They say life surprises you when you least expect it, and this book was definitely an instance when the saying was true. It all started from a Youtube video about friends and I found a lot of relevant points from it.
Even though this book is primarily targeted at women, there were a number of points I felt were very relevant and relatable and it helped me quite a lot.
The Problem
A very succinct summary is that the environment that we are in doesn't give us the level of intimacy in friendships that we desire. Despite the advent of technology, evidence has shown that society today has a lot more loneliness than before and when women were asked to rank their friendship intimacy on a scale of 1 to 10, they were twice more likely to give 1 or 2 than a 9 or 10. A study published in American Sociological Review also states that the common number of close confidantes one has, has decreased from two to three in 1994 to zero in 2004.
Feelings of disconnectedness and loneliness can be as harmful as addiction to alcohol or cigarettes. However, as much as many of us hate to admit it, it is the first step to creating more intimacy in our friendships. It's not a sign of weakness, but rather a sign of growth and setting the conditions right to make meaningful changes. However, it is expected that there will be slip ups along the way because personal growth is always uncomfortable at the start. That being said, one shouldn't shun it solely because of the discomfort or insecurity, but rather see it as part of the process. Acknowledging the gap is a crucial move and we can analyse deeper on what needs to be improved.
Another point worth noting is that frientimacy never occurs when two people first meet; it is something that really takes time and effort and isn't something that happens by magic. Hence, it isn't always about finding "better friends", but it's more about choosing a few friends to build a close friendship. We all have our idea of what an ideal friend looks like, but the catch is that anyone can come into your life as long as they aren't abusive or threatening, and they are friendly and warm.
Finally, we must understand that happiness is our responsibility and not our friends' responsibility. Take the analogy of a broken bucket; no matter how much water you pour in it, it'll still leak unless the holes are patched. Likewise, we need to heal our insecurities and wounds because additional love from our friends cannot compensate for it. I'm not saying that it's wrong to depend on friends for affirmation, but attaching our worth to how much love we received from others is a dangerous trap.
The Requirements
There are three key ingredients to having close friendships - positivity, consistency and vulnerability.
However, some points worth noting would be the fact that all three are needed and that a friendship can be harmed if not all three are matched, as well as the fact that not everyone will reach the top of the triangle and hit a 10 in all three domains. That is okay because different people bring different things to our lives.
Positivity
Many people feel that they are the ones who give more in a relationship. When couples were individually surveyed on the percentage they gave in a relationship, three-quarters of them had numbers that accumulated to more than 100 percent.
One threat to intimacy is this very belief that we give more than we get. It is important to take note that we need to take note of a few things - first of all, the ways that we may be giving and receiving might be different. Even though an ideal world would be myself sending my friend a food delivery and the friend returning the favour, a more prominent reality is a friend turning up for events that we plan. Scorekeeping is a dangerous trap to fall into because many of us think that we give more than we get, and this can hence breed tension.
Sometimes, we need to tell our friends what we need because they may have a different idea of that from us, and we also need to keep a lookout for the things that our friends give. Different friends play different roles in our lives; some of them may be people with similar interests, people who network us to others or people who mentor us and give us advice to make sure we are headed in the right direction. Moreover, there are five different love languages that people have - words of affirmation, acts of service, physical touch, quality time or receiving gifts. In other words, there may be a mismatch between what we need for love and what they think we need for love. The fact that no two people are clones of each other makes the differences even more likely to exist.
At the end of the day, we also need to show gratitude towards our friends for what they give to restore balance. Those who initiate more could actually be receiving more of something else from the friendship than they give, and hence it would be nice if they could express their appreciation for that. Likewise, those who aren’t that great at initiating could show their appreciation for their friends who initiate.
Consistency
In a society that expects us to be busy and career-driven, many of us feel that we have no time to make friends. However, the irony is that busy people actually need friends more because friends act as a buffer from some of the stress of daily life and work. In fact, Laura Vandekam’s book 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think states that we spend 56 hours per week sleeping and 50 hours at work on average, leaving us with 62 hours to decide how we want to spend our time. We can, hence, devote more time that we spend lazing around, scrolling through social media feeds or watching Netflix to building our friendships with people. The truth is that we have the time, but many of us are choosing not to spend their time on it.
Many people also lament about a lack of initiation from their friends, but it often has to do with their lack of initiation skills than the fact that there is something wrong with us. Hence, since initiating from ourselves is something that is within our control, we are strongly encouraged to initiate and not be so fearful of it. Believing that something is right with us and that the world needs more initiators, and that we are in control of our own friendship, is a crucial step to building better friendships.
Moreover, with the people we choose to be around, it would help to not label any interaction as one that isn’t worth our time because every friendship starts from scratch and no friendship is a waste of time. It’s less about the people whom we interact with, but more about the topics we talk about when we interact. That being said, not everyone can reach the highest level of connection, hence it is important to prioritise a few friends and build that consistency with them.
Vulnerability
Many of us have this misconception that vulnerability just means revealing more about our lives, but it actually means to share openly to deepen the friendship and not merely for the sake of doing so. It all starts with us knowing ourselves and who we are - building our self-awareness and believing that we are worth being known.
Moving forward, we also need to initiate new activities and conversations. New activities can make us anxious because there are the fears of rejection and what others will think of us, and that is normal. It would be nice to initiate new activities we are interested in out of our usual routine. Regarding conversations, it is important to talk about our friendships because that is the key to a transparent and honest friendship. Topics such as new subjects, asking questions and listening, as well as being curious about each other’s pasts, would definitely expand the friendship. Other ideas could be following up on past conversations, as well as sharing what we need from sharing and asking what our friend needs.
Likewise, it is important to both shine and share shame in front of our friends. Shining is important because it allows our friends to know our strengths, and we should encourage them to shine as well. However, sometimes we may feel afraid of showing our bright lights due to our need to fit in; we may think that it might make others feel inferior towards us. The thing that we must remember is that humility isn’t thinking less of ourselves; it is not thinking less of others. Some ways we can shine while staying humble include saying that we are aware of those who aren’t as well off as us in a certain aspect, affirming our friends and encouraging them to share about their highs.
Still, without our lows, we won’t be able to enjoy our highs. Thus, we also need to share those moments of insecurity, shame and stress with our friends to develop a whole friendship. The author said she likes to ask her friends the pair of questions: “What are you celebrating right now?” and “What is one thing causing you stress these days?” and notes that the two come as a set.
So, how can we be more open about our insecurities? We can offer support to others because the biggest obstacle to others sharing their insecurities is the fear of being judged or rejected. Thus, by assuring them they won’t be judged and praising them for courageously sharing, they will be more willing to open up. We can also reach out when we are hurting or ask them how they feel about a new event in their lives.
Obstacles To Intimacy
The Fear We’re Not Good Enough
It is important that we like who we are to enjoy intimacy. We all have the desires to fit in, to be liked and to feel chosen and special. However, believing that we aren’t good enough is like the leak in the bucket that no amount of water can compensate. Leaks in this context sound like the limiting belief that others will not accept us for who we are if we don’t show our true side. Others may be afraid others see them as arrogant, but in fact, the fear of coming across as arrogant ironically makes us more likely to be seen as such because we can come across as grandiose due to a lack of self-worth.
To revive our self-worth, we first need to know ourselves on a deeper level, more than what sort of clothes, food and music makes us happy. We need to know our values and what could potentially trigger our insecurities. We want to be close to others, but are we even close to ourselves? Moving forward, we can take a step back from the limiting beliefs we have, and analyse them and the triggers for the negative feelings and thoughts that we have. Feelings must be analysed and not suppressed; in fact, medication can never be used as a substitute for these feelings and the work to get to the root of them must be done.
However, more than that, we need to know that we are worthy and learn to appreciate our strengths and capabilities, and the fact that we will never fully heal from every single struggle. That is okay because growth is the goal in life. Even a bucket with holes can be helpful in the sense it can water the flowers on the ground.
The Fear of Rejection
As humans, we have a need to belong. In fact, this need is supported even more by research which shows that having a sense of community improves our physical and mental health drastically.
Rejection is something that is perceived very easily. Even an unanswered text or a comment we are doubtful about can be seen as rejection. Moreover, a study from a Dutch university also proves that rejection from undesirable things can sting. This can cause us to go down a slippery slope of believing that everything in life is against us and might cause us to view life or events through an overly-negative lens.
A lot of dealing with it constitutes reframing the way we perceive and react to events. Instead of assuming that people will reject us, we can try to think of alternative scenarios and respond with non-defensiveness. Choosing not to take things personally and instead let go of the urge to win a conversation is important. Sometimes, we may need to just convey our needs to our friends, such as when they give us advice when all we want is someone to listen to us. In fact, psychologists found that defensiveness can hurt ourselves more than it can hurt others.
Another important mindset to adopt is the fact that we must risk heartache and rejection in order to feel accepted and loved. It’s like the positive and negative feelings that are “opposites” of each other must come as a pair.
The Toxic Friend Trend
There have been countless articles promoting the idea of deleting toxic people from our lives. While the advice isn’t wrong, viewing friends through a suspicious lens causes the friendship to be put at risk and sets our expectations for a friendship way too high. Dubbing friendships as toxic is not a good idea because we all exhibit critical, self-obsessed or jealous behaviours from time to time. The term “toxic” should be reserved for the manipulative people; the rest of them who are not malicious but exhibit those behaviours should be seen as works in progress.
What needs to be done, however, is to acknowledge those gaps we have and areas for improvement. Even if we think others are toxic, we might actually be seen as “toxic” to them because of the behaviours that we exhibit that might come from one of these possibilities: either we’re not aware of it, or we might be coming up with excuses for ourselves.
We can also reframe the way we see others and instead of just looking at the negatives, we can also look at the positives to get a fuller picture of them (this isn’t to say we should ignore the negatives, but training the mind to view things from a more neutral perspective). Specifically, others whom we think are needy aren’t actually needy, because humans are ultimately co-dependent on each other. Since we want others to be there for us, why not be there for them too?
C.S. Lewis also shared this quote: “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to keep it intact you must give it to no one.” As such, believing that we can receive love will allow us to lean in at times and, while we may get rejected and hurt at times, we can’t do without that if we want to experience love.
However, this isn’t applicable if a friendship is abusive.
Jealousy and Envy
It is easy to use the two terms interchangeably, but jealousy is fear of losing something or someone to someone else, while envy is wishing that we could have something that someone else has.
There are two ways to deal with these feelings - we can either blame others for something we feel is lacking in our lives, or we can acknowledge that these are things that we want and work towards pursuing them. The latter is the option we should choose to protect our friendships; putting others down is but a huge disservice to our friendships.
One way to do it is by cheering even when we don’t feel like doing so. There is, understandably, a fear of coming across as ingenuine in such a situation; however, we must remember that there are many voices in our head and it isn’t fake if one voice actually says that we are happy for our friend, even if others convey jealousy or envy. Another option is to befriend those whom we think have it all, and we may realise that others might envy something that we have, even if we think they are the one who should be envied. Regardless of the situation, it is worth noting that life isn’t a bed of roses for anyone and no matter how smooth-sailing one’s life looks on the outside, there will be struggles on the inside. The third option is to offer empathy - which is tapping into our friend’s feelings, not thinking about how we’d feel in the same situation. This is where many of us fall into the trap of shifting the conversation focus to about us instead of him/her.
The final two practices constitute being honest. We need to be honest with them about our envy, but also encourage them to keep shining and having other friends. Maybe we could say that we are happy for our friends, but we have also had these feelings of wishing we could have what they do. However, we must also realise that all of us have this need to belong and the yearning to be part of a tribe, so it is worth noting that letting our friends have other friends diminishes our friendship in no way. Two people can be best friends, but it doesn’t mean they cannot be friends with others.
Holding Ourselves Back
This is the opposite scenario - when we feel we are the object of jealousy. The author cited two instances - she felt that her sister would never be able to shine if she herself was shining brightly, and that people criticised her when she was at her best moments yet offered her solace and comfort when she was at her worst. In this case, success felt lonely at the top.
However, the thing is that others’ self-worth isn’t defined by our success, and us shining brightly doesn’t make them shine any less. It’s just that many of us believe that when one person shines, he or she dims the lights of others. Hence, what we can do to reduce tension between us and our friends is by encouraging them to shine and asking questions that invite them to share about the joyful moments of their lives, or we could gently remind them not to dismiss compliments. The first step, however, is to understand other possible reasons deeper than the common belief that our friend is just jealous. There may be a deeper lying issue to the jealousy.
Another thing worth noting is to keep connections healthy and not impress solely for the sake of wanting to win over others. Being a people pleaser takes so much more energy than just focusing on building a stronger friendship, so why go through all the extra trouble? In fact, it’s okay to not win others over, because those who leave when you share your achievements don’t truly love you; they love your achievements.
Finally, if we are more “successful” than our friends in a certain aspect, we can include them in our success. For example, if a friend is jealous of us making more money than them, we can treat them to a meal and invite them to give to us in other ways. Asking them to celebrate our success is an act of vulnerability that reflects great strength. That way, when others are more involved in our success, the success we get need not be so lonely anymore.
Concluding Thoughts
This book is honestly one of the best books that I’ve read. Instead of the typical “my way or the highway” approach, it offers a lot of alternatives and questions a lot of common advice that we hear, such as those about being solely dependent on oneself or the fact that friends either energise or drain you. There are many useful tips on how to be more honest with our friends, and a lot of misconceptions that we have about so many aspects about life are addressed. I would strongly recommend this to anyone who’s interested in building deeper friendships because a lot of the skills and points are very relevant and useful.
Picture credits: https://www.amazon.com/Frientimacy-Deepen-Friendships-Lifelong-Happiness/dp/1580056075
Comentarios