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Friendships

Okay, So friendships, happy place. Friendships. What separates acquaintances from friendships? Just a couple ideas. What would you say? Would separate an acquaintance from a friendship Joy you allow with a person? Yes. And then wasn't it as we were talking about How how you actually conflict with friends. But you're a polite with acquaintances. Yes. So to allow conflict because you care about that other person writes to me, delineates friendship. Yes. So, to you, a friendship is establish If you're somebody I can actually talk to a the level but things that aren't going well. And I know we can go there with you. Whereas I probably wouldn't have that dialogue with an acquaintance. And if I have an issue with you that I could bring it up because I am afraid of the conflict. Yes, because I care enough like, well, I want I want to maintain this friendship with tomorrow. So I'm gonna bring up this conflict rather than just saying like no problem. Yeah, let it go. And interestingly enough, w...

hen you avoid a conflict with me, you are actually separating yourself more for me and I don't get to know it. That's part of the choices we make when we avoid conflict is that we're removing ourselves from relationship in. The other person doesn't know. Um, Brian, would you What would you say? What would you distinguish? The difference? One acquaintance on a friendship level of trust, in terms of how much you trust each other and stated, Or just you know, that you can trust this person, be a little bit more what you're able to share with them. I mean, time back. And I ask this because in today's world, like I said, I'm gonna blend friendship with social media. In today's world, we have 80,000 friends, right? And yet there needs to be some distinguishing of what is our friend and what is our acquaintance and what is our social media contact? Etcetera about relationship. I like it very much. I believe you say it. Mathias is named Mathias Smell. PhD from the University of Arizona's Department of Psychology, did a study to determine at determined specifically how much reaching out to other people, friends and what level friendship it needed to be. Um, what? What level of friendship determined? Happiest, which I think is interesting, because when we talk about how important friendship is and we talk about important connection is there's actually a continuing their of what matters on Day did this, they did this program where they took. I believe it was 100 people over the course of several days, and they coded the way they talk to each other. They coded the talk that two individuals had in each other as either small talk or substantive. It was gonna fall into one of two categories. Small talk was defined as trivial banter. Most of what people talk about all the time. That's the majority of conversation. You say what most people talking about trivial crack. It's things like one liners about the weather, right, versus a substantive conversation, which would include something that was more meaningful to both parties. That was, was more than just a quick catch up. It was going to a next level. That was kind of how they define both things and what they found overall when looking at these friends all talking to each other. And everyone was just lumped in as a friend that certainly the substantive conversation confirmed that they were more friends versus the acquaintance. People had the small talk and overall that they found the unhappiest people were engaged in the least amount of conversation and spent the most time alone. So the unhappiest people and this is this is regardless, I don't think your goddesses a word. I've been correction of that. This is, regardless, although it is a cafe in Durham irregardless Cafe, regardless of whether or not you consider yourself by human nature, to be an introvert or extrovert wasn't part of the equation that it's not about whether or not you like to be more alone or you like to be more out there. It had to do with the fact that from just agenda, genuine happy list level, the people who connected the least amount of time and tended to go off alone the most were by far the unhappiest. The next happiest level people were the ones, had the most amount of conversation and spent the least amount of time alone. That kind of makes sense, right? But that was actually the middle ground, the happiest, the happiest people by far. These are the winners. Dignity being actually had about a third less small talk in terms of all the talk. They had that 1/3 less small talk, but twice as much meaningful conversation as the unhappiest people. So what they came out of that research with and several other studies back this up. But I really like how this had to do was that it's not about connecting and being friends with 800 people or 1000 people on Facebook. It's how deep you go, the quality of those less shipping, how substantive how much means to you. So they found that the happiest people could have four dear friends in the world, and that's it. And there's only people they talk to you. But boy, did they talk to them versus someone who would have 400 friends and have mostly small talk all the time would have much unhappier. Mood reads. I think right now, as we blend this with social media, that's pretty important. That's pretty important to recognize, because sometimes you can feel like I talk to people all day long, and yet it and sad and afraid they found that it only takes minutes of meaningful dialogue a day to change a mood, to feel more connected and to be more happy. Just 15 minutes when Joe is at here, she was saying, Spent 30 minutes alone. If you have four kids try for seven minutes a kid way, think that that's not much. But in the scope of over all day and the pace at which we go, it's actually pretty powerful, and it makes a difference in terms of how you feel and the less alone you feel. Um, I love this the curve of friendship. I thought this was very cool. If you think about how many friends should have, what makes a good friend like, how many friends is every else have? Do I have enough friends to have too many friends? Um, in terms of speaking of friendship, the idea of close friend varied with age. We're gonna talk about that in a second. But most school aged Children and adolescents had an average of 3 to 5 what they would call close friends. Have any of you guys have ever spent time with school age Children? They have a best friend every week today. Did you know Lisa is not my best friends? That was Thursday. It's now Susie so close Friends would vary, but they would have about 3 to 5 close friends. When you're in your twenties or thirties on in a whole new stage of life, you have an average of eight close friends. The distinguishing factor there is that you tended to have more close friends when you had when you were just getting married or you were just starting out as an adult in the city on you hadn't necessarily brought on the whole trappings of Children, etcetera. By middle age, that number declines to five close friends, and by retirement it just goes up a little bit. Six close friends. So these members as they stand, um, it first of all, I just think it's interesting that there's the curve of friendship. But the other thing is the definition of what close friends meant changed by the time you have retired. Ah, close friend is a close friend. They have been your friend up through ups and downs through thick and thin through dramatic life changes. Those those really mean close friends. When you're younger, you say you have five close friends, but they're flippant friendships, and they don't They don't have the obviously you're in school when you see each other here and there and answer stuff. It's just they don't have that concrete depth to them on those Middle Ages again, the eight close friends tents in their twenties and thirties. You tend to lose a lot of those friendships. We're gonna talk about that in a second, but those who you it identifies your close friends and somebody took a snapshot of you. 25 are not your close friends at 45 Certainly not that whole number, perhaps half on by middle age again, you're you're sliding in there with people who just get you. You get what they're doing. You wonder it's a lot more acceptance. It's less flippancy, and you're more likely to keep those people regardless, what happens in your life. So there's two patterns here, but I think it's really interesting, cause I know a lot of people who then say, you know, if you're lucky to have one good friend in your life, well, what is that number and how do other people see it? So what is a close friend, then what? I was a close friend. Goodbye, friends with acquaintance. What's a close friend? We tend to have different categories, of course, what we say. But according to the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, the five qualities that were most selected as the desirable attributes of a friend and this was crossed gender for a man and a woman were warmth, kindness, expressivity, openness and a good sense of humor. That is what people are looking for in someone they want to be close to, the other part of that whole equation. In terms of what's a close friend is, you have to get it back. That's what came up in time and time again. I want someone who's like this, and I want them to treat me with these qualities and I'm gonna treat them. Reciprocity was huge in this. Someone's not a close friend. Unless we're both giving to each other. It can't be just one way I'm giving you this, and I don't get it back. Those friendships do not last as close friendships over time, and the average life span of a friendship is interesting. We hear a lot about the seven year itch that Number seven came up earlier when I was talking about when these obstacles hit the most between five and seven. This seven year itch applies across the board in terms of dear friends and friends that we make virtually in all our different ways. But I'm gonna have to give credit to something. Studies. So forgive me if I'm saying a lot of names, but I don't want to say I did this study. Sociologist Gerald Molen Hurst invested the context in which we developed these friendships. And one of his conclusions was that there's that time and time again. A really large study is that we lose about half of our friends every seven years. Ah, I think about your own life. Think about who? Your dearest friends seven years ago. Just take a moment to do that. Just like an exercise. Actually, write it down. Write down three friends of, Write down three friends of yours now and then go back seven years and go back seven years and tell me if you find this to play out, just take a minute now. Because I when I first heard that I was like No way And that's it. Yes way. Yeah, I would imagine that it definitely changes. And I know I mean, because you move a lot as well to so you're not constantly in their families. And then as you get older, it becomes harder to make new friends. So again that that might be why the numbers a little bit lower, right? And then, in terms of one of the things that we found, we found a lot. Me and Jerald when we did this research is that we keep a similar number of friends. But we do replace the members in that network, and the network could be our who We go out for drinks with friends. We all have our friends, right? This do I got drinks? Friends. This is the one I would call it 2 a.m. And this is the friend. That first thing I get to work, I say, How was your weekend? I probably see them ever over the weekend, but that they are my friend. In that context, friends come in context, which I think is really interesting. And when we lose a friend in a context, we use our lose our work friend, really lose our neighbor friend. We tend to replace them over time with somebody else. Who's that context, friend? It's not as methodical is that because things like we change cities, we change jobs, we change schools. We changed life situations, and now we hang out with different people. We now have several kids, and other kids are doing this and this person doesn't have kids. And so now maybe we see him in this context, but not that context. That's a really common conflict in relationships is somebody moves into a new life stage. And the friends that were there before feel a little left behind because now they have all those new life context friends and yet naturally, as humans, that's how we work. It's not usually something that we're ever trying to cut somebody out, but it's it's how we tend to move through life. You guys be bridesmaid. Bridesmaid was that was kind of the set up for the film was that she was competing with. The other bridesmaid was who was her friend in a new context. That's a really normal dynamic, and it plays out time and time again. So we tend to keep a certain number of friends that would you like Kerber friendship? It didn't separate that much. It wasn't that crazy difference it was just we would replace people roughly half of our group every seven years. So did you guys find that that Rebecca did you get a chance to look at those? Do you guys do that exercise about the friends every years? Absolutely. I mean my I have three Children under age seven, and now my closest friends are the parents of my funds friends. Because we spend so much time together, right? Proximity is huge. It's It's actually very difficult to remain very close friends with a significant geographic distance, especially when there's a time change unless there's a strong intention to remain friends. One of the things that they found is that with social media and the advent of Skype and Google, plus hangouts, and this and that is that you have more ability to maintain a friendship over time because you could say, Look, I meet you, Um, at nine o'clock with wine online, let's recap our day. You can now retain this friendships, but the lack of the eye contact in the expressiveness and the shared experiences is what separates friendships. That's why you can have pen pals and keep in touch, but slowly it starts to trickle down to the Christmas card of the holiday card of the Every couple years we do a shoutout in Facebook. Hope you're doing well. Way, start, toe. Nobody ever wants to say, like, Wow, this friendships really gone away. It usually whimpers out over time and so that that intentional effort Teoh maintain that friendship and keep those things that make us think you're my friend. I can see you. You can see me were connected. This matters. That's where the friendship part comes in minor, but like knowing kind of like the menu. Sha of someone's life is a big deal because very I think that's why we have that feeling like I haven't talked personally like six months. But we land right back where we were, and I feel like when, uh, my best friend and I were like in completely different cities for, like, seven years, six years, and I think we caught so often that I mean I knew what you had for lunch. I didn't like so many little details, and we realized later that that was part of what kept this connected versus, like there were other people that I kept in touch with, but I kind of only knew, like, the sound bite of what was going on in their life. Right feed? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that's very true and part of what the obstacle is as it relates to friendships maintaining over time. It's not just the proximity, but it's the fact that you start to feel like by the time I told you the whole story to catch you up. It's just too much work. So I won't tell you the story this time. And enough skip stories means friendship starts just separating. Um, who are our friendships over time with this was breathing interesting to me in our six teens to twenties or so, 20% of our friends happened to be relatives. So cousins, siblings, people that you're generally friend with. You've heard people say I'm best friends with my mom, things like that and 20% of them are romantic partners. By the time in your thirties or forties that never dips you, you don't really get to see relatives that much. Your life is got a lot going on in 15% of relatives, 60% of who we call our dearest friend is our partner, our life partner. And then at the age of 76 up those relatives that were 15% of your network are now half of your neck. Wear those people your very dear to very close to, and about 30% are partners. And a lot of that has to do with how we age and live and who's still living and where we are, right. But what's really interesting is that that idea that the people you start with are the people that you've known over time, and you realize I've known you through all of this. I would not have called you my dear friend in any way in my thirties and forties and how my life is going. But over time we gain respect and gain the trust, and we have constantly have that my new sha because we stayed each other's lives, even if word out each other's lives, I'm hearing for my mom how my cousins doing and this and that, and then they drift back together and find friendships. This to me was very interesting to think that this is a very natural cycle for us in terms of what? What we find as friends and relatives are any well, joy, you can speak. This was one of your best friends. My sister. Yeah, Your best, Red. Yeah, I know. Sometimes I think I don't know how unique my my situation is, but I think a lot of two second blurb on you and your sister for those of you didn't see your class here created by my sister Jules and I work together. We have a photography studio together, and we're twins, best friends. And sometimes that's good for us to work together and sometimes not. But But I think that sometimes I wonder if I'm in a situation where I, um well, let other friendships slide because she's such a good friend of mine that I would focus more on her when I was thinking like we've spent years apart where we lived in different countries and I knew what she had for lunch, too, because we were always in touch with each other. And they've had other friendships that I don't count on it much because I always have her. Yeah, so I don't know that's healthy or not weighing a healthy example. But you are relatives and extraordinarily dear friends, and I think that's interesting. And again, one of my goals when I talk about building relationships with your Children, I would love that. I would be to be one of the closest friends as they get older. Right now, I know my job needs to be more parent, but I would love to be someone that they feel like is actually a good friend later. That's That's one of my goals. So men, women and friendships did you know that men and women process friendship differently? Let's look first at men being friends, with women and women being friends with men. Let's talk about their for a second. The number one reason cited that men valued friendships with the opposite sex was because of the emotional support they didn't get from other men. They wanted a good friend who was a woman platonic relationship because they wanted to be able to have that emotional support that they felt too weird to talk to guys about and they just couldn't get. And that was one of the That was the number one reason they sought out friends of the other gender. The number one case. Why women became platonic friends with men was that they enjoyed the opportunity to act, interact in a more masculine style. But they sometimes felt shut out of it with their own gender. I thought that was interesting. By the way, if you want to get a hint into my last three months, this was me on the couch at 11 0 really? That is fastening that's going into Evernote that's gonna go into the presentation. So the other thing that's very interesting about how men and women do friendship differently when you talk about men as friends, with men and women as friends with women. Basically, women would sorry, just okay, this is actually The study was conducted at the University of North Carolina. They found that women emphasised friendship through talking and communicating and sharing, and men emphasized friendship through doing through activities. I thought that's pretty fascinating. I mentioned my husband's like, Yeah, of course. So men would bond through golfing and fishing and sport, whereas women would go to dinner and just plan to talk and to share and communicate on Guim in were actually three times more likely to choose talking as any activity that they were gonna do that evening with friends, whereas men were twice as likely to success to select an activity is what they're gonna dio. She said, Any guy, what do you do with your friends tonight? I kind of understand talk. It was an unusual response, even if men needed that. So men would instead of trying to break down the barriers and hold that space. We talked earlier with micro sharing that about you'll be able to kind of hope open that space for other men to feel that they can open up and then share. Instead of doing that, they would tend to be to go to their women friends and have those conversations. Or they would feel stuck. They would feel like they have no place to do it. And they would dump everything on their partner, which would cause issues in the bedroom, as we know. That was so 11 oclock this morning or whatever it was nine am Has this been extraordinarily long day? We have covered the damn it. I mean, this morning you weren't even engaged. What on earth is happening? Okay. The vital effects of friendship. Why we care. Great great stats. I love these. The reason why this is according to vital friends, the people you can't afford to live without massive study of friendship showed that if your best friend or your dear friend eats healthily, your five times more likely to have a healthy diet yourself if you have a best friend at work. I mentioned this when we kicked off the show. If you have a best friend at work, you're seven times more likely to be engaged in your job. Or the really quirky fact isn't rehearsed. If you do not have a dear friend at work, you're 12 times less likely to be engaged at work. And dear friend or good friend or work best friend just means there's someone there that you connect to and feel close to. It doesn't mean they're your best friend in your whole life, Um, married If you're married, your friendship is five times more important to you your friendship with your spouse than physical intimacy. It doesn't that mean that physical interest, it doesn't matter to you, but if you really put it down, if you to say the one thing that really stands out across the board this relationship I have with my wife. This relationship I had with my husband is this dear companionship. That's what matters. She moves in this. I love all the other things. Yeah, she's got a body. Sometimes she takes her clothes off. It's but it's that companionship that's mostly missed. And if you are sick, this one blew my mind. Having close support can cut the risk of dying in half. This was a landmark study done at Stanford University that showed that women who had breast cancer, who's participated in a support group where people intentionally supported each other, live twice as long as though those who didn't and they actually reported less pain. There were a lot of reasons for that. But one of the major things is that as friends, we tend to be there for each other. We tend to try to help people through adverse effects. We tend to say things like, Look, I'm your friend. I care so much about you and I want you to know that what you're doing right now isn't healthy, you know that? What were you been smoking for 20 years? We're holding an intervention, and it's all your friends here. You know, it's things like that, these broader effects to encourage each other to care for each other, to say, You know, yeah, it's one thing to say Live your own life, but I actually want you in my life and I want to help you through this when someone is ill and, um and extremely vulnerable because they've taken, gone. We mentioned breast cancer, any sort of major life events where they're very ill, their friendships. That's when the friends rally and help and support them and come and visit them, the hospital, and share them up and make them food. And all those things that we think are nice and good community things have a massive physical effect on how well they get, which I just think it's so encouraging. Statistics even go as far as pointing out that people with social support have fewer cardiovascular problems and immunity problems and lower levels of cortisol. You've heard mention this all the time. This is the stress hormone. They have lower levels of stress when they feel like they've got support and friendship. Part of the thinking behind that is the the actual practical things that I just mentioned you're sick. They bring you food, you know, you're not feeling well. They go out and get you some medicine that you need the things that physically will help you get better. But the other part of that is we're hard wired. The evolutionary argument is that we're social animals. Didn't rest kick off this class front and he announces us because we're social animals who are humans. I think that was his plug for this program in our last class workshop. But we are meant to live as a group, are meant to live in a pack remit to live as a society. And over time, what we're doing is separating that. We're moving farther and farther apart. More people live alone now than ever before. We always used to live with families and extended families, and we break that up more and more. We're living in larger spaces in the Western world. We're living in larger spaces as a one than we ever used to do before were substituting online friendship for real world friendship. And when I just mentioned a lot of those practical matters, that is stuff that has to happen in person has to happen in a community, and we're investing in real life friendships more than ever. We're investing less in real life friendships than ever before because we are. So what's the word with B is the not the other world with being because we're so busy. So we're not investing in those relationships, even if we really want to grab a drink with a friend after work, we have a lot to do. We have a ton of things to get through tonight, and we're really tired and those fuzzy pink socks at home. They are so comfortable and my feet could be in them right now instead that a bar with you. And that's the way we tend to go basically through the over amount. Overwhelming amount of research says that having genuine friendships is akin to taking a daily multivitamin. They really support you that much. If you took my sales workshop, the three day sales workshop I touched on this towards the end when I was talking about some of the things that have to do with work life balance. We chatted on that for a little bit, but who here is familiar with the top five Regrets of the Dying. Have you seen this? This is This is really powerful. I have actually read through this several times. I do believe it's a book now. It started as a nurse who had been working with patients in hospice, had started noticing, over and over again that the regrets that these people had, as they were ending their lives where eerily similar. And over time she started documenting this. And then she wrote an article and it became widespread. And now I believe there's a book. But the thing that's really amazing is these top five things that people regretted most in their life is everything. I didn't know this when I mentioned this last time on sales course. Everything we've been talking about, this relationship course is touched on here. The father. The five regrets were Number one is. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself and not what others expected of me. That idea of the relationship to yourself of becoming more aware of who you are, not trying to change your but becoming more aware of your yourself. Number two. I wish I hadn't worked so hard we can busy ourselves out of a marriage marriage. We convince ourselves out of our Children's childhood weaken. Busy ourselves, certainly at a friendships, apparently at the clip of every seven years in half. Number three. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings. We talked about vulnerability and courage. And what an incredible connection there is between the two of those I thought you were. You're very courageous today. No doubt to go up and do that. You had to you into both Whitney share your feelings in front of everybody here. And, um actually, I think what Rebecca said is man, that guy has ball. I would say the whole word. It was definitely a big compliment. Um, and, uh, in case your Children are watching what she said, man, that I had a guy haven't Elmo basketball 4 40 Fella must do a lot of sports with his male friends. That's what Rebecca said. Um, but the idea of having the courage to express your feelings earlier when Brian and Sarah up here we were talking about when you guys were looking each other, Why is it so hard to look at her and say that hurt my feelings, that it just doesn't even occur to you on def. You were to tap in and find a way to say it. It takes a lot of courage. The irony with vulnerability is it's the softest part of us, and we have Teoh pull on a lot of resource to be able to have the courage to show it. That's what that irony is. I'm gonna skip to number five and come back to number four because it illustrates my point. Number five is that I wish I had let myself be happier. We don't let ourselves be happy because that's selfish because we have to do things for everybody else. We don't have time to sit there and just do something for ourselves. And yet when we do that, we actually fortify ourselves to not only B'more for other people. We care for others better. When we have more to give and we've given to ourselves, we're not feeling so taken from and in terms of an interpersonal relationship, were more dynamic, interesting per person. If we've given that time for our own Selves to have something to bring to the table and then number four, which was, I wish I had stayed more in touch with my friends. That was one of the top five regrets of the Dying was that over time people had realised that in there dying weeks that they had let go of so many friendships because they're too busy because they moved because there's a lot of effort because they were overwhelmed with all the things in their life, and they never created that white space on their calendar. For those friendships, it was a major regret that when it was their time to leave, they didn't even know how to get in touch with people that they wanted to say. You meant so much to me in my life at this stage of that sage or whatever it was. I've always thought of you. I haven't talked to you in 20 years. I have always thought of you that regret that, and they probably wouldn't get the chance when their time was over. That that's how much friendships could mean to us