August 31, 2019 • 57 mins
What's the scientific function of best friendship? Cristen and Caroline put besties and bromances under the microscope to discover the pros and cons of how these influential relationships shape our lives.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and welcome to stuff I've never
told to your production of I Heart Radios how stuff works.
For today's classic, I wanted to bring one back that's
been really on my mind lately, and that is the
science of having a BFF. Where I was I used
(00:28):
to call m Biffle's best friends for life because I
have a group of I have a group of cooer
friends that we've been friends, some of us since we
were four years old, um, but like high school, middle school,
and we see each other a couple of times a year,
and it's always so easy. It's like putting on a
comforting sweater or something. And as I've been going through
the death of my father, I've realized how much friendship
(00:53):
has meant to me, and how much the support of
my friends has meant to me, and them just being
there and knowing who I am and kind of being
willing to sit with me or have me tell them
just the most ridiculous stories about about my family. Um
it's it's meant the world. And I'm every day like,
(01:15):
how did I look out in this friendship lottery? UM?
So I wanted to share this classic episode with you
about the science of best Friends. Please enjoy. Welcome to
Stuff Mob Never Told You from how stupp works dot com. Hello,
(01:40):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline and I'm Kristin,
and in honor of International Friendship Day, which is August three,
Kristin and I are looking at the science of friendship,
what benefits friendship has for you, what does it mean
to have a BFF, what will that BFF bring to
your life, and how the role of friendship has sort
(02:01):
of changed and evolved over the centuries, because even the
Greeks used to talk quite a bit about friendship and
their philosophy. Yeah, obviously, friendship is something that goes back
throughout human history, and Aristotle had a well known philosophy
on the different types of love, one of which is philia,
(02:22):
which is affectionate regard or friendly feeling and our deepest
and closest friendships probably also intersect with the idea of
a goopa, which is love for humankind, although do you
think that it crosses ever into arrows? Probably could the
passionate love, Yeah, philia with benefits. Yeah, Well, people often
(02:44):
talk about how they marry their best friends, so those
Venn diagrams can often intersect. Yeah, that's right. And it's interesting,
I mean, like not to get off on a tangent,
but it's interesting that, like, even the idea of quote
unquote marrying your best friend is relative kind of recent development.
I mean, marriage for centuries was just sort of an
economic agreement right there. There wasn't this idea that, oh,
(03:07):
you marry someone that you would like to live with
for the rest of your life. It would be oh, no,
someone will be selected for you that will benefit Yeah.
I mean, because it's fine, We're all going to die
at thirty two, our children will be apprenticed out. It's fine.
Nobody has to like each other. Yeah, and who cares anyway,
because no one has Facebook to know what each other
is up to or how happy everyone is or is not.
(03:29):
That's right, and Aristotle did definitely did not have Facebook.
And author Massimo Pigliucci, who who wrote a book about
the philosophy of friendship, talks about Aristotle's philosophy and his
theories that basically friends, He thought that friends sort of
had this mirroring role in each other's lives. They could
sort of hold a mirror up to each other to
(03:51):
help them improve personally, help each other improve and that
they would help each other achieve this thing called you
deemonia hopefully I'm pronouncing that right, which is often translated
now as happiness, maybe literally in the Greek it meant
having a good demon, so you would help each other
achieve that that thing you were chasing, that elusive happiness,
(04:14):
that had that that good demon inside of you. I
like that. I just thought I was hungry, But apparently
it's happiness. It's just your happy demon inside of you
asking for a sandwich. Um. But if we move into
more contemporary times and look at how the nature of
friendship has changed, it's interesting that more of that aerros
(04:39):
type of passionate love has shifted from the person who
would have been like our our closest friend and confidante
to these days, more commonly to a spouse or a
long term partner, because, for instance, if you look back
in the Victorian era at the closest of female friendships,
(05:02):
and if you read letters that women wrote to each other,
and even that men wrote to each other during this time,
they were so effusive and just almost passionate in their
love for the other person. Yeah, because that was okay,
that was okay. There was no there was nothing in
society really that was dictating that it was weird to
(05:25):
be like really like passionately in like with your friends,
especially like in terms of when we think of male
friendships background this time and it being okay to be
physically affectionate. Yeah, if you look, for instance, at Abraham
Lincoln and his best friend Joshua Speed, they shared a
tiny bed for four years while they were living together,
(05:48):
obviously in their bachelor days, and that was no big deal.
I mean, some people today think, oh, well, that must
mean that Lincoln must have been doing something with Joshua Speed.
But actually, that kind of physical intimacy that you also
see reflected in photos of male friends at the time,
where they might be holding hands or touching uh one
(06:09):
person's shoulders, or even in sort of a side hug,
a platonic side hug, it wasn't so strange at the time.
And some think that the Industrial Revolution the rise of
organized sports and outdoor activities led to that breakdown in
particular of male platonic intimacy, and for women, the idea
(06:35):
of having that closer, more emotional, intimate best friendship was
a little bit more of a normalized idea because there's
been that longstanding idea of women just being the nurturing,
emotive sex. But even still, when you get to the
nineteen twenties, for both men and women, it wasn't so
(06:58):
okay to be as passionately in friend love with your
BFF because this was around the time when you have
the rise of homophobia. Yeah, and so when you have
something to be afraid of, you have to actively show
that you are not that thing, and in this case
it was it was the rise of the idea of
(07:18):
what is manly and masculine and what is female and feminine,
and homophobia was really tied up in that, and so
the idea of having that like physically affectionate close relationship
whether you're a man or a woman, was just not
hunky dory anymore. Well, and also with the industrial revolution,
you have with that the rise of the companion it
(07:40):
in love marriage that we think of today, And so
that's when you start to see that kind of emotion
and closeness transposed from the best friendship into the marriage.
And a lot of parents became concerned at this time,
particularly for their daughters, that if they seem too close
to their best friend, than they weren't going to make
(08:02):
a good wife. You know, they could sort of practice,
you know, being uh compassionate and kind to someone else.
But there was definitely uh, this line that was drawn
and was perpetuated by psychoanalysts in the nineteen twenties who
warned about the quote perversions of the libido that were
(08:23):
the tendencies of teenage girls to fix their affections on
members of the same sex. I mean, that's silly, right,
I mean, like as far as being concerned about young
girls spending a lot of time together, yeah, well, and
I would assume to the penalties for that were it
would be much harsher for men at the time, because
(08:44):
I feel like now maybe we're just not freaking out
as much. But for instance, it's so much more common,
it seems like for groups of girls to get together
and have slumber parties and play with each other's hair
and do each other's makeup and that kind of stuff
that involves lots of physicality, whereas boys friendship physicality is
(09:04):
often more of the rough and tumble play. There's not
that same kind of intimacy, right, They're probably not sharing
a bed like Abraham Lincoln and Joshua Speed. Yeah, exactly. Well,
because they have to prove that they're masculine, and so
you can't have that intimacy. But I mean, speaking of
intimacy and things that are good for you, friendship has
(09:24):
a ton of health benefits. And these health benefits have
been asserted over and over again forever, and you're probably
familiar with a lot of them, including the psychological ones
that uh Mayo pointed out. They include increasing your sense
of belonging in purpose, boosting your happiness and reducing stress,
helping to improve your self confidence and self worth, help
you cope with traumas, and also encouraging you to change
(09:48):
or avoid unhealthy lifestyle habits. These are all kind of
hallmarks psychological benefits of close friendships. Well, and that last
point to that the Mayo Clinic noted, encouraging you to
change or avoid your unhealthy lifestyle happens. Really hearkens back
to that Greek idea of the good friend helping you
find your your good demon inside of you. Yeah, you're
(10:12):
a good demon, whether that's just goodness or margarita. Yeah,
so whatever, But you know, all of that well being,
once you've achieved all that well being, that definitely leads
to a lot of potential physical benefits, things like better
brain health. Harvard researchers back in two thousand and eight
found that strong social ties could actually promote brain health
as we age, and so you know, that's why it's
(10:34):
even critical when we talk about like aging populations and
older people being alone and how awful that is. The
stronger your social network, the better you'll be as far
as emotional health and brain health. And the lower stress
levels associated with having close and healthy friendships also leads
to us being less likely to get colds. I mean,
(10:57):
this is just like one example of how it does
improve our overall health. Yeah, and studies have also pointed
out that this kind of social support can lower blood pressure,
protect against dementia, and reduce the risk of depression. So
it's apparently pretty important to have friends, you guys, and
all in all, this adds up to the possibility that
we might live longer as one byproduct of having friendships.
(11:22):
There was a two thousand five study published in the
Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health which tracked a group
of Australians over ten years, and they found that those
with a large circle of friends were twenty two percent
less likely to die during the study period than those
with fewer friends. And I'm sure there are other issues
(11:44):
in there as well, yes, but I mean that is
that's that's impressive. Is nothing to to sneeze and when
you look at women in particular, um friendship also has
in a fact on women who are battling breast cancer,
as a study in two thousand six in the Journal
(12:05):
of Clinical Oncology showed um. They did a study of
nearly three thousand nurses who had breast cancer and found
that the women without close friends were four times as
likely to die from breast cancer as women with ten
or more friends. And I think it's worth noting that
proximity and the amount of contact with the friend or
(12:25):
friends was not associated with survival. It was just the
fact that you have friends who love you in your
life that was the protective factor. Having a spouse, however,
was not associated with survival rates. It's all about the
friends well, and men can also benefit from friendships as well.
This was a study published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine
(12:47):
which looked at a group of Swedish men over six
years and found that those with solid friendships more than
an attachment to one person you know, just having the
spouse perhaps in the hall, appeared to affect the risk
of heart attack and fatal coronary disease in a positive way,
probably lowered the chance of that happening. Now, again, these
(13:10):
are kinds of correlation versus causation associations to make, but nonetheless,
the evidence is pretty strong that all in all, healthy
friendships are healthy for us. However, and this is something
probably all moms did, in fact tell us many times
when we were growing up. Not so healthy friendships can
(13:34):
negatively impact us. Sure, yeah, it totally makes sense. If
your close friends are boozing it up or smoking or
doing whatever, then you are also more likely to do that,
especially if you have a strong desire to fit in. Um.
There was a study back in in basic and applied
social psychology that found that when you perceive a greater
(14:00):
acohol use among your best friends, that predicts in you
higher levels of willingness to consume alcohol. So basically, if
it's the norm in your brain, whether it's true or not,
if the norm in your brain is that your friends
are drinking and smoking and doing whatever, you were more
likely to abuse those substances yourself. Yeah, and there was
(14:22):
a recent study that came out in the British Medical
Journal which found that friends steer our decisions in when
we were school age more so than parents, and remembering
when I was fourteen years old, that is not a
surprising finding at all because friends are so much cooler
than parents at that time anyway. But they found that specifically,
(14:44):
the impact of having a smoker as a close friend
during adolescence is greater than that of having a smoking
parent or siblings when it comes to predicting whether you
shall smoke in adulthood, not just whether you're going to
be out in the school yard smoking some smokes that
you stole from some cigarette stubs you found on the ground,
(15:06):
some misty stubs that you snagged. And another factor that
comes into play is also having cross sex friendships among adolescents.
This was a study in two thousand six in the
Journal of Psychology looking at kids in urban settings in six,
seventh and eighth grades. So not only did they find
that developing cross sex friendships is more likely to lead
(15:29):
to or be related to popularity, but they also found
a lot of stuff regarding smoking and drinking. Having these
cross sex friendships is also linked to the perception among
seventh graders that the best friends attitudes about smoking and
drinking are less negative. It's also linked to higher levels
of cigarette use among sixth and eighth graders, in addition
(15:52):
to more alcohol use among six seventh and eighth graders.
So does that mean then that our parents were right
when you know they warned us like, don't hang out
with old Johnny who smoking those he smoked cigarette butts
from Virginia slims. He will turn out like he's a
bad apple. I well, I think I think it's interesting,
(16:14):
and there's probably a lot more details that you could
look into, or that maybe are actually in the full
study if we were to read the full study. But
I think it's interesting to look at cross sex friendships
in this very impressionable age when your hormones are raging
and you're really insecure. Everybody's really insecure and doesn't know
what's going on in life, um, and how that's linked
to popularity and then what does it mean to be popular?
(16:35):
And then you're thinking about the norms of like, oh well,
if Johnny and Susie are smoking, then that's cool and
I can do it. And there's a lot wrapped up
in there that to me, just sets off alarm bells
of the terror of being a parent because you have
to take in all of those different variables when talking
to little Suz about how to manage those kinds of
(16:58):
peer pressures. Yeah, but we there's even more on cross
sex friendships that we'll get into in a minute. But
let's talk about sort of beyond just the physical and
emotional and mental effects of friendship. Let's talk about the
science of friendship because there have been some really interesting
studies in the past couple of years, including one that
um took my Space into account and side note, the
(17:20):
study came out in two thousand eleven, which was seemed
surprisingly recent considering that they were using my Space data. Yeah,
I actually double check that date. I was like, that's
got to be like two thousand one, not two thousand eleven.
But it was this just a study that Tom conducted. Yeah, seriously,
everybody's top friend. But so the study was talking about
(17:40):
this thing called cognitive alliances, and they used the my
Space Top ten Friends system. If any of you were
on my Space, you remember how fraughth that was, Like,
you know, I broke up with him and so I'm
moving him out of my top friends are like, oh,
we met and she's cool, so I'm gonna put her
in my top friends. Yeah. I remember when I was
setting up my MySpace account so long ago now, and
(18:04):
how it was just a terrifying experience to you know,
so carefully select who would be in that top ten
to make you look as good, and by you, I
mean me look as good as possible. I'm so glad
that went away. I'm yeah, I we don't. We don't
need extra bad feeling stuff like that. And looking at
(18:26):
these top ten friends, researchers found support for their alliance hypothesis,
which basically held that human friendship is caused by cognitive
systems that function to create alliances for potential disputes. So like,
I guess your top ten friends would function as your
you know, your gang of Ruffians in case the neighboring
(18:46):
gang of Ruffians on my Space came up and tried
to beat you up. But they also found that because
an allies support can be undermined by a stronger outside relationship,
the alliance model predicts that people will prefer partners who
ranked them above other friends. So I'll like you more
if you like me more. So this whole idea is
that we form friendships and strong friendships as human humans
(19:11):
as sort of a status power grab to ensure that
if people we don't know with threatening status has come along,
then we have a leg to stand on. Yeah, kind
of that. We just have these mental and emotional alliances
that we form that becomes stronger the more the other
person shows that were valued. That takes out all of
(19:34):
the romance of friendships for me. Don't worry. It gets
even weirder. I thought it was so that you could
trade those necklaces that are the broken hearts. You get
one half and I get the other. Yeah. Well, so
there's this there's this really interesting New York Times article
a couple of years ago UM talking to scientists Nicholas
(19:56):
Kristakis and James Fowler, who, along with coree searcher Jamie Suttle,
have done a lot of studying up on friendship networks,
how and why we form these connections, and how health
related risks and benefits end up being kind of transmitted
from person to person or even skipping a person and
going on to somebody else. And they use the National
(20:18):
Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and this thing called the
Framingham Heart Study, which followed people in Framingham, Massachusetts for
several generations to see how their personal connections and interactions
affected their health. Yeah, and and Framingham. The Framingham Heart
Study is a fascinating one because it's almost this ideal
(20:38):
study population because so many people who grew up in
Framingham stayed in Framingham, so it gives them this they
can sort of isolate environmental variables and toy around with
all of that. And uh, these researchers found some really
compelling evidence for how good and bad behaviors spread through
(21:03):
our social networks, from both our best friendships all the
way to acquaintances or even people we've never met before. Yeah,
and they kind of treated it like a virus. Things
like quitting smoking, losing weight, and being happy. Those are
obviously good attributes, and they watched how these things could
spread or crop up versus negative habits like picking up smoking,
(21:23):
gaining weight, and becoming less happy. So if if you're
looking just at the weight thing, they found that obesity
broke out in clusters, and a lot of scientists who
countered this said, well, it's probably environmental. Maybe more fast
food restaurants opened, etcetera. Etcetera, etcetera. But they found out
that it didn't really relate at all to something like
a McDonald's opening in the neighborhood. They found that even
(21:45):
if a friend in that group moved away and gained weight,
her social circle back home was gaining weight too, and
that the risk of obesity increased even if a friend
of a friend of a friend gain weight. What is
going on with that? Yeah, that kind of pattern was
so consistent that these researchers termed it the three degrees
(22:07):
of influence that what you were doing can have affect,
you know, to your friends of friends of friends, and
vice versa. Yeah. Another theory that was discounted was this
(22:32):
thing called home a Philly, which is basically like associates
with like. But again, that's kind of discounted by the
fact that Susie can move away to a different state
and gain weight and her friends back home are still
gaining weight. But some of the things they looked at
among these friend groups are maybe there's some subconscious social
signaling at work. As our friends become heavier, we change
(22:53):
our perception of what obese looks like, and therefore give
ourselves permission to gain a little weight. Because maybe it's
not so bad, or if we don't gain weight, maybe
we just simply become more accepting of other people in
our social circles who do so maybe they don't feel
as bad about watching what they eat well, And this
jumped out to spouses tend to have less of an
(23:14):
effect on us, particularly in this area of weight gain
that they looked at. They have less of an effect
than close friends do because our ideas about weight in
particular are more influenced by people of the same sex,
which makes sense because you know, we're looking to, you know,
people who are more We're looking at essentially like the
beauty standards of our group. Absolutely, and they found the
(23:38):
degree of friendship matters. So this is sort of like
what we're talking about with these cognitive alliances. A second ago.
If Steve likes Peter more than Peter likes Steve, Steve
will gain weight when Peter does. He'll be influenced by
Peter's weight gain, But Peter's weight won't be influenced by
Steve's because he doesn't whatevery verb you want to use
(23:59):
value Steve much noticed Steve as much care about Steve
as much. But if there's a mutual degree of friendship,
the weight effect is significant. Poor Steve, what did he
do wrong? And that sounds a lot like that alliance
hypothesis that you just mentioned from that MySpace study, right exactly,
So how you view your friends and how they view
(24:22):
you beyond just like the actual closeness factor, what really exists,
like how you view your friendship matters too, I guess.
But if we go back to Aristotle talking about mirroring,
you know, he said that friends hold a mirror up
to you to help you achieve your happiness, we should
bring up mirror neurons because Christakis, Fowler, and Settle also
(24:43):
talked about mirror neurons and happiness simply the fact that
the more happy people you're exposed to on your in
your day to day life or in your social network,
the more often your spirits are lifted. And so it's
the kind of thing like I feel like we've seen
marketing campaigns and advertising campaigns that are kind of based
on the side you a where if one person does
something nice for you and then you do something nice
(25:04):
for the next person, suddenly the whole network is happier
and more polite. Um, And so it's sort of that
idea of like mirror neurons, as as you smile at someone,
they might smile at someone else. And soon like all
of our friends are smiling at each other and they
don't know why. Yeah, And anecdotally, all of this kind
of the ripple effect of friendship ring so true. Thinking
(25:25):
about the patterns of my friends and even broader social
networks as I have moved through my twenties and now
I'm approaching my thirties, and just how our socializing habits
have changed to center more around like domestic activities. We
aren't going out so much. We're doing more things like
(25:47):
going on a day hike rather than going on a
night bar crawl. And it's like as soon as one
person or one couple started doing that, than someone else
took note and they started doing it. And then you
see their picture is on Facebook and you're like, well,
maybe I needed And it's like we all have collectively
become just in general, like less wild. And I think
(26:10):
it has a lot to do not so much with like,
oh we're learning thirty, we must be boring, But I
think it's probably a lot of this, like the epidemic
of friendship essentially, Yeah, like what you perceived the norm
to be. Yeah, I want to do what Peter is
doing because Peter apparently is the cool guy. Actually want
to be Peter. But we'll watch out. If Peter has
(26:31):
the d r D two gene, well, then you better
watch out because another thing that Christakis and Fowler found
was that there is a genetic component to friendship, and
this obviously needs a lot more research, but one thing
that they found their their their preliminary findings are that
friendship can be influenced by certain genes, and the gene
d r D two, which I kept in my mind saying,
(26:52):
are two D two influences drinking behavior. People with this
gene are not only susceptible to certain behaviors, including drinking
and alcoholism, but are susceptible to making friends with those
exact same behaviors. So there's an argument for like with
like so I party all the time. I want to
be friends with people who party all the time. But
now there might be a genetic component behind that as well.
(27:14):
It's your R two D two jeans all coming together.
This is not the droid I'm looking for. You need
to see three. That's right, um. But they also found
a second gene that showed that people are attracted to
their opposite opposites when it comes to other certain behaviors.
So there's a lot of I think research that still
needs to be done there, But the fact that you
(27:36):
might be attracted to certain people, whether romantically or on
a friendship level, because of genetics, that's really interesting. Well,
it's one of the things I was reading about was
talking about how and we hear about this a lot
more in terms of our romantic attractions, how we tend
to subconsciously seek out partners who are more genetically diverse
(27:58):
so that it will give our offspring a better chance
of survival, whereas with friends, we seek out people subconsciously
who are more like genetically similar because we want to
tend and befriends. That's right, especially for ladies. Yeah, and
speaking of which, we have some gender differences to get
into in our friendship patterns. And also talk about how
(28:21):
making friends changes over our individual life terms, because as
I'm sure a number of our listeners who are maybe
heading into their thirties and beyond can attest making friends
as you get older changes it can be a bit
more challenging for a number of reasons that we will
get into okay, but if we look at gender stuff first. Um.
(28:45):
I thought that the search for numbers on around this
topic was interesting in and of itself because there's a
lot of studies looking at at how many friends the
average man has, but not so many specific numbers for women.
And I'm wondering if that's not because people just assume
that women have so many more friends and that men
don't make close relationships, and so that's more interesting and
(29:07):
they want to study that more. But if you look
at men's friends in particular. This is from Men's Health Survey,
so keep that in mind. But they found that the
average guy has four point eight close friends whom he
keeps in contact with, primarily through text, and guys said
they had a best friend of those who had known
(29:30):
him since high school. Yeah, and I do think that
you're right that there is so much of an assumption
that women just make friends all the time and that
we will have a bestie at all points during our life,
although that bestie might change. That there's more focus on, well,
what of men, because there's been a lot more research
(29:51):
into the dynamics of female friendships. But I think it's
more because it's a given, so there's not as much
attention to tallying up. We'll just how many friends does
a woman have? Well, yeah, because she's always tending and befriending,
so we don't have to really worry about her. This
is this is something that we've talked about before a
lot on the podcast. We talked about it in our
(30:12):
female Friendships episode a while ago. But it's the fact
that women tend to respond to stress with this huge
flood of brain chemicals that cause us to make and
maintain friendships with other women in particular. Yeah, this Landmark
study found that when we hang out with our lady friends,
(30:32):
when we go out for sex in the city style
brunches every every weekend somehow, uh, it actually releases the
bonding chemical oxytocin in our brain, and so we feel
tended and befriended. And that is sort of the more
female analog to the fight or flight response, right, and
(30:54):
just that women, when women get stressed, our oxytocin makes
us go towards one another, whereas men's testosterone testosterone makes
them go the other way. And female brains seem to
really like this tending and befriending because for the research
has found that once we reach out to our friends,
we get a little shot of oxytocin in our brain.
(31:16):
The more that we do it, the more oxytocin our
brain's release. So we're just like hugging all the time,
Like I can't stop, I'm just hugging my friends all
the time. Well, it's true, there is a certain kind
of crisis management that a very best friend can offer
that no one else can offer, even say a spouse
(31:38):
or a girlfriend or a boyfriend or a family member. Yeah,
I mean that that's what's really jumped out to me.
That's so interesting in all of these various studies that
it's like, Nope, it's friendship. It's those close platonic friendships
that really save you and protect you. Well, And I
wonder if it is that oxytocin connection that explains something
(31:58):
that's called the Steel Magnolia's effect, which is this study
finding that women tend to rate their female best friends
more highly than guys rate their guy friendships. Like we
we seem to value that even more. Or maybe it
might also be like a thing of self reporting where
(32:19):
maybe we simply gush more about our girlfriends and guys
gush about their guy friends, because I never want to
contend that male friendships are are no less strong and important. Um,
but but it is interesting and it's also yes called
the steel magnolia's effect. Well, I think that ties in
with a study, a two thousand study that was published
(32:41):
in the journal Adolescents where they basically put boy friends
and girl friends in rooms together and let them kind
of hang out in chit chat and kind of looked
at the way that the two boys talked to each
other versus the two girls and what they talked about.
And boys ended up rating their relationships with best friends
are in conflict than did girls. But what's interesting about
(33:04):
that is it's not that there's not conflict, it's they
the researchers were saying that, like the guys would just
like hash it out, like what's your problem, here's my problem.
More confrontational. Girls are less likely to be as confrontational
to one another and to maybe talk about Betty Sue
behind her back Betty Sue, but I know Betty Sue
and Peter like God. So anyway, but girls rated lower
(33:26):
in withdrawal and higher in communication skills and support validation
than boys. So girls are better at talking about things,
although sometimes that talking happens behind the back. Um. Just
one side note on girl code versus guy code. There
has been some other research which has suggested that girls,
(33:49):
especially like adolescent girls, tend to hold their besties to
hire girl code standards than guys do for their guy friendships.
And I think it's partially because of the fact that
maybe boys tend to be a little bit more confrontational
to each other than girls do, because conflict resolution within
(34:10):
you know, thirteen year old girl friendships can be challenging
at times. Yeah, well, so I promised you that we
would talk about cross sex friendships again, and here it is. Uh,
we're still talking about adolescence, some boys and girls here
and there was a two thousand eight study in the
Journal of Youth Adolescence that looked at gender age, cross
(34:35):
sex friendships and what that means regarding antisocial behavior. I
read the study and I was like, oh God, I
had a lot of good guy friends in high school. Lord. Anyway,
So here it is. They found that boys who had
only same sex best friends and girls who had other
sex best friends endorsed higher rates of anti social behavior.
(34:59):
Having they're sex best friends predicted anti social behavior from
six to seventh grade and eight to eleventh grade, especially
for girls. So what does that mean then, I mean,
are they basically saying that maybe girls who are getting
along better with guys just don't get along as well
with girls, and so they're calling it anti social behavior.
(35:21):
I don't know, but I wonder if it ties back
to the other cross sex friendship study, which talked about popularity.
It talked about choosing bad behaviors and things like smoking
and drinking, and the fact that girls who had more
cross sex friendships were more likely to engage in this
behavior or think it was normal. So that's that's an
interesting finder. Yeah, I mean I don't think. I don't know.
(35:43):
It sounds the the language that it uses sounds almost
so alarmous because we hear anti social like oh no.
But I think in this case, antisocial means something a
little gentler than the way it sounds. I think it
means like maybe just things that go against the norm. Well,
as we move out of adolescence and into adulthood. Research
has also suggested that our patterns of cross sex friendships
(36:10):
also change, and essentially, women like move away from having
a best guy friend, usually in heterosexual relationships, that would
be the husband, and it moves away from them to
another female as we get older. Yeah, usually the daughter.
I am a perfect example of this. Like, So, this
(36:31):
study study looked at basically phone records who were people
calling and for several years the woman was calling a
man all the time, and then slowly that shifted to
be a woman, typically the daughter. So, my mom calls
me all the time, you know, like I can't access
my e books? Well did you buy them? I don't know. Well, okay,
(36:51):
call Peach mac Um, called Betty, Sue or Peter Mom.
I'm busy. Maybe they can deal with it, since Peter
is so cool. Um. But what they found was that
men show a more consistent pattern of being linked to
a female best friend their entire lives, which I think,
judging by the fact that they qualified the male best
(37:11):
friend as someone who became the husband typically, this just
sounds like. This just sounds like whereas the wife starts
calling the daughter instead of the husband, the husband keeps
calling the wife, which I think is also a pattern
that holds true in my family. My my mother calls
me all the time. My father calls my mother. Yeah,
so I think that's all that is well, and that
(37:31):
brings up then how our pattern of making friends changes
as we age and if we're sort of backing out
of the gendered lens and looking just at age. Um.
There was a two thousand eight study in the Journal
of Experimental Education looking at school attitudes and friendship and
as you might expect, adolescents who felt that they were
(37:55):
valued and respected by their classmates were more likely to
report adaptive achievement motivation. And what does that mean? That
just means that you're more likely to foster this long
term achievement in school. You're more likely to have good
quality friendships that put a value on academics versus poor
(38:15):
quality friendships and viewing classmates as resistant to school norms.
That's related to reports of maladaptive achievement motivation. So basically,
if you have good friends who value academics, you're going
to consider it the norm. Again, there's that thing, the norm,
and you are also going to value academics and do
well in school. And then though, as you start to
make the transition from high school to college, it really
(38:37):
starts to test your friendships. Not so surprisingly, um, during
just the first year in college, high school, best friendships
declined and satisfaction, commitment, rewards, and investments, according to a
two thousand three study published in the journal Personal Relationships.
And during this period that the freshman year of college,
(39:00):
there's also an increase in the cost and alternatives to
best friend relationships. So it's not so surprising because you
go to college unless you're maybe bunking with your best
friend from high school or still see them regularly, you're
being introduced to a whole, bigger, broader world of potential
best friendships. Yeah, a bigger, broader world. And also maybe
(39:22):
it's just harder to keep in touch with friends back
home and that kind of thing. And so they found
that what really helped these best friendships continue to thrive
from high school through into college was maintenance behaviors, also
things like supportiveness, self disclosure, interaction. Basically, the more you
continue to communicate on a really intimate level, like constantly
(39:43):
and consistently, the better that friendship will be maintained well.
And that completely jives with a two thousand study called
Forecasting Friends Forever, which I really enjoyed that study title.
But these research or collected data across nineteen years of
(40:04):
different friends, starting when these friends were in college and
after nineteen years, obviously, like a lot of these people
had had kids, they had moved an average of like
five point six times, which is kind of funny because like,
what does moving point six mean? It just means math
is awkward sometimes. And they found that expressions of intimacy
(40:28):
at the outset of the study, like when you know,
these friends were talking about each other when they were
still in college, was not a major predictor of whether
they would still be friends nineteen years later. So if
you were like, oh my god, we're just so but friends.
She's awesome, I love her, We'll be friends forever doesn't
necessarily mean it's going to happen. It was more the
(40:49):
level of interdependence and essentially thinking and perceiving the world
in similar kinds of ways that most strongly predicted whether
they would be friends almost two decades later, And so
the researchers recommended that really learning to communicate and sort
of figuring out how each person sees the world and
(41:11):
what your value systems are and all of that matters
the most if you want to be friends forever. Yeah,
Like I have two friends, both of whom I've known
forever um but one she and I are communication styles
are very similar, and that we don't you know, we've
been friends forever. We we love and adore each other,
(41:32):
but we can go very very long times without seeing
or hearing from each other, and then when we do
see each other, we just have a glass of wine
and pick right back up where we left off, and
it's great. Another friend that I know, um, that I've
had forever. She has a slightly different set of needs
and expectations, and you know that's always dangerous in any
type of relationship to expectation. But um, you know, she's
(41:54):
really hurt if we go for too long without speaking
to each other. And so that relationship requires a different
type of effort and energy and communication style. Well, and
the importance is that you know that and you recognize that,
so you're not kind of you know, because you clearly
can communicate with each other. So it's more than the
frequency of communication. And I'm the same way with my
(42:15):
closest friends. We will go for long periods of time
without talking because I'm just I'm rolling on a phone talker.
I'm more of a podcast talker, Caroline, But I'm not
a phone talker either, and that does make a lot
of things difficult, like my mother all the time. Oh
that's different. But the older you get, though, it can
(42:36):
be challenging to make new friends because obviously you know
those some of those friendships from say high school in
college do fade away because you develop your own life
and your own rhythm and probably move and maybe meet
someone that you settled down with. And um, one of
us is sort of a side note. But one major
(42:58):
milestone at some that the survey found is a great
predictor of making new friends is having a baby. Yeah,
so if you're feeling lonely, just have a baby. Oh god, don't, don't. Um.
But yeah, so this is a survey, so you know,
keep in mind it's not like an academic study, but
survey funded by Nature's Purist, a baby products company, found
(43:22):
that fifty three of new moms said it was easier
to bond with other women after having a baby, and
sevent those said it was because they had so much
in common. In my brain, I'm just like, you have
a baby in common. But of course that brings with
it like an entirely new life. And a lot of
these moms, surveys said, not only did they now have
(43:43):
things in common like um, post baby sex worries or
you know, body worries, or like I haven't slept in
seven months anymore. Ever, they're also worried about just boring
their old friends with baby talk. Yeah. I mean that
that those survey findings make total sense. Um, But when
it comes to just making friends, if you aren't in
(44:06):
you know, a baby circle, it can be challenging. This
was something that Alex Williams wrote about not too long
ago in the New York Times, and he said that
you sort of have to resign yourself once you get
into your thirties of making what he calls kind of
friends instead of best friends. They're not like the super
(44:26):
best friends that you would hang out with almost like
cheer style, like every night you hang out and it's awesome.
But it's more getting into the situational friend zone. So
you have your kind of friends that you will do
outdoors and stuff with, and then you have your kind
of friends that are like movie buffs, so you go
to like film festivals with them. And then you have
your I don't know what it's another kind of friend.
(44:50):
Computer nerd friends. Yes, can you program computers together? Yes?
Those friends? Um. Yeah, but He says that you've like,
once you've crossed the threshold into your thirties, you're now
in the situational friend zone. Do do do Do Do
do Oh. Another big kind of friend, the couple friend.
(45:10):
You know, the two people that get along really well
so you can hang out at a fore top there
you go. Well, so what's going on around this age?
Psychology professor Laura Carsonson, who is the director of the
Stanford Center on Longevity in California, has observed that people
tend to interact with fewer people as they move toward midlife,
(45:30):
but that they end up growing closer to the friends
they already have. Why she kind of this is depressing.
She says that once we turn thirty, it reminds us
that our time horizons are shrinking, so we're less focused
on exploration and more concentrating on the here and now. Yeah,
just anecdotally speaking, that makes sense because at least in
(45:51):
my day to day I can't really see much beyond
the here and now because I have no free time. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um,
there's also the whole issue. According to Marla Paul, who's
the author of the Friendship Crisis, Finding, Making and keeping
friends when you're not a kid anymore. She also says
that the bar is simply higher than it was when
(46:11):
we were younger, when we were in college, and we're
surrounded by like thousands of other humans, and we can
pick and choose our friends at will. We're not just
willing to meet in general, We're not just willing to
meet just anyone for an afterwork Margarita. Well, if there
is a Margarita involved, my bar is actually quite low,
quite low. But in terms yeah, in terms of like
(46:31):
forming really close friendships, I think it takes a little
more now because I guess once you're thirty, you know
your politics are set, your religious views are set, like
all of these important things, and your view on kids
in marriage and whether you're going to do that is set. Also,
your schedule is very set. Um. But what if if
you are interested in making a new solid friendship. There
(46:55):
are three criteria that sociologists say are critical for forging
the bonds, which are proximity, repeated and unplanned interactions, and
a setting that encourages people to let their guard down
i e. Margarita's um and also confide in each other.
And those might seem like a simple set of criteria,
(47:17):
but actually finding all of those in one that is
a challenge because once you're like thirty ish and you're
in the working world, it is harder. Like, you know,
you have work friends, but work is an interesting situation
because people move on and change jobs. They compete with
each other for roles and tasks and whatever else they're
competing for, and different people earn less and more than
(47:38):
each other. So there's that whole money issue too. And
if you're in a relationship, if you're looking for couple friends,
it's like matchmaking for two to all four people like
each other. That's a whole other thing. So what do
we do then? Obviously we have more challenges as we
get older to finding new friends. And if you're in
the market for a new friend, I think one good
(48:01):
piece of advice that Tracy Moore at Jezebel offered was
that you you need to just go lots of places,
do lots of things that you like to do, essentially
set yourself up to meet people who are like you,
whether that's joining an outdoor group or volunteering regularly, or
essentially like pursuing your passion where other people will be
(48:23):
pursuing a similar passion, and that right there will give
you a foundation to start from. Right, because we're not
sixty anymore, hopefully we'll beyond the point where we lie
about our interests and you know what we like and
don't like. And so the more you put yourself in
a situation where you were genuinely happy and doing something
that you love, the more chance you'll meet somebody who
(48:43):
also really loves doing that thing well. And one theme
that I hear a lot when I talk to girl
friends my age about this process of meeting new friends
is that it feels very much like dating, for sure. Yeah,
being a grown up and finding a new friend. And
I've I not too long ago, have this conversation with
a mixed group men and women, and everybody agreed it's
(49:05):
like dating, and that it's hard, and but that it's
almost even more rewarding than going on several first dates
like with a possible romantic partner, because at least, like
there's no pressure in the friendship thing. Yeah, well, that
that's another thing. It's like you have to relieve yourself
of being terrified that it might not work out, because
(49:25):
it might not. You might not see this person, you
might this person might not be your BFF, but that's
okay because he or she is busy, just like you
are probably busy, and there are plenty of friend fish
in the sea, that's right. I mean, that's another thing
that that Tracy Moore said to is like the stakes
are very low. You know, meet people who make you happy,
and if they don't make you happy, or they don't
(49:47):
hang around or you don't see them again, you'll meet
somebody else. Yeah, but I think it is important. I mean,
particularly if you're in a situation where you've moved to
a new city or you are at a new job.
You're just sort of in like an known spots starting
from zero and obviously want some face to face friends.
It is. It is work in a lot of ways,
(50:08):
like like dating, if you want to if you want
to get out there, you gotta put some effort into it. Yeah,
but I think yeah, to develop, I mean, anybody can
have a circle of acquaintances where you're you're friendly to people,
but if you really are after like a very close friendship,
it's so critical to be yourself. And I mean, I
know we say that in terms of romantic relationships too,
(50:29):
but like, how are you expected to have a BFF
for a circle of close friends if you're acting like
you're not who you say you are or something right,
because the truth will come out eventually. But there was
one article that was in the Daily Email, so but
bear with me. It was simply um a piece on
(50:51):
friendships among women that had significant age gaps, and it
was just like anecdotes of how and why they got
along so well, and it was fascinating to see these
like much older women befriending much younger women and vice versa,
and how it's important to also as we get older,
to stay open to making friends who might not be
(51:14):
within you know, like two years on either side of
our age, because older folks are even younger folks depending
on how old you are, can make fantastic friends too. Well.
It's that whole diversity of experience thing. One thing that
relationship coach Karen Smedley pointed out was that maybe you're
at an age where all of your friends are having
babies but you either can't, don't want to, aren't ready, whatever.
(51:37):
Having an older friend who you know, having an older
friend or a younger friend who's having a different life
experience than your age group can be very valuable because
it kind of takes the pressure off. You're like, oh,
now I can see that there are other lifestyles out there.
I don't have to have this pressure to do X
y Z that all my friends are doing. Yeah, but now, Caroline,
is at time for us to ask folks for friendship
(51:59):
store for sure? Well, we want to hear from you
about your best friend and how friendship has affected your life.
Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com is where
you can send us your letters. You can also though,
tweet us at mom stuf podcast or send us a
message on Facebook. And one final making friends tip. You know,
(52:21):
you can always bring up the podcast because you know,
if you both like the podcast, then hey, you got
you have like over five topics to talk about. That's right.
So with that, we have a couple of letters to
share with you our friends right now. Okay, I have
(52:54):
a letter here from Anna who says that she used
to get the question no, we're are you really from
all the time. She says, my family is a mix
of German, Croatian, Swedish and Ukrainian, and I came out
looking very Eastern European. My professors would pronounce my name
with a strong accent. During roll call and after class
(53:14):
seemed very interested in asking where I was from. When
I would reply, oh, about two hours north in Ohio,
they would reply with no. Before that, I never quite
knew how to respond. People have even gone so far
as to speak to me in Russian or in very
slow English. I also thought it might be interesting to
give a perspective on exotic beauty from a slightly different perspective.
(53:35):
I'm a very light skinned, light haired, green eyed girl
living in rural Japan. Not many foreigners visit this part
of Japan, let alone live here. So for many people,
I am their first white foreigner they have seen in person.
The initial reaction is lots of squealing, with people touching
my hair, getting uncomfortably close to my eyes, and complimenting
me on how small my face is and how big
(53:56):
my nose and eyes are. Those are apparently compliments. I've
gotten many people asking me to take and use my
photo for advertising purposes with no pay, because I have
that quote unquote Russian beauty that is sought after here.
It all seems very forced, ultrapolite, but definitely does make
me feel an other. I would also like to add
that the amount of products here to make people women
(54:17):
in particular look western is mind boggling. Whitening creams, I
tape colored contacts for less than the equivalent of ten
dollars at a drug store. Hair lightning kits, and arm
and face covers for the beach, cars and bikes. I
just thought I would share. Man. Okay, Well, thanks for
the very interesting perspective. Annah, Well, I've got another letter
here in response to our exotic beauty episode. This is
(54:39):
coming from Lillian, who writes, I grew up in an
inner city neighborhood in northern New Jersey as a bi
racial woman of Puerto Rican and Chinese ethnicity. I've encountered
a really uncomfortable amount of fetishizing, not only from white men,
but also from black and Hispanic men who generally watched
too many Kung Fu movies. If I had a dollar
for every time I've been told I'm comprised of quote
(55:00):
the best of both worlds, or told that somehow my
mix is superior for stupid stereotypical reasons, I'd be a
very wealthy woman Puerto Rican curves and a docile freak
in the bedroom. The sex must be amazing. Imagine the
food she can cook. The first person to call me
exotic was my white male homeroom teacher in my freshman
(55:21):
year of high school. That was an uncomfortable year. Fortunately, though,
since then, I've heard the quote unquote compliment so many
times that I've developed the perfect response to it. Now.
Whenever someone calls me exotic, I say, oh great, another
one who wants to put me in a cage a
parent is exotic. I'm from New Jersey. The resulting flash
of embarrassment that tends to cross their faces is just priceless.
(55:44):
So thanks Lilian, and thanks to everybody who's written into
us mom Stuff at how stuff Works dot Com is
our email address, but you can also reach us on
Facebook and tweet us at mom Stuff podcast and for
links to all of our social media as well as
all of our podcast, blog and videos. There's one place
to go, and it's stuff Mom Never Told You dot com.
(56:08):
For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how Stuff Works dot com. And that brings us
to the end of this classic episode. I hope you've
learned a lot about best friends and feeling warm and
fuzzy about perhaps your best friend. Uh we would love
(56:30):
to hear about your best friend, and you can email
us about them at Stuff Media, mom Stuff at iHeart
media dot com. You can also find us on Twitter
at mom Stuff podcast or on Instagram at Stuff I've
Never Told You. Thanks as always to our suproducer Andrew Howard,
and thanks to you for listening. Stuff I've Never Told
You the production of I Heart Radios how Stuff Works.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
(56:51):
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
W
Hey, this is Annie and welcome to stuff I've never
told to your production of I Heart Radios how stuff works.
For today's classic, I wanted to bring one back that's
been really on my mind lately, and that is the
science of having a BFF. Where I was I used
(00:28):
to call m Biffle's best friends for life because I
have a group of I have a group of cooer
friends that we've been friends, some of us since we
were four years old, um, but like high school, middle school,
and we see each other a couple of times a year,
and it's always so easy. It's like putting on a
comforting sweater or something. And as I've been going through
the death of my father, I've realized how much friendship
(00:53):
has meant to me, and how much the support of
my friends has meant to me, and them just being
there and knowing who I am and kind of being
willing to sit with me or have me tell them
just the most ridiculous stories about about my family. Um
it's it's meant the world. And I'm every day like,
(01:15):
how did I look out in this friendship lottery? UM?
So I wanted to share this classic episode with you
about the science of best Friends. Please enjoy. Welcome to
Stuff Mob Never Told You from how stupp works dot com. Hello,
(01:40):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline and I'm Kristin,
and in honor of International Friendship Day, which is August three,
Kristin and I are looking at the science of friendship,
what benefits friendship has for you, what does it mean
to have a BFF, what will that BFF bring to
your life, and how the role of friendship has sort
(02:01):
of changed and evolved over the centuries, because even the
Greeks used to talk quite a bit about friendship and
their philosophy. Yeah, obviously, friendship is something that goes back
throughout human history, and Aristotle had a well known philosophy
on the different types of love, one of which is philia,
(02:22):
which is affectionate regard or friendly feeling and our deepest
and closest friendships probably also intersect with the idea of
a goopa, which is love for humankind, although do you
think that it crosses ever into arrows? Probably could the
passionate love, Yeah, philia with benefits. Yeah, Well, people often
(02:44):
talk about how they marry their best friends, so those
Venn diagrams can often intersect. Yeah, that's right. And it's interesting,
I mean, like not to get off on a tangent,
but it's interesting that, like, even the idea of quote
unquote marrying your best friend is relative kind of recent development.
I mean, marriage for centuries was just sort of an
economic agreement right there. There wasn't this idea that, oh,
(03:07):
you marry someone that you would like to live with
for the rest of your life. It would be oh, no,
someone will be selected for you that will benefit Yeah.
I mean, because it's fine, We're all going to die
at thirty two, our children will be apprenticed out. It's fine.
Nobody has to like each other. Yeah, and who cares anyway,
because no one has Facebook to know what each other
is up to or how happy everyone is or is not.
(03:29):
That's right, and Aristotle did definitely did not have Facebook.
And author Massimo Pigliucci, who who wrote a book about
the philosophy of friendship, talks about Aristotle's philosophy and his
theories that basically friends, He thought that friends sort of
had this mirroring role in each other's lives. They could
sort of hold a mirror up to each other to
(03:51):
help them improve personally, help each other improve and that
they would help each other achieve this thing called you
deemonia hopefully I'm pronouncing that right, which is often translated
now as happiness, maybe literally in the Greek it meant
having a good demon, so you would help each other
achieve that that thing you were chasing, that elusive happiness,
(04:14):
that had that that good demon inside of you. I
like that. I just thought I was hungry, But apparently
it's happiness. It's just your happy demon inside of you
asking for a sandwich. Um. But if we move into
more contemporary times and look at how the nature of
friendship has changed, it's interesting that more of that aerros
(04:39):
type of passionate love has shifted from the person who
would have been like our our closest friend and confidante
to these days, more commonly to a spouse or a
long term partner, because, for instance, if you look back
in the Victorian era at the closest of female friendships,
(05:02):
and if you read letters that women wrote to each other,
and even that men wrote to each other during this time,
they were so effusive and just almost passionate in their
love for the other person. Yeah, because that was okay,
that was okay. There was no there was nothing in
society really that was dictating that it was weird to
(05:25):
be like really like passionately in like with your friends,
especially like in terms of when we think of male
friendships background this time and it being okay to be
physically affectionate. Yeah, if you look, for instance, at Abraham
Lincoln and his best friend Joshua Speed, they shared a
tiny bed for four years while they were living together,
(05:48):
obviously in their bachelor days, and that was no big deal.
I mean, some people today think, oh, well, that must
mean that Lincoln must have been doing something with Joshua Speed.
But actually, that kind of physical intimacy that you also
see reflected in photos of male friends at the time,
where they might be holding hands or touching uh one
(06:09):
person's shoulders, or even in sort of a side hug,
a platonic side hug, it wasn't so strange at the time.
And some think that the Industrial Revolution the rise of
organized sports and outdoor activities led to that breakdown in
particular of male platonic intimacy, and for women, the idea
(06:35):
of having that closer, more emotional, intimate best friendship was
a little bit more of a normalized idea because there's
been that longstanding idea of women just being the nurturing,
emotive sex. But even still, when you get to the
nineteen twenties, for both men and women, it wasn't so
(06:58):
okay to be as passionately in friend love with your
BFF because this was around the time when you have
the rise of homophobia. Yeah, and so when you have
something to be afraid of, you have to actively show
that you are not that thing, and in this case
it was it was the rise of the idea of
(07:18):
what is manly and masculine and what is female and feminine,
and homophobia was really tied up in that, and so
the idea of having that like physically affectionate close relationship
whether you're a man or a woman, was just not
hunky dory anymore. Well, and also with the industrial revolution,
you have with that the rise of the companion it
(07:40):
in love marriage that we think of today, And so
that's when you start to see that kind of emotion
and closeness transposed from the best friendship into the marriage.
And a lot of parents became concerned at this time,
particularly for their daughters, that if they seem too close
to their best friend, than they weren't going to make
(08:02):
a good wife. You know, they could sort of practice,
you know, being uh compassionate and kind to someone else.
But there was definitely uh, this line that was drawn
and was perpetuated by psychoanalysts in the nineteen twenties who
warned about the quote perversions of the libido that were
(08:23):
the tendencies of teenage girls to fix their affections on
members of the same sex. I mean, that's silly, right,
I mean, like as far as being concerned about young
girls spending a lot of time together, yeah, well, and
I would assume to the penalties for that were it
would be much harsher for men at the time, because
(08:44):
I feel like now maybe we're just not freaking out
as much. But for instance, it's so much more common,
it seems like for groups of girls to get together
and have slumber parties and play with each other's hair
and do each other's makeup and that kind of stuff
that involves lots of physicality, whereas boys friendship physicality is
(09:04):
often more of the rough and tumble play. There's not
that same kind of intimacy, right, They're probably not sharing
a bed like Abraham Lincoln and Joshua Speed. Yeah, exactly. Well,
because they have to prove that they're masculine, and so
you can't have that intimacy. But I mean, speaking of
intimacy and things that are good for you, friendship has
(09:24):
a ton of health benefits. And these health benefits have
been asserted over and over again forever, and you're probably
familiar with a lot of them, including the psychological ones
that uh Mayo pointed out. They include increasing your sense
of belonging in purpose, boosting your happiness and reducing stress,
helping to improve your self confidence and self worth, help
you cope with traumas, and also encouraging you to change
(09:48):
or avoid unhealthy lifestyle habits. These are all kind of
hallmarks psychological benefits of close friendships. Well, and that last
point to that the Mayo Clinic noted, encouraging you to
change or avoid your unhealthy lifestyle happens. Really hearkens back
to that Greek idea of the good friend helping you
find your your good demon inside of you. Yeah, you're
(10:12):
a good demon, whether that's just goodness or margarita. Yeah,
so whatever, But you know, all of that well being,
once you've achieved all that well being, that definitely leads
to a lot of potential physical benefits, things like better
brain health. Harvard researchers back in two thousand and eight
found that strong social ties could actually promote brain health
as we age, and so you know, that's why it's
(10:34):
even critical when we talk about like aging populations and
older people being alone and how awful that is. The
stronger your social network, the better you'll be as far
as emotional health and brain health. And the lower stress
levels associated with having close and healthy friendships also leads
to us being less likely to get colds. I mean,
(10:57):
this is just like one example of how it does
improve our overall health. Yeah, and studies have also pointed
out that this kind of social support can lower blood pressure,
protect against dementia, and reduce the risk of depression. So
it's apparently pretty important to have friends, you guys, and
all in all, this adds up to the possibility that
we might live longer as one byproduct of having friendships.
(11:22):
There was a two thousand five study published in the
Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health which tracked a group
of Australians over ten years, and they found that those
with a large circle of friends were twenty two percent
less likely to die during the study period than those
with fewer friends. And I'm sure there are other issues
(11:44):
in there as well, yes, but I mean that is
that's that's impressive. Is nothing to to sneeze and when
you look at women in particular, um friendship also has
in a fact on women who are battling breast cancer,
as a study in two thousand six in the Journal
(12:05):
of Clinical Oncology showed um. They did a study of
nearly three thousand nurses who had breast cancer and found
that the women without close friends were four times as
likely to die from breast cancer as women with ten
or more friends. And I think it's worth noting that
proximity and the amount of contact with the friend or
(12:25):
friends was not associated with survival. It was just the
fact that you have friends who love you in your
life that was the protective factor. Having a spouse, however,
was not associated with survival rates. It's all about the
friends well, and men can also benefit from friendships as well.
This was a study published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine
(12:47):
which looked at a group of Swedish men over six
years and found that those with solid friendships more than
an attachment to one person you know, just having the
spouse perhaps in the hall, appeared to affect the risk
of heart attack and fatal coronary disease in a positive way,
probably lowered the chance of that happening. Now, again, these
(13:10):
are kinds of correlation versus causation associations to make, but nonetheless,
the evidence is pretty strong that all in all, healthy
friendships are healthy for us. However, and this is something
probably all moms did, in fact tell us many times
when we were growing up. Not so healthy friendships can
(13:34):
negatively impact us. Sure, yeah, it totally makes sense. If
your close friends are boozing it up or smoking or
doing whatever, then you are also more likely to do that,
especially if you have a strong desire to fit in. Um.
There was a study back in in basic and applied
social psychology that found that when you perceive a greater
(14:00):
acohol use among your best friends, that predicts in you
higher levels of willingness to consume alcohol. So basically, if
it's the norm in your brain, whether it's true or not,
if the norm in your brain is that your friends
are drinking and smoking and doing whatever, you were more
likely to abuse those substances yourself. Yeah, and there was
(14:22):
a recent study that came out in the British Medical
Journal which found that friends steer our decisions in when
we were school age more so than parents, and remembering
when I was fourteen years old, that is not a
surprising finding at all because friends are so much cooler
than parents at that time anyway. But they found that specifically,
(14:44):
the impact of having a smoker as a close friend
during adolescence is greater than that of having a smoking
parent or siblings when it comes to predicting whether you
shall smoke in adulthood, not just whether you're going to
be out in the school yard smoking some smokes that
you stole from some cigarette stubs you found on the ground,
(15:06):
some misty stubs that you snagged. And another factor that
comes into play is also having cross sex friendships among adolescents.
This was a study in two thousand six in the
Journal of Psychology looking at kids in urban settings in six,
seventh and eighth grades. So not only did they find
that developing cross sex friendships is more likely to lead
(15:29):
to or be related to popularity, but they also found
a lot of stuff regarding smoking and drinking. Having these
cross sex friendships is also linked to the perception among
seventh graders that the best friends attitudes about smoking and
drinking are less negative. It's also linked to higher levels
of cigarette use among sixth and eighth graders, in addition
(15:52):
to more alcohol use among six seventh and eighth graders.
So does that mean then that our parents were right
when you know they warned us like, don't hang out
with old Johnny who smoking those he smoked cigarette butts
from Virginia slims. He will turn out like he's a
bad apple. I well, I think I think it's interesting,
(16:14):
and there's probably a lot more details that you could
look into, or that maybe are actually in the full
study if we were to read the full study. But
I think it's interesting to look at cross sex friendships
in this very impressionable age when your hormones are raging
and you're really insecure. Everybody's really insecure and doesn't know
what's going on in life, um, and how that's linked
to popularity and then what does it mean to be popular?
(16:35):
And then you're thinking about the norms of like, oh well,
if Johnny and Susie are smoking, then that's cool and
I can do it. And there's a lot wrapped up
in there that to me, just sets off alarm bells
of the terror of being a parent because you have
to take in all of those different variables when talking
to little Suz about how to manage those kinds of
(16:58):
peer pressures. Yeah, but we there's even more on cross
sex friendships that we'll get into in a minute. But
let's talk about sort of beyond just the physical and
emotional and mental effects of friendship. Let's talk about the
science of friendship because there have been some really interesting
studies in the past couple of years, including one that
um took my Space into account and side note, the
(17:20):
study came out in two thousand eleven, which was seemed
surprisingly recent considering that they were using my Space data. Yeah,
I actually double check that date. I was like, that's
got to be like two thousand one, not two thousand eleven.
But it was this just a study that Tom conducted. Yeah, seriously,
everybody's top friend. But so the study was talking about
(17:40):
this thing called cognitive alliances, and they used the my
Space Top ten Friends system. If any of you were
on my Space, you remember how fraughth that was, Like,
you know, I broke up with him and so I'm
moving him out of my top friends are like, oh,
we met and she's cool, so I'm gonna put her
in my top friends. Yeah. I remember when I was
setting up my MySpace account so long ago now, and
(18:04):
how it was just a terrifying experience to you know,
so carefully select who would be in that top ten
to make you look as good, and by you, I
mean me look as good as possible. I'm so glad
that went away. I'm yeah, I we don't. We don't
need extra bad feeling stuff like that. And looking at
(18:26):
these top ten friends, researchers found support for their alliance hypothesis,
which basically held that human friendship is caused by cognitive
systems that function to create alliances for potential disputes. So like,
I guess your top ten friends would function as your
you know, your gang of Ruffians in case the neighboring
(18:46):
gang of Ruffians on my Space came up and tried
to beat you up. But they also found that because
an allies support can be undermined by a stronger outside relationship,
the alliance model predicts that people will prefer partners who
ranked them above other friends. So I'll like you more
if you like me more. So this whole idea is
that we form friendships and strong friendships as human humans
(19:11):
as sort of a status power grab to ensure that
if people we don't know with threatening status has come along,
then we have a leg to stand on. Yeah, kind
of that. We just have these mental and emotional alliances
that we form that becomes stronger the more the other
person shows that were valued. That takes out all of
(19:34):
the romance of friendships for me. Don't worry. It gets
even weirder. I thought it was so that you could
trade those necklaces that are the broken hearts. You get
one half and I get the other. Yeah. Well, so
there's this there's this really interesting New York Times article
a couple of years ago UM talking to scientists Nicholas
(19:56):
Kristakis and James Fowler, who, along with coree searcher Jamie Suttle,
have done a lot of studying up on friendship networks,
how and why we form these connections, and how health
related risks and benefits end up being kind of transmitted
from person to person or even skipping a person and
going on to somebody else. And they use the National
(20:18):
Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and this thing called the
Framingham Heart Study, which followed people in Framingham, Massachusetts for
several generations to see how their personal connections and interactions
affected their health. Yeah, and and Framingham. The Framingham Heart
Study is a fascinating one because it's almost this ideal
(20:38):
study population because so many people who grew up in
Framingham stayed in Framingham, so it gives them this they
can sort of isolate environmental variables and toy around with
all of that. And uh, these researchers found some really
compelling evidence for how good and bad behaviors spread through
(21:03):
our social networks, from both our best friendships all the
way to acquaintances or even people we've never met before. Yeah,
and they kind of treated it like a virus. Things
like quitting smoking, losing weight, and being happy. Those are
obviously good attributes, and they watched how these things could
spread or crop up versus negative habits like picking up smoking,
(21:23):
gaining weight, and becoming less happy. So if if you're
looking just at the weight thing, they found that obesity
broke out in clusters, and a lot of scientists who
countered this said, well, it's probably environmental. Maybe more fast
food restaurants opened, etcetera. Etcetera, etcetera. But they found out
that it didn't really relate at all to something like
a McDonald's opening in the neighborhood. They found that even
(21:45):
if a friend in that group moved away and gained weight,
her social circle back home was gaining weight too, and
that the risk of obesity increased even if a friend
of a friend of a friend gain weight. What is
going on with that? Yeah, that kind of pattern was
so consistent that these researchers termed it the three degrees
(22:07):
of influence that what you were doing can have affect,
you know, to your friends of friends of friends, and
vice versa. Yeah. Another theory that was discounted was this
(22:32):
thing called home a Philly, which is basically like associates
with like. But again, that's kind of discounted by the
fact that Susie can move away to a different state
and gain weight and her friends back home are still
gaining weight. But some of the things they looked at
among these friend groups are maybe there's some subconscious social
signaling at work. As our friends become heavier, we change
(22:53):
our perception of what obese looks like, and therefore give
ourselves permission to gain a little weight. Because maybe it's
not so bad, or if we don't gain weight, maybe
we just simply become more accepting of other people in
our social circles who do so maybe they don't feel
as bad about watching what they eat well, And this
jumped out to spouses tend to have less of an
(23:14):
effect on us, particularly in this area of weight gain
that they looked at. They have less of an effect
than close friends do because our ideas about weight in
particular are more influenced by people of the same sex,
which makes sense because you know, we're looking to, you know,
people who are more We're looking at essentially like the
beauty standards of our group. Absolutely, and they found the
(23:38):
degree of friendship matters. So this is sort of like
what we're talking about with these cognitive alliances. A second ago.
If Steve likes Peter more than Peter likes Steve, Steve
will gain weight when Peter does. He'll be influenced by
Peter's weight gain, But Peter's weight won't be influenced by
Steve's because he doesn't whatevery verb you want to use
(23:59):
value Steve much noticed Steve as much care about Steve
as much. But if there's a mutual degree of friendship,
the weight effect is significant. Poor Steve, what did he
do wrong? And that sounds a lot like that alliance
hypothesis that you just mentioned from that MySpace study, right exactly,
So how you view your friends and how they view
(24:22):
you beyond just like the actual closeness factor, what really exists,
like how you view your friendship matters too, I guess.
But if we go back to Aristotle talking about mirroring,
you know, he said that friends hold a mirror up
to you to help you achieve your happiness, we should
bring up mirror neurons because Christakis, Fowler, and Settle also
(24:43):
talked about mirror neurons and happiness simply the fact that
the more happy people you're exposed to on your in
your day to day life or in your social network,
the more often your spirits are lifted. And so it's
the kind of thing like I feel like we've seen
marketing campaigns and advertising campaigns that are kind of based
on the side you a where if one person does
something nice for you and then you do something nice
(25:04):
for the next person, suddenly the whole network is happier
and more polite. Um, And so it's sort of that
idea of like mirror neurons, as as you smile at someone,
they might smile at someone else. And soon like all
of our friends are smiling at each other and they
don't know why. Yeah, And anecdotally, all of this kind
of the ripple effect of friendship ring so true. Thinking
(25:25):
about the patterns of my friends and even broader social
networks as I have moved through my twenties and now
I'm approaching my thirties, and just how our socializing habits
have changed to center more around like domestic activities. We
aren't going out so much. We're doing more things like
(25:47):
going on a day hike rather than going on a
night bar crawl. And it's like as soon as one
person or one couple started doing that, than someone else
took note and they started doing it. And then you
see their picture is on Facebook and you're like, well,
maybe I needed And it's like we all have collectively
become just in general, like less wild. And I think
(26:10):
it has a lot to do not so much with like,
oh we're learning thirty, we must be boring, But I
think it's probably a lot of this, like the epidemic
of friendship essentially, Yeah, like what you perceived the norm
to be. Yeah, I want to do what Peter is
doing because Peter apparently is the cool guy. Actually want
to be Peter. But we'll watch out. If Peter has
(26:31):
the d r D two gene, well, then you better
watch out because another thing that Christakis and Fowler found
was that there is a genetic component to friendship, and
this obviously needs a lot more research, but one thing
that they found their their their preliminary findings are that
friendship can be influenced by certain genes, and the gene
d r D two, which I kept in my mind saying,
(26:52):
are two D two influences drinking behavior. People with this
gene are not only susceptible to certain behaviors, including drinking
and alcoholism, but are susceptible to making friends with those
exact same behaviors. So there's an argument for like with
like so I party all the time. I want to
be friends with people who party all the time. But
now there might be a genetic component behind that as well.
(27:14):
It's your R two D two jeans all coming together.
This is not the droid I'm looking for. You need
to see three. That's right, um. But they also found
a second gene that showed that people are attracted to
their opposite opposites when it comes to other certain behaviors.
So there's a lot of I think research that still
needs to be done there, But the fact that you
(27:36):
might be attracted to certain people, whether romantically or on
a friendship level, because of genetics, that's really interesting. Well,
it's one of the things I was reading about was
talking about how and we hear about this a lot
more in terms of our romantic attractions, how we tend
to subconsciously seek out partners who are more genetically diverse
(27:58):
so that it will give our offspring a better chance
of survival, whereas with friends, we seek out people subconsciously
who are more like genetically similar because we want to
tend and befriends. That's right, especially for ladies. Yeah, and
speaking of which, we have some gender differences to get
into in our friendship patterns. And also talk about how
(28:21):
making friends changes over our individual life terms, because as
I'm sure a number of our listeners who are maybe
heading into their thirties and beyond can attest making friends
as you get older changes it can be a bit
more challenging for a number of reasons that we will
get into okay, but if we look at gender stuff first. Um.
(28:45):
I thought that the search for numbers on around this
topic was interesting in and of itself because there's a
lot of studies looking at at how many friends the
average man has, but not so many specific numbers for women.
And I'm wondering if that's not because people just assume
that women have so many more friends and that men
don't make close relationships, and so that's more interesting and
(29:07):
they want to study that more. But if you look
at men's friends in particular. This is from Men's Health Survey,
so keep that in mind. But they found that the
average guy has four point eight close friends whom he
keeps in contact with, primarily through text, and guys said
they had a best friend of those who had known
(29:30):
him since high school. Yeah, and I do think that
you're right that there is so much of an assumption
that women just make friends all the time and that
we will have a bestie at all points during our life,
although that bestie might change. That there's more focus on, well,
what of men, because there's been a lot more research
(29:51):
into the dynamics of female friendships. But I think it's
more because it's a given, so there's not as much
attention to tallying up. We'll just how many friends does
a woman have? Well, yeah, because she's always tending and befriending,
so we don't have to really worry about her. This
is this is something that we've talked about before a
lot on the podcast. We talked about it in our
(30:12):
female Friendships episode a while ago. But it's the fact
that women tend to respond to stress with this huge
flood of brain chemicals that cause us to make and
maintain friendships with other women in particular. Yeah, this Landmark
study found that when we hang out with our lady friends,
(30:32):
when we go out for sex in the city style
brunches every every weekend somehow, uh, it actually releases the
bonding chemical oxytocin in our brain, and so we feel
tended and befriended. And that is sort of the more
female analog to the fight or flight response, right, and
(30:54):
just that women, when women get stressed, our oxytocin makes
us go towards one another, whereas men's testosterone testosterone makes
them go the other way. And female brains seem to
really like this tending and befriending because for the research
has found that once we reach out to our friends,
we get a little shot of oxytocin in our brain.
(31:16):
The more that we do it, the more oxytocin our
brain's release. So we're just like hugging all the time,
Like I can't stop, I'm just hugging my friends all
the time. Well, it's true, there is a certain kind
of crisis management that a very best friend can offer
that no one else can offer, even say a spouse
(31:38):
or a girlfriend or a boyfriend or a family member. Yeah,
I mean that that's what's really jumped out to me.
That's so interesting in all of these various studies that
it's like, Nope, it's friendship. It's those close platonic friendships
that really save you and protect you. Well, And I
wonder if it is that oxytocin connection that explains something
(31:58):
that's called the Steel Magnolia's effect, which is this study
finding that women tend to rate their female best friends
more highly than guys rate their guy friendships. Like we
we seem to value that even more. Or maybe it
might also be like a thing of self reporting where
(32:19):
maybe we simply gush more about our girlfriends and guys
gush about their guy friends, because I never want to
contend that male friendships are are no less strong and important. Um,
but but it is interesting and it's also yes called
the steel magnolia's effect. Well, I think that ties in
with a study, a two thousand study that was published
(32:41):
in the journal Adolescents where they basically put boy friends
and girl friends in rooms together and let them kind
of hang out in chit chat and kind of looked
at the way that the two boys talked to each
other versus the two girls and what they talked about.
And boys ended up rating their relationships with best friends
are in conflict than did girls. But what's interesting about
(33:04):
that is it's not that there's not conflict, it's they
the researchers were saying that, like the guys would just
like hash it out, like what's your problem, here's my problem.
More confrontational. Girls are less likely to be as confrontational
to one another and to maybe talk about Betty Sue
behind her back Betty Sue, but I know Betty Sue
and Peter like God. So anyway, but girls rated lower
(33:26):
in withdrawal and higher in communication skills and support validation
than boys. So girls are better at talking about things,
although sometimes that talking happens behind the back. Um. Just
one side note on girl code versus guy code. There
has been some other research which has suggested that girls,
(33:49):
especially like adolescent girls, tend to hold their besties to
hire girl code standards than guys do for their guy friendships.
And I think it's partially because of the fact that
maybe boys tend to be a little bit more confrontational
to each other than girls do, because conflict resolution within
(34:10):
you know, thirteen year old girl friendships can be challenging
at times. Yeah, well, so I promised you that we
would talk about cross sex friendships again, and here it is. Uh,
we're still talking about adolescence, some boys and girls here
and there was a two thousand eight study in the
Journal of Youth Adolescence that looked at gender age, cross
(34:35):
sex friendships and what that means regarding antisocial behavior. I
read the study and I was like, oh God, I
had a lot of good guy friends in high school. Lord. Anyway,
So here it is. They found that boys who had
only same sex best friends and girls who had other
sex best friends endorsed higher rates of anti social behavior.
(34:59):
Having they're sex best friends predicted anti social behavior from
six to seventh grade and eight to eleventh grade, especially
for girls. So what does that mean then, I mean,
are they basically saying that maybe girls who are getting
along better with guys just don't get along as well
with girls, and so they're calling it anti social behavior.
(35:21):
I don't know, but I wonder if it ties back
to the other cross sex friendship study, which talked about popularity.
It talked about choosing bad behaviors and things like smoking
and drinking, and the fact that girls who had more
cross sex friendships were more likely to engage in this
behavior or think it was normal. So that's that's an
interesting finder. Yeah, I mean I don't think. I don't know.
(35:43):
It sounds the the language that it uses sounds almost
so alarmous because we hear anti social like oh no.
But I think in this case, antisocial means something a
little gentler than the way it sounds. I think it
means like maybe just things that go against the norm. Well,
as we move out of adolescence and into adulthood. Research
has also suggested that our patterns of cross sex friendships
(36:10):
also change, and essentially, women like move away from having
a best guy friend, usually in heterosexual relationships, that would
be the husband, and it moves away from them to
another female as we get older. Yeah, usually the daughter.
I am a perfect example of this. Like, So, this
(36:31):
study study looked at basically phone records who were people
calling and for several years the woman was calling a
man all the time, and then slowly that shifted to
be a woman, typically the daughter. So, my mom calls
me all the time, you know, like I can't access
my e books? Well did you buy them? I don't know. Well, okay,
(36:51):
call Peach mac Um, called Betty, Sue or Peter Mom.
I'm busy. Maybe they can deal with it, since Peter
is so cool. Um. But what they found was that
men show a more consistent pattern of being linked to
a female best friend their entire lives, which I think,
judging by the fact that they qualified the male best
(37:11):
friend as someone who became the husband typically, this just
sounds like. This just sounds like whereas the wife starts
calling the daughter instead of the husband, the husband keeps
calling the wife, which I think is also a pattern
that holds true in my family. My my mother calls
me all the time. My father calls my mother. Yeah,
so I think that's all that is well, and that
(37:31):
brings up then how our pattern of making friends changes
as we age and if we're sort of backing out
of the gendered lens and looking just at age. Um.
There was a two thousand eight study in the Journal
of Experimental Education looking at school attitudes and friendship and
as you might expect, adolescents who felt that they were
(37:55):
valued and respected by their classmates were more likely to
report adaptive achievement motivation. And what does that mean? That
just means that you're more likely to foster this long
term achievement in school. You're more likely to have good
quality friendships that put a value on academics versus poor
(38:15):
quality friendships and viewing classmates as resistant to school norms.
That's related to reports of maladaptive achievement motivation. So basically,
if you have good friends who value academics, you're going
to consider it the norm. Again, there's that thing, the norm,
and you are also going to value academics and do
well in school. And then though, as you start to
make the transition from high school to college, it really
(38:37):
starts to test your friendships. Not so surprisingly, um, during
just the first year in college, high school, best friendships
declined and satisfaction, commitment, rewards, and investments, according to a
two thousand three study published in the journal Personal Relationships.
And during this period that the freshman year of college,
(39:00):
there's also an increase in the cost and alternatives to
best friend relationships. So it's not so surprising because you
go to college unless you're maybe bunking with your best
friend from high school or still see them regularly, you're
being introduced to a whole, bigger, broader world of potential
best friendships. Yeah, a bigger, broader world. And also maybe
(39:22):
it's just harder to keep in touch with friends back
home and that kind of thing. And so they found
that what really helped these best friendships continue to thrive
from high school through into college was maintenance behaviors, also
things like supportiveness, self disclosure, interaction. Basically, the more you
continue to communicate on a really intimate level, like constantly
(39:43):
and consistently, the better that friendship will be maintained well.
And that completely jives with a two thousand study called
Forecasting Friends Forever, which I really enjoyed that study title.
But these research or collected data across nineteen years of
(40:04):
different friends, starting when these friends were in college and
after nineteen years, obviously, like a lot of these people
had had kids, they had moved an average of like
five point six times, which is kind of funny because like,
what does moving point six mean? It just means math
is awkward sometimes. And they found that expressions of intimacy
(40:28):
at the outset of the study, like when you know,
these friends were talking about each other when they were
still in college, was not a major predictor of whether
they would still be friends nineteen years later. So if
you were like, oh my god, we're just so but friends.
She's awesome, I love her, We'll be friends forever doesn't
necessarily mean it's going to happen. It was more the
(40:49):
level of interdependence and essentially thinking and perceiving the world
in similar kinds of ways that most strongly predicted whether
they would be friends almost two decades later, And so
the researchers recommended that really learning to communicate and sort
of figuring out how each person sees the world and
(41:11):
what your value systems are and all of that matters
the most if you want to be friends forever. Yeah,
Like I have two friends, both of whom I've known
forever um but one she and I are communication styles
are very similar, and that we don't you know, we've
been friends forever. We we love and adore each other,
(41:32):
but we can go very very long times without seeing
or hearing from each other, and then when we do
see each other, we just have a glass of wine
and pick right back up where we left off, and
it's great. Another friend that I know, um, that I've
had forever. She has a slightly different set of needs
and expectations, and you know that's always dangerous in any
type of relationship to expectation. But um, you know, she's
(41:54):
really hurt if we go for too long without speaking
to each other. And so that relationship requires a different
type of effort and energy and communication style. Well, and
the importance is that you know that and you recognize that,
so you're not kind of you know, because you clearly
can communicate with each other. So it's more than the
frequency of communication. And I'm the same way with my
(42:15):
closest friends. We will go for long periods of time
without talking because I'm just I'm rolling on a phone talker.
I'm more of a podcast talker, Caroline, But I'm not
a phone talker either, and that does make a lot
of things difficult, like my mother all the time. Oh
that's different. But the older you get, though, it can
(42:36):
be challenging to make new friends because obviously you know
those some of those friendships from say high school in
college do fade away because you develop your own life
and your own rhythm and probably move and maybe meet
someone that you settled down with. And um, one of
us is sort of a side note. But one major
(42:58):
milestone at some that the survey found is a great
predictor of making new friends is having a baby. Yeah,
so if you're feeling lonely, just have a baby. Oh god, don't, don't. Um.
But yeah, so this is a survey, so you know,
keep in mind it's not like an academic study, but
survey funded by Nature's Purist, a baby products company, found
(43:22):
that fifty three of new moms said it was easier
to bond with other women after having a baby, and
sevent those said it was because they had so much
in common. In my brain, I'm just like, you have
a baby in common. But of course that brings with
it like an entirely new life. And a lot of
these moms, surveys said, not only did they now have
(43:43):
things in common like um, post baby sex worries or
you know, body worries, or like I haven't slept in
seven months anymore. Ever, they're also worried about just boring
their old friends with baby talk. Yeah. I mean that
that those survey findings make total sense. Um, But when
it comes to just making friends, if you aren't in
(44:06):
you know, a baby circle, it can be challenging. This
was something that Alex Williams wrote about not too long
ago in the New York Times, and he said that
you sort of have to resign yourself once you get
into your thirties of making what he calls kind of
friends instead of best friends. They're not like the super
(44:26):
best friends that you would hang out with almost like
cheer style, like every night you hang out and it's awesome.
But it's more getting into the situational friend zone. So
you have your kind of friends that you will do
outdoors and stuff with, and then you have your kind
of friends that are like movie buffs, so you go
to like film festivals with them. And then you have
your I don't know what it's another kind of friend.
(44:50):
Computer nerd friends. Yes, can you program computers together? Yes?
Those friends? Um. Yeah, but He says that you've like,
once you've crossed the threshold into your thirties, you're now
in the situational friend zone. Do do do Do Do
do Oh. Another big kind of friend, the couple friend.
(45:10):
You know, the two people that get along really well
so you can hang out at a fore top there
you go. Well, so what's going on around this age?
Psychology professor Laura Carsonson, who is the director of the
Stanford Center on Longevity in California, has observed that people
tend to interact with fewer people as they move toward midlife,
(45:30):
but that they end up growing closer to the friends
they already have. Why she kind of this is depressing.
She says that once we turn thirty, it reminds us
that our time horizons are shrinking, so we're less focused
on exploration and more concentrating on the here and now. Yeah,
just anecdotally speaking, that makes sense because at least in
(45:51):
my day to day I can't really see much beyond
the here and now because I have no free time. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um,
there's also the whole issue. According to Marla Paul, who's
the author of the Friendship Crisis, Finding, Making and keeping
friends when you're not a kid anymore. She also says
that the bar is simply higher than it was when
(46:11):
we were younger, when we were in college, and we're
surrounded by like thousands of other humans, and we can
pick and choose our friends at will. We're not just
willing to meet in general, We're not just willing to
meet just anyone for an afterwork Margarita. Well, if there
is a Margarita involved, my bar is actually quite low,
quite low. But in terms yeah, in terms of like
(46:31):
forming really close friendships, I think it takes a little
more now because I guess once you're thirty, you know
your politics are set, your religious views are set, like
all of these important things, and your view on kids
in marriage and whether you're going to do that is set. Also,
your schedule is very set. Um. But what if if
you are interested in making a new solid friendship. There
(46:55):
are three criteria that sociologists say are critical for forging
the bonds, which are proximity, repeated and unplanned interactions, and
a setting that encourages people to let their guard down
i e. Margarita's um and also confide in each other.
And those might seem like a simple set of criteria,
(47:17):
but actually finding all of those in one that is
a challenge because once you're like thirty ish and you're
in the working world, it is harder. Like, you know,
you have work friends, but work is an interesting situation
because people move on and change jobs. They compete with
each other for roles and tasks and whatever else they're
competing for, and different people earn less and more than
(47:38):
each other. So there's that whole money issue too. And
if you're in a relationship, if you're looking for couple friends,
it's like matchmaking for two to all four people like
each other. That's a whole other thing. So what do
we do then? Obviously we have more challenges as we
get older to finding new friends. And if you're in
the market for a new friend, I think one good
(48:01):
piece of advice that Tracy Moore at Jezebel offered was
that you you need to just go lots of places,
do lots of things that you like to do, essentially
set yourself up to meet people who are like you,
whether that's joining an outdoor group or volunteering regularly, or
essentially like pursuing your passion where other people will be
(48:23):
pursuing a similar passion, and that right there will give
you a foundation to start from. Right, because we're not
sixty anymore, hopefully we'll beyond the point where we lie
about our interests and you know what we like and
don't like. And so the more you put yourself in
a situation where you were genuinely happy and doing something
that you love, the more chance you'll meet somebody who
(48:43):
also really loves doing that thing well. And one theme
that I hear a lot when I talk to girl
friends my age about this process of meeting new friends
is that it feels very much like dating, for sure. Yeah,
being a grown up and finding a new friend. And
I've I not too long ago, have this conversation with
a mixed group men and women, and everybody agreed it's
(49:05):
like dating, and that it's hard, and but that it's
almost even more rewarding than going on several first dates
like with a possible romantic partner, because at least, like
there's no pressure in the friendship thing. Yeah, well, that
that's another thing. It's like you have to relieve yourself
of being terrified that it might not work out, because
(49:25):
it might not. You might not see this person, you
might this person might not be your BFF, but that's
okay because he or she is busy, just like you
are probably busy, and there are plenty of friend fish
in the sea, that's right. I mean, that's another thing
that that Tracy Moore said to is like the stakes
are very low. You know, meet people who make you happy,
and if they don't make you happy, or they don't
(49:47):
hang around or you don't see them again, you'll meet
somebody else. Yeah, but I think it is important. I mean,
particularly if you're in a situation where you've moved to
a new city or you are at a new job.
You're just sort of in like an known spots starting
from zero and obviously want some face to face friends.
It is. It is work in a lot of ways,
(50:08):
like like dating, if you want to if you want
to get out there, you gotta put some effort into it. Yeah,
but I think yeah, to develop, I mean, anybody can
have a circle of acquaintances where you're you're friendly to people,
but if you really are after like a very close friendship,
it's so critical to be yourself. And I mean, I
know we say that in terms of romantic relationships too,
(50:29):
but like, how are you expected to have a BFF
for a circle of close friends if you're acting like
you're not who you say you are or something right,
because the truth will come out eventually. But there was
one article that was in the Daily Email, so but
bear with me. It was simply um a piece on
(50:51):
friendships among women that had significant age gaps, and it
was just like anecdotes of how and why they got
along so well, and it was fascinating to see these
like much older women befriending much younger women and vice versa,
and how it's important to also as we get older,
to stay open to making friends who might not be
(51:14):
within you know, like two years on either side of
our age, because older folks are even younger folks depending
on how old you are, can make fantastic friends too. Well.
It's that whole diversity of experience thing. One thing that
relationship coach Karen Smedley pointed out was that maybe you're
at an age where all of your friends are having
babies but you either can't, don't want to, aren't ready, whatever.
(51:37):
Having an older friend who you know, having an older
friend or a younger friend who's having a different life
experience than your age group can be very valuable because
it kind of takes the pressure off. You're like, oh,
now I can see that there are other lifestyles out there.
I don't have to have this pressure to do X
y Z that all my friends are doing. Yeah, but now, Caroline,
is at time for us to ask folks for friendship
(51:59):
store for sure? Well, we want to hear from you
about your best friend and how friendship has affected your life.
Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com is where
you can send us your letters. You can also though,
tweet us at mom stuf podcast or send us a
message on Facebook. And one final making friends tip. You know,
(52:21):
you can always bring up the podcast because you know,
if you both like the podcast, then hey, you got
you have like over five topics to talk about. That's right.
So with that, we have a couple of letters to
share with you our friends right now. Okay, I have
(52:54):
a letter here from Anna who says that she used
to get the question no, we're are you really from
all the time. She says, my family is a mix
of German, Croatian, Swedish and Ukrainian, and I came out
looking very Eastern European. My professors would pronounce my name
with a strong accent. During roll call and after class
(53:14):
seemed very interested in asking where I was from. When
I would reply, oh, about two hours north in Ohio,
they would reply with no. Before that, I never quite
knew how to respond. People have even gone so far
as to speak to me in Russian or in very
slow English. I also thought it might be interesting to
give a perspective on exotic beauty from a slightly different perspective.
(53:35):
I'm a very light skinned, light haired, green eyed girl
living in rural Japan. Not many foreigners visit this part
of Japan, let alone live here. So for many people,
I am their first white foreigner they have seen in person.
The initial reaction is lots of squealing, with people touching
my hair, getting uncomfortably close to my eyes, and complimenting
me on how small my face is and how big
(53:56):
my nose and eyes are. Those are apparently compliments. I've
gotten many people asking me to take and use my
photo for advertising purposes with no pay, because I have
that quote unquote Russian beauty that is sought after here.
It all seems very forced, ultrapolite, but definitely does make
me feel an other. I would also like to add
that the amount of products here to make people women
(54:17):
in particular look western is mind boggling. Whitening creams, I
tape colored contacts for less than the equivalent of ten
dollars at a drug store. Hair lightning kits, and arm
and face covers for the beach, cars and bikes. I
just thought I would share. Man. Okay, Well, thanks for
the very interesting perspective. Annah, Well, I've got another letter
here in response to our exotic beauty episode. This is
(54:39):
coming from Lillian, who writes, I grew up in an
inner city neighborhood in northern New Jersey as a bi
racial woman of Puerto Rican and Chinese ethnicity. I've encountered
a really uncomfortable amount of fetishizing, not only from white men,
but also from black and Hispanic men who generally watched
too many Kung Fu movies. If I had a dollar
for every time I've been told I'm comprised of quote
(55:00):
the best of both worlds, or told that somehow my
mix is superior for stupid stereotypical reasons, I'd be a
very wealthy woman Puerto Rican curves and a docile freak
in the bedroom. The sex must be amazing. Imagine the
food she can cook. The first person to call me
exotic was my white male homeroom teacher in my freshman
(55:21):
year of high school. That was an uncomfortable year. Fortunately, though,
since then, I've heard the quote unquote compliment so many
times that I've developed the perfect response to it. Now.
Whenever someone calls me exotic, I say, oh great, another
one who wants to put me in a cage a
parent is exotic. I'm from New Jersey. The resulting flash
of embarrassment that tends to cross their faces is just priceless.
(55:44):
So thanks Lilian, and thanks to everybody who's written into
us mom Stuff at how stuff Works dot Com is
our email address, but you can also reach us on
Facebook and tweet us at mom Stuff podcast and for
links to all of our social media as well as
all of our podcast, blog and videos. There's one place
to go, and it's stuff Mom Never Told You dot com.
(56:08):
For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how Stuff Works dot com. And that brings us
to the end of this classic episode. I hope you've
learned a lot about best friends and feeling warm and
fuzzy about perhaps your best friend. Uh we would love
(56:30):
to hear about your best friend, and you can email
us about them at Stuff Media, mom Stuff at iHeart
media dot com. You can also find us on Twitter
at mom Stuff podcast or on Instagram at Stuff I've
Never Told You. Thanks as always to our suproducer Andrew Howard,
and thanks to you for listening. Stuff I've Never Told
You the production of I Heart Radios how Stuff Works.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
(56:51):
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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