As researchers and humans, we are very interested in happiness. In one study project, we explore how a person’s ethics and decision processes influence types of psychological well-being. While psychological well-being involves a lot of nuanced things to understand (positive emotions, resilience, self-acceptance, purpose), one fact is inescapable: Humans are social creatures, and our happiness is tied up in the people around us.
Since we are pro-happiness, we look for ways to help people be happier. We probably don’t need to tell you that friendship is an important source of happiness but since we are academics we are going to anyway. We also have a strategy for cultivating new friendships to share.
Friends are a gift. They are a saving grace in times of struggle. Our old friends, new friends, work friends, and friends who become like family (#framily) all serve particular purposes in our lives. They each contribute to our psychological well-being differently, and we know this from personal experience.
Tara met her best friend Melanie on the first day of high school in 1991. Ed met his best friend Dan in Senegal in 1997. These people could easily blackmail us but never would because they love us too much. They are our ride-or-die, true blue, best friends forever and ever and are good for us! Research shows that friendships are associated with greater happiness, self-esteem, and sense of purpose. They even help us to live longer, healthier lives. Thanks, friends!
Since the two of us writing this are real-life friends, we thought it would be interesting to investigate the differences between how men and women approach friendship. There is a lot of great research on this. It shows that women’s relationships often center on emotional support based on our female friend’s ability to know a friend’s needs. Men’s friendships tend to be less based on shared feelings and more on shared activities or interests. The main takeaway: Perhaps men and women do friendship differently.
Different approaches to friendship are fine but this blog is called “The Problem With” so we have some bad news.
Friendship can have a dark side, and you have likely felt it. You may think you’ve outgrown schoolyard peer pressure, but the pressure to conform persists in adult friendships. We want people to like us so we do things that may not be in our best interest. Maybe it’s having one too many adult beverages on a work night, spending too much money on a trip, or spending time you don’t have on an activity.
This grown-up peer pressure can take many forms because our friends influence our priorities, how we spend our time and money, and what goals we work toward. The flip side: These things can also be limited by our friendships. There’s no telling how many successful romantic partnerships have been shut down or marginalized by friendships.
Maybe our friends try to protect us from getting hurt or settling, or we disqualify ourselves for the sake of our friendships. For better or worse, the influence friends have can be monumental.
Our friendships also help solidify our self-concept, but it can also become a kind of echo chamber. That’s because we naturally have an affinity for people similar to ourselves, a phenomenon known as homophily. This can limit our ability to change and grow; both important for our eudaimonic well-being. Consequently, the people we rely on to help us make better, more informed judgments are not making us more informed. What’s worse, they make us feel like we have considered other perspectives even though their perspectives are not different from our own.*
Another problem: Friendships end. Dionne Warwick articulated in Billboard’s 1986 Hot 100 chart topper, That’s What Friends Are For…
Knowing you can always count on me, for sure
That’s what friends are for
For good times and bad times
I’ll be on your side forever more
That’s what friends are for…
Real-life friendships don’t generally work like that. Do we need to be on someone’s side forever to be a good friend? We don’t think so. Like any good relationship, friendship is a two-way street. Just because you’ve known someone for most of your life doesn’t mean they get to stay in it by default.
Sometimes friendships run their course and come to an end. These things happen and even though the fallout can be painful, it can also lead to personal growth and realizations about how and with whom you want to spend your time. Research even shows that as we age, we tend to “proactively prune” our friendships in favor of emotionally close social partners (as opposed to peripheral acquaintances). The older we get, the less time we have on the planet, and the less willing we are to spend time with people who don’t bolster us emotionally.
We also learned that men are lonelier, have trouble maintaining close friendships with other men, and have fewer close friendships than women. That’s a problem but we have some ideas to help.
We realize that making new friends as an adult is difficult. It requires putting yourself out there, which can be a real challenge. This is where that homophily thing can pay off. When you are more public about who you are and what you like, it will get noticed by others who share those interests—others who may be drawn to you because they are like you. Plus, you’ll have something to talk about, which can help in the early days of friendship.
Remember: As Christian Rudder points out in his groundbreaking book, Dataclysm, trying to fit in can be counterproductive. Self-actualization is a key component of eudaimonic well-being and it’s tough to self-actualize when you are trying to be someone you are not. Also, you can’t hide what makes you different if you are trying to attract people similar to yourself.
Be sure to manage your expectations. Close friendships rarely happen overnight. Our real-life friendship took over a decade to blossom into what it is today. It is the result of years spent building trust by proving that we could listen to each other, rely on each other, make each other laugh, and support each other when things are not great.
Friendships, for all their problems, are worth it.
*A more complicated term for this is epistemic closure.
