, right, because temperaments are also going to draw
something different out of a parent, right. Yes. Absolutely, you
might react to your babies differently because they have they're
reacting to you differently. Right. So it's it's really interesting
how these two things can intersect. Yes. And so one
of the things I am fascinated by in your book
is the idea of, in terms of friendship, platonic love. Right. So,
(10:51):
platonic love is the love I have, let's say, for
my girlfriends, and even though they lack sex and fashion,
they feel to me just as integral to my life
and as strong as a romantic relationship. Yeah. Yeah, And
(11:12):
actually I think in platonic I was interested in learning
the lines between romance and friendship because Angela Chen she
she has this really great book Ace, and she kind
of talks about how, you know, in the a sexual community,
there's very much a distinction between being sexually attracted someone
and romantically attracted to someone, right, And so sexual attraction
(11:35):
as I want to have sex with you, Romantic attraction
is I'm passionate about you, I idealize you, I think
you're amazing, you feel like my soul ate right. And
so when we look at relationships between woman friends in particular,
we see them saying things like you are my soulmate
and all I want to do is spend my time
with you, right, And that is sort of sounds like
it's kind of on the romantic spectrum. And in fact,
(11:57):
throughout our history, um, you know, in the early seventeen hundreds,
there was the sense that the genders are so distinct
that you can only find this true and deep intimacy
with your friends who share the same gender as you,
kind of like romance being more of a part of
friendship than it was marriage. Right, And so at that time,
(12:18):
friends were holding hands, friends were sharing beds, friends were cuddling,
right because all of that, m oh, that was normal
at that time. Now, of course, our script for friendship
is a lot more limited. Right. But I think if
we look at if we can differentiate or take a
fine tiof comb between the differences between all these different
forms of love, we can see that romantic relationships romantic
(12:39):
feelings are kind of I would argue, even normal without
a lot of particularly close and intimate friendships. Okay, so
let me ask you this, because this is advice that
I've given my friends, and you can tell me it's
probably wrong, and I'll make sure I edit this part out.
But um, I say to my girlfriends that they shouldn't
(13:05):
expect their partner to be their best friend, because I
feel like they are setting themselves up let's say when
they first lived with somebody or marry them, because I
have found the game changer in my marriage, which is
a very good marriage, was that when I would go
to my husband for a lot of kind of scaffolding,
(13:26):
he he just wasn't the person like I never was
satiated by what I got back from him. But if
I went to my girlfriends, you know, they like to
chew on some of the stuff I like to chew
on for a lot longer. And yet my life path
is with my husband and sort of the big issues
I deal with with my husband and obviously have sex
(13:47):
with my husband. But my girlfriends I've sort of kept
for a lot of the other emotional stuff that I
sometimes think it's too inundating for my husband. Meaning I
say to my girlfriends, don't necessarily go into marriage with
this idea that this person is your all, your best friend,
your lover, or your everything. Am I right or am
(14:09):
I wrong? I agree with the idea that your spouse
should not be your everything, and in fact I argue
that being in a healthy romantic relationship or healthy marriage
really requires you to have people to support you outside
of that marriage, because the research finds that when you're
(14:31):
in conflict with your spouse, it disrupts your stress hormone
release in unhealthy ways unless you have quality connection outside
that marriage. That when you make a friend, not only
are you less depressed, your spouse is less depressed too.
Um that people that you know, related to what you said, Alie,
engage in emotion ships, which means you go to different
people to help you work through different emotions, they have
(14:52):
higher overall well being. That women who have close friends
out of the marriage are more resilient to strife within
the marriag much whereas people that only rely on a spouse,
they're very devastated when things go wrong. Right their mental health,
according to the research, is just more impacted by the
natural ebbs and flows in that relationship. And what that
(15:14):
means is that if something goes wrong and you're completely
off kilter, it's harder to heal from it, Whereas if
something goes wrong, and you go out and you get
some support, you return to your relationship in a centered
place to be like, we're not enemies, let's work this out.
I've process of my feelings. I'm not in a reactive
place that is such a great resource for your marriage.
And so I definitely agree with you that this has
(15:34):
been a truth throughout our entire species that somehow we've
forgotten in recent decades, that we've always needed an entire
community to feel whole. And so I hope that my
message of friendship is really really important while I came
to it going through breakups and feeling like I feel
so bad in these breakups because I feel like romantic
love is the only love that makes me lovable, and
(15:55):
I'm questioning whether that's true because I see how much
my friends love me. Right. But I think this message
of we have to maybe see love unless of a hierarchy,
so that we can value and put effort into our
platonic partnerships just like we do our marriage, right, I
think it benefits all of us, whether we're single or
whether we're married. I would go so far as to
say that in the past what I found was so
(16:17):
kind of helpful to my well being, And you talk
about a wellness group at the beginning of the book.
UM was I've had versions of that. I've had lunch clubs,
I've had book clubs. UM I have basically now a
like a menopause club with a group of women my age.
That is, so the sole purpose is to support each other.
(16:41):
And you know, when somebody's parent dies or a divorce,
or you know, any kind of life shift, we kind
of circle the wagons and and I think it's so important.
And I think that there's something about the group of
women that kind of quilt together, the kind of support
that is impossible to find anywhere else. Yeah. I also
(17:06):
love a group, you know, monthly Spanish speaking group and
a bi weekly dinner club. And you know, I talked
about the world this group. I love having groups for everything.
But what we're doing when we create those groups is
that we are creating the infrastructure for friendship to happen organically.
So this sociologist Rebecca Adams, she argues that for friendship
(17:26):
to happen organically, we need repeated, unplanned interaction and shared vulnerability,
which is school Jim lunch recess, right, But as adults,
we don't often inhabit those environments unless we seek them
out intentionally. Because work, we're not often vulnerable at work,
So we're seeing each other repeatedly, we're only showing a
(17:46):
professional quote unquote side of ourselves. We don't actually know
each other. Right, So if we rely on that template
from childhood, we are going to be lonely and in
fact as adults. A study found that people that think
friendship happened without effort are more lonely five years later,
whereas those that see it as taking effort are less lonely. Right.
And so when we create these groups, right, we are
(18:09):
giving ourselves continuous, unplanned interaction and shared vulnerability. We are
creating the ingredients for our friendships to sort of take
off and strengthen on our own without us having to
continue to product them in the same way. And it's
interesting because I have my mother now, who is in
her late eighties. She was somebody that had very strong,
(18:30):
incredible friendships in her lifetime, and she's at a point
now and you talk about widows in your book, but
she's at a point now where her husband is dead
and all her close female friends are dead. And one
of the things that she and I talked about a
lot is how she at can find community now, you
(18:52):
know what I mean, because she's not even out and about.
And I said, I know that this sounds simplistic, but
you know you should invite people over to play. You know,
you know there art classes and groups like and it
used to those sort of things when you would hear
people say it sounded so kind of perfunctory and like,
(19:12):
oh yeah, okay, I'm not going to join a group.
But as I get older, I realized, yeah, yeah, you
kind of have to, you know what I mean. And
for her well being, she needs to figure out a
way in her late eighties now to find friendship. In
mind that and as much as she you know, needs
to get her heart checked and bone density, all of
(19:34):
it exactly. There's a lot more to come after the
short break and we're back. It's funny what you were
saying to earlier about vulnerability, because I have found that
(19:56):
and and this is not gender prejudice, just in my
in my life, I have noticed that a lot of
my male friends have a fear of vulnerability, and therefore
their friendships aren't as close. And even my husband, I
would say that that's true with him. Yeah, and you
(20:17):
are right that vulnerability. First of all, um, men are
about half as likely to to access support within their
friendships in a given week than woman and that that
really does hinder men's friendships. You know, men men have
tend to have these more companionate friends where you're hanging
out around an activity, and that is a great form
of friendship to write, but it has its limitations. We've
(20:40):
seen that in the pandemic right. If you have friends
that you're just hanging out with to to play golf
and you can't see each other, someone moves or you
have a pandemic, right, which hopefully doesn't happen again. But
you know, if people move or they become long distance,
then obviously your ability to maintain that connection is very limited.
And fundamentally, being vulnerable, it does increase the depth and
the closeness. We know from the research that people that
(21:01):
intimately self disclose are liked more than other people. People
that express negative emotion. Although we think, you know, friendship
is positive vibes only, they actually are more likely to
make friends in their traditions in their transition to college.
And we also know that it's very necessary for our
mental health and well being. Right. That throughout the book,
I think you'll see that all of the things that
(21:22):
we do that create connection also tend to improve our
mental health and well being, vulnerability included. Right, So, people
that conceal tend to be more concealing of information about themselves,
they experience more depression, more suicidality. One study that looked
at a hundred and six factors that predict depression found
that having it a confidance, someone you're confiding is is
(21:43):
the number one factor that prevents depression. And so I
think in the in the American culture, we kind of
have this very false ideal that to be strong means
I never need anyone and I'm handling things on my
own at all times. Right, And the research binds that
people that are like that, they tend to experience more
physical health issues. They're not releasing their emotions, so they
(22:04):
manifest physically. They experience more you know, headaches, more gas
through intestinal issues. It's not that they go away or
those emotions aren't there, it's just that they're they're kind
of wreaking havoc on you physically. It's even if you
don't if you can't necessarily be aware of it, mentally right.
And so when we see the people that actually are
the most resilient, it's the securely attached people. And that
(22:26):
security comes from I shared myself with other people. They
responded in a loving and accepting way, and I internalize
that into being part of my sense of self. But
I would say with the anxiety attachment, and I can
speak for myself, but with anxiety attachment, there's obviously the
fear of vulnerability. But what happens when you are vulnerable
(22:49):
with somebody else You express a secretive part of yourself
or you know, vulnerable party of yourself, and it freaks
them out or it causes them to pull away. Then
you you it's like it's more damage than if you hadn't. Yeah, No,
you're absolutely right, and you're right that it's actually better
(23:12):
to not be vulnerable if the other person isn't safe.
But you don't know that, right, Yeah, and you don't
know that. But I also want to differentiate between oversharing
and vulnerability. Um anxiously attached people, right, they're they're afraid
that other people are going to reject and abandon them.
So often their vulnerability can come from a place of
I want to test you to see if you'll abandon me,
(23:34):
rather than I feel safe with you, and as a
reflection of that relationship, I am then going to be
vulnerable with you. Right, And so it isn't as authentic
because it's like I'm doing this to test you and
see your reaction and decide whether you'll stay around, whereas
a vulnerable act is more like I'm discerning that I
feel safe in this moment, and that is what is
pushing me to share my internal world with you. And
(23:56):
so I think how we understand ourselves, whether I'm being
vulnerable or over hearing. Is is this coming from a
place of fear? Right? Is this coming from a place
of fear that you're going to pull away from me?
Versus when I'm vulnerable? Is this coming from a sense
of safety? Right? Two different things that differentiate those two acts.
But I also want to say avoidably attached. There was
a study that looked at people answering, you know, thirty
(24:18):
six questions. It was even gotten to the New York
Times thirty six questions to fall in love. When I
read that study, I found that in general, if we
go through these thirty six questions of deepening into the
sy with each other, like when's the last time you cried?
People feel more connected to each other, right, it generates
a lot of closeness. But we found is that when
someone was avoidantly attached, that didn't happen. The voterability did
(24:41):
not create connection. And that's another important thing to recognize.
Sometimes your vulnerability didn't land and it wasn't necessarily because
of your issue per se. I mean, it could be right,
we just talked about oversharing, but it could also be
because of someone else's baggage, Like they're not really able
to sit with feelings like avoidingly attached people, they're not
able to sit with emotions. They're not able to be
(25:03):
open to connection without feeling overburdened or without feeling like
people are putting all this pressure on them and that
comes from their path. So I think it's also important
to recognize sometimes our vulnerability may not go right, and
that's not necessarily our faults. What we can do in
those moments is observed, take note, and decide in the future,
(25:23):
I'm going to be vulnerable with someone that does make
me feel safe. Well that's a great point, So tell
me what you mean when you say friendship is the
underdog of relationships. Yeah, yeah, I mean that in so
many ways, our cultural messages have focused around I'm going
to say romantic relationship because that's the standard language for doubt, right,
(25:44):
But we know you know the complexities of that, right.
You know, people always ask you when are you're going
to get married? Right? When are you going to find
the one? When are you gonna find your soul? Many
when you gonna find your person? When we talk about friends,
it's like we'll say things like we're just friends, signifying that, oh,
if we're friends not involved sexually romantically, then it's an
inferior relationship, or let's be more than friends, signifying again
(26:05):
that there's this hierarchy that we have to relationships. And
if people decide to center their life around friendship, it's
single people. There's a stigma attached to that. Right. While
marriage does improve well being, single people who socialized well,
who are well socialized, who have a larger social networks,
are actually happier than the average married person. And so
(26:27):
I'm interested in, i guess, disrupting this hierarchy because I
think it would allow all of us to be a
little bit more creative and ask ourselves, what are the
forms of connection that I do want in my life,
what makes me feel fulfilled, right, instead of feeling this
pressure to I'm gonna get married to this person and
we're gonna become very insular. Right, it's just gonna be
this nuclear unit. Right, Like, we get these these strong
(26:48):
cultural messages, and they're so strong that they kind of
they fundamentally alter how we relate to our friends, where
I think we see friendship as inferior and it becomes
a self fulfilling prophecy because as we're less vulnerable, we
invest less time, we're less affirming, we're not as intentional
than we would be with a spouse. Inevitably, that relationship
is going to be inferior. It's not because friendship is
(27:09):
in fear. It's because you're treating that relationship differently because
you have this understanding. And so I think, you know,
in the society where we are so so lonely, we
just can't afford to throw a morsel of connection away.
And I think so much, so often we're just throwing
friendship away. We're not being intentional, we're not putting in
the effort, we're not making it a priority. And I
think it would benefit us all, especially from this very
(27:32):
disconnected state that we're in. If we started to see
friendship for the value that it could really bring to
our lives, well, especially because you say that, you know,
friendship helps us figure out who we are, so which
is you know, if you're saying that friendship through your
life is like the building blocks of creating your character,
(27:54):
then you know you should both have great friendships and
fail at friendships, to have friendships that don't go well
or you know, break up or you know, all those
things in order for you to figure out sort of
your own character, and ultimately, I would say your adult attachment. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
(28:19):
I do argue that, you know, I think there is
this intimate link between the self and how we form friendships.
And you know, our friends, as they advertise different ways
of being in the world to us, show us who
we could be, right, show us all of the options
that are available to us for how we could be
in this world. And I think when we're just around
one person, we shrink. I mean I felt this in
(28:39):
the pandemic, being with a partner at the time, that
I felt like my relationship with myself had shrunk in
some way. It was like my my identity had sort
of thinned out, right, Like I had one experience of
myself because each person calls forth a different experience of yourself.
Right around this person, I'm like this. I'm around this person,
(28:59):
I'm like this, And so just being around one person,
it was it was kind of like straight, straight jacketed
version of my own identity. And so I think being
around a community helps us develop a more dimensional, a
richer sense of our own identities and our own selves.
And do you think you know, just because of age
and experience, can you outgrow friendships? I mean, you talk
(29:22):
about creating new friendships when you're an adult, absolutely, can
you also let go of friendships? Yeah? So this is
going to be the reality that even if you are
comfortable with your friendships now, chances are there will be
another time in your life when you might have to
create friendships again. Um, some people move, obviously that can
be disruptive for friendships. But another study just found that
(29:44):
every seven years we lose about half our friends. Um,
so that just sort of means yeah a lot. Yeah,
that the friends that we have now may not be
the friends we have seven years from now, or so
the have yet being the longer that you've kept a friendship,
the more likely it is to keep going. And so
the newer friendships, the younger friendships are a lot more
(30:07):
likely to shed. And I think it is important to
realize first of all, that that's natural and normal, right,
because I think a lot of us can feel shame
around this. You can feel very isolating, like here's this
person I thought would always be my person and they're
not anymore. But everybody's going through this, not just you
and um. But also the other point that I want
to make is that your friendships will also ebb and flow,
(30:30):
and so there could be an EBB period and if
you don't assume in that period that the friendship is over,
it's going to make it more likely to continue. There
is a study on long distance friends that found that
perceiving them as flexible and not fragile, like oh, maybe
we don't talk for a few months, but I still
assume that I could reach out at any time, right,
that that actually promotes the friendship being maintained and continuing.
(30:52):
So I think that's also important. There are two different issues,
like we have incompatibility, which is contributing to our separation,
and but we also have normal EBB and flows of relationships,
and in those cases when it's not driven by major
jarring incompatibilities, then we can maintain hope for the friendship
returning at a later time in life when we both
(31:14):
have the availability for it. All Right, So let's go
through the different steps of making a new friend in
our adulthood. Yeah, So first I would tell you, Ali,
I hope you know that friendship and adulthood does not
happen organically, and if you believe that, you're more likely
to be lonely. So I want you to know that
(31:34):
you're going to have to try, and you're going to
have to put in an effort. Here's what might be
coming up for you. That sounds very scary. I'm worried
I'll be rejected. Here's what I want to share with you.
We're less likely to be rejected than we think. When
strangers interact and they're asked how much do you think
the other person likes them, their estimations tend to be
(31:55):
inaccurate and more negative than the truth. So this is
called the liking gap. Right, we we erroneously think people
like us less than they actually do. Right. The other
thing that I'm going to say, to prepare your mindset
for going out there and interacting is to assume people
like you. Reason being, this is a self fulfilling prophecy
called the acceptance prophecy. The acceptance prophecy is the finding
(32:19):
that when researchers told people they go into a group
and be accepted or liked based on their personality profile,
this was a lie, by the way, but they found
that people became warmer, open, and friendlier, and they actually
were more likable. So I want you to start assuming
people like you, right, And now that your mindset is right,
(32:39):
I think we can go two different avenues. One reconnect
with people from your past, because the research finds first
of all, that people appreciate that reconnection text more than
we assume, but also that when we reconnect with people
from our past, we have more trust, so the relationship
moves more quickly. Okay, right, So is there anyone you've
fallen out of touch with who you would have preferred
(32:59):
to stay in touch with? Right? Can you reach out
to them? But the next thing I tell you to
do is to pursue a hobby in community with other people.
The reason being that when people are pursuing hobbies and
community they are, they tend to be more open to friendship. Right.
One of the reasons that we tend to pursue these
hobbies and community is to meet people. It's like our
covert way of saying, I what friends. As I joined
(33:21):
this kickball league or this arn't class, right, I didn't
do it alone for a reason. And joining something that's
repeated over time, which is not not a workshop, but uh,
you know, a class that's more repeated, you're going to
capitalize on something called the mere exposure effect, our unconscious
tendency to like people who are more familiar. So when
these researchers planted women into a psychology class, students didn't
(33:45):
remember any of the woman, but they like the woman
who showed up for the most classes about more than
the woman that didn't show up for any And so
what that tells us is that when you first joined
this group, it's going to be awkward. You're not gonna trust,
You're gonna feel weary as refect has not set in.
But as you stay in this group for two to
three months, those feelings are going to change. They're gonna
(34:06):
like you more, You're going to like them more. Right.
I also suggest when you join that group, you're overcoming
something called overt avoidance, which is our tendency to not
show up because we're scared. But you also have to
overcome covert avoidance, which is our tendency to show up
physically but check out mentally. So I want to make
sure that when you get to that group, you're not
just on your phone, that you are actually introducing yourself
(34:29):
and saying, Hey, I'm Marissa, it's great to meet you.
How have you liked this hiking group so far? Remember,
you're assuming people like you here, and then lastly, generating
exclusivity with someone in the group, finding someone in the
group who you like, asking them to hang out outside
of the group so you have particular memories and experiences
with that person that you don't share with the rest
(34:50):
of the group. That is what builds friendship. Yeah, I
like to. I mean, I actually have made a lot
of new friends in my adulthood. Um. And I've found
also that the older I get, I'm much bolder about
pursuing friendships than I was when I was young. You know.
Now I'm just like I got nothing to lose, you
know what I mean? Like what And I also find
(35:11):
that what you said before earlier, they people are more receptive.
Like you think you're going to reach out and they're
gonna be like, what is this fucking stalker doing, you know,
but yet they're like, I would love to go for
a walk, you know. I love to like I'm always
surprised when I'm received that way, you know, because you're
you're always, you know, kind of your fourth grade self,
(35:32):
no matter how old you are, when you're sort of
reaching out and making a friend and it's time for
a short break. Welcome back to go ask Alli. You
talk about intentional generosity, which is something that I've tried
(35:56):
to always feed and water in myself. Um, and one
kind of friend I like to be is a creative friend.
So I make my own sort of holiday cards. I
love to bake people's birthday cakes. I love. I have
found that it has given me immense pleasure to be
an intentional, intentionally generous friend. I guess you would phrase
(36:19):
it that is really lovely. And um, I think what
we're really getting at here is something called the theory
of inferred attraction, which is the idea that people like
people that they think like them. So anything that you
do that shows people I care about you, You matter
to me, You're important. Those are going to generate friendship.
(36:40):
And I think for me when I was younger, I
have this misconception that to make friends I have to
be entertaining. I have to be insightful, I have to
say something funny all the time, right, And in fact,
people report this entertaining piece being the least important value
they look for in friendship. You, I'm screwed. Well, you
(37:00):
do do the most important thing, which is making people
feel like they matter, especial people want. It's called ego support.
And you know, I think humor can be a way
into that right of making people feel like they matter.
And so the more I think when we feel really
insecure about belonging, we get into this place that's a
little bit self centered because we're in pain. I think
pain is inherently self centered. We don't have the resources
(37:22):
to think of other other people. Where we think have
they reached out to me? Have they welcomed me? Have
they initiated with me? Whereas people who are really good
at friendship, they think a lot more about what they
have they done for others? Have I made them feel welcome?
Have I initiated with them? Have I made them feel
cared for? Right? And they don't expect that people are
going to invest in them if they see themselves aren't
(37:45):
haven't been accountable for that same level investment. So I
think sometimes we need to gently, kindly empathically check ourselves. Right,
if our friendships aren't working out? What have I done
to make other people feel loved and valued? Right? Rather
than what have people done for me to make me
feel loved and value? Because it starts with I'm making
them feel loved and then it tends to be a
(38:06):
sort of more reciprocal cycle. How do you feel about
the term best friend? Like, when you're young, it it's territorial,
and but when you get older, I've noticed that women
my age have a very strong reaction to the term
best friend. You know, I think we need quality, deep
intimate connections. Whether that has to include the label best
(38:27):
friend or not. I don't think it's completely necessary, but
I will say the value of it is that friendship
is so freaking ambiguous. We don't know what we can
expect from our friends. We don't know how invested they
are with us. There's no formal ceremony right, set of
expectations that come with being a friend, and friend can
be anywhere from someone who's nearly an acquaintance that you
met for coffee once. I mean, Facebook further diluted our
(38:50):
perception of what it means to be a friend. And
so we're all working from such different definitions, which means
we all have different expectations from each other that come
out of these different definite and those different expectations is
what part of what can create problems in friendship. Right,
So what I like about best Friend is that it
clarifies some of those expectations. It says, Okay, we are
(39:12):
going to make each other a priority. Maybe we are
gonna gauge in mutual support seeking. When I have a need,
I know I can feel comfortable reaching out to you.
That allows us to kind of calibrate our expectations of
each other a little bit. Yeah, I think that. Yeah,
I also think um. I did this interpersonal exercise and
what was kind of interesting about it was to see
(39:33):
how much time we give the toxic people as compared
to a lot of the people that are so close
to us. Wow, there's as much air time for these
people that make me feel bad as this circle around me,
and it it actually seeing it visually made me kind
of readjust you know, my my own landscape of friendship
(39:54):
in general. Yeah, I think two things in relation to that.
I don't know which is often kind of passive in friendships,
not necessarily discerning. Um. You know, this is what I've
realized to having a large network of friends, I begin
to ask myself, who do I want to invest in
more deeply? Right, it can't be that whoever reaches out
to me I'm going to go along with, because then
I'm not able to cultivate and curate my friendships in
(40:17):
the ways that I want. Right, And so that I
think is very often occurrence that we hang out with
people who it's easiest to rather than who we want
to go deeper with. Um. And so that requires some discernment.
But I also say for anxiously attached people, there are
many different stress mechanisms that we might use fight flight, freeze,
(40:38):
but also fawn. Fawn is if someone is threatening to me,
I try to get them to like me, and anxiously
attached people tend to experience this more so. They actually
are attracted to people that are less engaged with them,
that like them less because oh this triggers my fond response.
So now I'm going to engage more and try to
(41:00):
hang out with them more and try to get them
to like me right. And that's part of the template
of the anxiously attached that I am going to have
to earn love right. Anxiously attached people can sometimes feel
like someone just likes me. What do they know? What
do they know? This is weird? You know, it's suspicious
almost right, Whereas securely attached people, if someone makes them
feel bad, they walk away instead of working harder. So
(41:23):
our attachment style could play into that as well. I mean,
I wonder if sometimes it's very simplistic, But one thing
I say to my daughters when it comes to friendship
is find the people that make you feel good. M exactly. Yes.
I also think that when I'm I want to not
(41:44):
go to assisted living. I actually want to get a
house and live with my girlfriends because I think I'll
be happier. I truly believe this. I'll be happier and
I'll live longer if I already create a community um
of people that make me feel good. Now, I love that,
(42:04):
and I just love thinking more creatively about the potential
of friendship. There's been more talk about people who physically
in gen z choosing friends as life partners, right, and um,
just being a lot more creative around what we think
friendship can do. Because, aside from sex, most of the
things that you might look for from a spouse you
can also look for from a friend. There's really no
(42:25):
reason not to, aside from like a lack of creativity. Right,
So what sort of life do you want to live?
What sort of connections do you want to have? What
feels good for you rather than what is the script
for how we are supposed to live? Right, I think
that is just going to fundamentally allow for our needs
to be met and for us to feel so much better.
And so I think that just requires us to see
(42:45):
friendship so much more expansively and and richly than how
we have historically seen it. Yes, and I inspiration is
one of my criteria for friendship. And so I guess
we're going to be friends, Merissa, because you really inspired
me on this podcast. Thank you so, Marissa. In the
(43:09):
spirit of friendship, it is now your turn to ask
me a question about anything. I love this to the
tables him turn. Yeah, you know, also a psychologists I'm
always wanted to ask questions. You could listen, you can
go deep if you want. I'm ready, thank you. I
am wondering what's something that you learned about friendship that
(43:29):
you didn't understand ten years ago. I ten years ago,
I didn't understand my worth in a friendship, meaning I
I always felt so lucky that this person was my friend,
and I didn't look at it like, well, they're lucky
that I'm their friend, you know what I mean. I
(43:50):
didn't see it as an equal relationship. Um, And I
think it caused me a lot of pain, and I
think it caused me to make bad decisions about who
I spent my time with and who I did all
those creative things for. Because I find in friendship when
(44:12):
you are one of my quote unquote people, I am
an endless well of love. I love to do things
for my friends. It makes me so happy the way
it does, you know, when I do things for my
daughters and so they because some of them became so
one sided that I had to move away from them,
(44:36):
And it was usually somebody else saying like, why are
you friends with that person? They don't treat you well,
they don't, they don't call you on your birthday, you know,
And so I started to realize, oh wait a second,
where am I in all this? Whereas now I'm very
good at that. And I also reach out to new
friendships the way we talked about with somebody that I
(44:58):
can already tell through just through experience and living life. Oh,
this is a person I can tell who will be
reciprocal and open and vulnerable with me. I love that, Ali,
I'm so proud of you. I don't know if I
can ask questions, but you can. I mean, as he'll
(45:19):
turn into a therapy at this session and he'll be like,
oh my god, Okay, what a quick question. Yes psychologists, Yes, yes,
like having sense of self worth so important for our
friendships because we have to take risks in friendship, like
reaching out to someone. Right. If we don't feel worthy,
we're not going to want to take those risks because
we think people don't want to hear from us. Right.
My follow up question is how did you develop that
(45:42):
sense of worth in yourself? How did I develop the
sense of worth? I think it was a few things.
I think it was almost like sexual relationships in the past,
you know, of being heard a bunch of times of
trying different types of people. I think the same can
be said about friendship. There are certain types of people
(46:03):
that I just could innately like just feel on a
visceral level. Oh, I know what type of person that is,
and I sort of get a sense of how they
are as a friend. I also think that there are
certain things that I am attracted to and friends. There's
a bunch of things that I learned, and I think
(46:25):
I learned it by befriending all different types of people.
And I feel like now in my fifties, I had
the greatest group of female friends, more so than I
did when I was forty year thirty like, and a
few of them are are from many many years that
we just sort of live life together, I guess, as
(46:45):
the kids call it, ride or die, and I still
seek new friends out. Yeah, I really like your answer, because, um,
we develop our sense of self not in isolation from people,
but when we experience loving people. That are if we
begin to feel more worthy. Right. Oh, absolutely, absolutely, Okay
asked that with the foul up questions. Though I could
(47:07):
ask more, I know you could, I'd be I'd be
in therapy for the next four days. Thank you so much.
This was so Your book is so great and insightful,
and I did get two copies for my daughters, and
I think everyone should read it because I think we
tend to focus more on the sexual relationships more than
our romantic friendships. And they exactly and they are like
(47:30):
oxygen and food and water. We need them. So thank
you so much, thank you so much, thank you for
listening to go ask Ali now Dr Marissa Franco's book Platonic,
How the Science of Attachment can help you make and
keep friends. I gave you but a sliver of the
(47:50):
book that it is so full of interesting insights and information.
So do yourself a favor and get the book. Because
my producer Brook would not let me do a four
hour podcast, but I could have now. If you would
like to follow Dr Marissa, she is on Instagram at
Dr Marissa g Franco and her website Dr Marissa g
(48:12):
Franco dot com, and you can take a quiz to
assess your strengths and weaknesses as a friend. If you'd
like more info on what you heard in this episode,
check out our show notes and be sure to subscribe,
rate and review the podcast, and follow me on Instagram
at the Real Ali wentworth Now. If you'd like to
ask me a question or suggest a guest or a
topic to dig into, I'd love to hear from you,
(48:32):
and there's a bunch of ways you can do it.
You can call or text me up three to three
three six four six three six, or you can email
a voice memo right from your phone to Go Ask
Glli podcast at gmail dot com. And if you leave
a question, you just might hear it. I'm go Ask Alli. Yeah,
(48:56):
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