Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - How to Make New Friends with Dr. Marisa Franco | Clutterbug Podcast # 246

Episode Date: October 28, 2024

Are your friendships more important than your relationship with your significant other?! In this episode, I'm thrilled to welcome Dr. Marisa Franco, a psychologist and expert on friendships. Dr. Franco shares helpful and eye-opening advice on building stronger connections in our lives. We dive into practical tips for making friends as adults, nurturing the friendships we already have, and creating a real sense of community. Whether you're looking to meet new people or deepen your current friendships, Dr. Franco offers guidance to make it feel easier and more meaningful.   Learn more about Dr. Marisa Franco here: https://drmarisagfranco.com/ Order her book Platonic here: https://drmarisagfranco.com/platonic-the-book/     You can find more Clutterbug content here: Website: http://www.clutterbug.me YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@clutterbug TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clutterbug_me Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clutterbug_me/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Clutterbug.Me/   #clutterbug #podcast #friendships Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We talk a lot on the Clutterbug podcast about decluttering and organizing and cleaning and getting motivated and getting off your butt and doing things that are good for you. But what I don't talk a lot about is getting off our butt and strengthening the most important thing, which is friendships, not only making new friends, but really nurturing the ones that we currently have. And today I'm so excited because I am interviewing Dr. Marissa G. Franco. She is a renowned psychologist, author, expert on friendships, and definitely the author of The Best Selling Book, Plotonic, How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make and Keep Friends. I feel like she's got some really real life and profound advice and insights that are going to help all of us just really foster a stronger community. Oh, welcome Dr. Marissa G. Franco. I'm so excited to have you here on the Clutterbug podcast.

I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for having me. This is exciting. I feel like friendship is something I struggle with a little bit, maintaining relationships for a whole lots of reasons. And you literally wrote the book on it. So this is exciting to talk about this. I'm curious, though, how you started specializing in friendship and relationships. I know you're a psychologist, but this is like, it's different. Yeah, in my young 20s, I went through a breakup and I took it really hard. And so I asked my friend Heather, hey, Heather, do you want to start a wellness group? We can meet up, practice wellness, cook, meditate, do yoga together?

and we started this group and it was so life-changing for me. And I looked around and I was like, wow, I think I took this breakup so hard because I felt like I had no love in my life or I wasn't worthy of love once this romantic relationship didn't work out. And I was like, why doesn't this love matter? Why have I been pretending this hasn't counted all along? And I felt like my own assumptions was predicated on like a larger social messaging, especially to women around romantic love.

what that means and what friendship doesn't mean correspondingly. So I got really curious about those messages and I was reading more and more books and I just really wanted a kind of book to exist that used science and gave friendship the dignity that I thought it really deserved. And eventually I was just like, okay, why don't I write it? Oh, that's actually really beautiful. I absolutely love that. Yeah, I've always thought of relationships as being a significant other. And in my youth, I was like a relationship bouncer, like from like boyfriend to boyfriend to boyfriend, but never really held on to the girlfriend relationships. Like I didn't see those as important or as important.

So you're so right. That's so fascinating. And now that I mean I'm 45, I'm really like, where are my girl tribe? You know, where is this connection? But it's hard. I find it hard as an adult to make it. new friends. It's not like when you're kids and you schedule a play date, you know. So I love that you actually talk about that. The book is not just about strengthening relationships. It's how to make

new friends and how to keep the ones that you have. And you talk about something that I've never heard of called attachment theory. Yeah. Can you explain what this is? Of course. So when we're young, how our parents treat us, leads us to create a template for how we think people will treat us throughout our lives. And so throughout our lives, we interpret the same events very differently based off of that early template. So there are some people whose parents were maybe sometimes loving, sometimes very preoccupied with other things. They really had to fight for their parents' attention. They became what's called anxiously attached. They always think, you're going to leave me, you're going to abandon me unless I'm always trying or you're always reassuring me.

So in their friendships, they tend to put a lot of effort, but it tends to be very volatile because they take rejection worse. They assume they're being rejected when they're not. They'll sort of withdraw from friends because they don't think friends care. They won't bring up problems because they think that'll lead friends to abandon them. So they're really trying, but they're not getting the outcomes that they want because of that early attachment style and those sets of assumptions. And then you have people who their parents were there physically, but not emotionally. They gave them maybe food, shelter, but when it came to needing

emotional support, their parents would kind of just abandon them, stop crying, stop being upset, get angry at them for having emotions. So they shut down their emotions. And in shutting down their emotions, they shut down the desire, need, rewards of connection. They actually feel like connections threatening, that people are going to shame them like their parents will. So they are avoiding They tend to be kind of lone wolves, very rarely vulnerable. You get close to them, they pull away, very afraid of intimacy. Their autonomy gets threatened very easily, so they really need to be self-sufficient, not depending on anyone because that's what they had to do when they were young.

So they did not be as generous towards others and not as supportive because, again, these are all threats to their own autonomy. But then you have people whose parents were kind of good enough. They were caring. When you were upset, they tried to comfort you and support you. They tried to understand you as a separate being from their set of assumptions and see you as a kid, almost for who you are. We're curious about who you are, what your opinions were. And they made you develop a secure attachment style, which means you assume that other people will like you, accept you.

You can trust people. You can be vulnerable around them. And so that has led you to be really good at making friends. You're better at initiating than the other attachment styles, better at conflict. in a caring, loving way. You're good at vulnerability. You're particularly generous compared to the other attachment styles. So I think that these attachment styles are really important to know because if we don't

know them, then we continue to think that, you know, I usually attach people, say relationships are just fragile or avoidantly attached. People just can't be trusted when you don't understand, okay, those assumptions are actually leading you to engage in a set of behaviors that make these assumptions more likely to come true. Oh, man. Okay. So this is sad. What if you have an attachment style that's not so great? It's definitely not secure. Do you talk about ways to overcome this in your book? And I can see how this also just understanding the attachment style could be helpful in your own relationships, like looking at other people. Like, why do they seem so needy? Or why do they need constant reassurance? Or why do they not seem

to reach out to me. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. It is really helpful. It's like a blueprint. Like I realize, you know, now that I know attachment theory, I'm like, oh, well, I may have like made that person upset, but it wasn't because I necessarily did something wrong. That's their, like their attachment style coming out. You know, they might not want to get as close as I want with them or not be as vulnerable as I want. And now I understand from an attachment theory lens that that's not personal. So that's why I find it helpful. But Platonic is really all about what securely attach. friends do. And so I really teach people in the book how to engage in more secure behaviors. And that looks like initiating friendships, not just waiting for people to come

to be talking through issues in a very loving, kind way. Being vulnerable, but also discerning about who you're vulnerable with, where anxiously attached people will kind of overshare to get people to like them, even with people that aren't safe and avoidantly attached people won't be vulnerable at all. How to do you. be generous without completely sacrificing yourself, which is what anxiously attached people do. Aointly attached people just tend to not be generous, but securely attached people. They're engaged in this process of mutuality, which means I'm thinking about my needs and your needs, and I'm thinking about how do we meet both of them, not how do I meet mine at your expense or how do I meet yours

at my expense? And so that sort of approach really helps them in all of these different realms of friendship. So in Platonic, I talk about the six different ways that secure people go about friendship and ways that really help them. Like, they initiate, they're vulnerable, they're authentic, they're generous, they know how to be angry and, like, harbor really healthy conflict. And they show a lot of affection. And so in showcasing those behaviors, I help, I help people give like a blueprint of like what they can do to make their friendships better no matter their attachment style. Oh, I need this. I'm going to go out and immediately. order it. I mean, it's hard to really, I feel like I might be, you're going to, I'm probably

anxious avoidant, just hearing you talk, but like leaning more towards the avoidant part. Does that make sense? Like, are sometimes you on a spectrum? Oh, totally. Yeah. So it's, it's like any personality trait, which means I, like, I might be funny, but funnier around some people, not really funny around other people. So it's, it's like there's a part of it that's a trait, but there's also, like, it depends on the situation. So if you're around someone who's very avoidant and is like they never give you any vulnerability, they're not very love, not give you very loving, not very generous, you might start being anxious. Like I need some reassurance here. I don't, I don't know if you like actually like me or if you're around someone very anxious who's like, I need you to be close to me

all the time. I need you to text me all the time. I need you to respond to me all the time. You might start feeling avoid it. Avoid it yourself. Like, oh my gosh, I need a little bit of space. Like this is kind of overwhelming my own sense of autonomy. So it is. It is. is an individual characteristic, but it's also relational. And, you know, for me, if you know your attachment style, what it tends to be, and I'm around people and my attachment style is changing, like, you know, if I tend to be secure, but all of a sudden I'm feeling more anxious, that tells me some information about what their attachment style is too. Oh, this is so good. Do you find if you arm in a long-term relationship with someone we've been together 20-something years married, and he is

very like avoidant attachment. So do you find like other people's attachment style in these close knit relationships can sort of, you know, leak out on you? You become a little like them because you're around them so much. Yeah, totally. You know, in the book Attached, that's a good book on attachment theory. They talk about like if you're insecure, like his advice is to find someone more secure because that can leak out on you, but also, you know, it is like, it's an adaptation, which I think is healthy, right? Like, if I'm really around someone who's very avoidant and no matter how much I try to engage or ask for love or ask for support, they're going to reject me, it's actually adaptive for me to stop engaging in those secure behaviors and instead figure out

how do I get my needs met elsewhere. And so, you know, that's a good point in general, like, why we develop these attachment styles is because we were at. for our environment, anxiously attached, you fought for that love. Eventually, you got it. Avoidantly attached, you stopped asking for that love and you are no longer hurt anymore. The issue is more so that throughout your life, most people are secure. More people are secure than insecure. And so you're missing those people that are secure because you're projecting that

template. You're not actually assessing the situation. But if you continue to be in insecure environments, then sometimes it's adaptive to keep using some of these insecure strategies. Yeah. That's really good. Okay, this is going to sound like a really silly question, but how do you make friends as an adult? And also, why is it so much work to maintain relationships? Like, I'm busy. Everyone's busy. And it's effort to make sure that you're reaching out and, and yeah, really nurturing the relationships that I have.

It feels sometimes like I'm like, oh my gosh, it's been months since I even talk to my best friend, which is really unfortunate. Yep. Yeah. So the first thing you have to do is let go of the myth that friendship happens organically because people that think it does are lonelier over time. The research finds people that think it takes effort, they're less lonely over time. So stop relying on the assumptions that you had when you're a kid, which is it just going to happen. And there's the sociologist Rebecca G. Adams and she says, for friendship to happen more organically, you need repeated unplanned interaction and shared vulnerability. So I see you all. all the time and we didn't plan it, like work or school, but also vulnerability, which as adults,

we're not often very vulnerable in the workplace. So what that means is that we can't rely on those same assumptions we get as kids because we're no longer in those same environments. So you have to try. And, you know, I tell people if you want to make friends that, you know, people tend to be like, that's scary, I don't want to be rejected, but research actually finds that when strangers interact, they underestimate how likes they are by each other. This is called the liking gap. So actually people like you more than you think they do. And the fact that you think you're going to be rejected, research finds actually makes you reject people. When you are thinking you're going to be rejected, you are colder, you are more withdrawn. Whereas when

researchers tell people, you're going to be accepted, this is based off our analysis of your personality, they go into groups and are warmer and are friendlier. And so it's called the acceptance prophecy. When you assume you'll be accepted, you're more likely to be accepted. So I try to tell people, assume that people like you, assume that they make that your first assumption when it comes to interacting with people. And even research on talking to strangers, people predict that about 40% of the time people will talk to them. It's actually about 90% of the time. So the world is much more open to you than you think, particularly if you have an insecure attachment style and you're going to have to put yourself out there and try. Now, I see people,

they'll go to like one happy hour to try to meet people and it feels so high stakes because you have an hour to find the friends for the rest of your life. I tell people to join something repeated over time because then you capitalize on something called the mere exposure effect, our tendency to like people when they are familiar. It's completely unconscious. Researchers plant women into a psychology lecture. No one remembers any of the women, but they like the woman that showed up for the most lectures 20% more than a woman that didn't show up for any. So instead of doing like a language workshop, can you join a language class where you'll get that mere exposure? But not only do you have to show up, that means when you show up, you overcome overt avoidance,

which is our tendency to just avoid people because we're nervous. But also you have to engage with people when you get there. You have to overcome covert avoidance. Covert avoidance is I show up on my phone. I show up. I'm talking about one friend I came with. I show up. I'm sitting in the corner of the room.

It's all the ways that we show up physically, but we disengage mentally. So overcoming covert avoidance is, you know, hey, like I'm Marissa. How are you enjoying this pickleball game? How long have you been playing? tell me more about your experience and then you can just like after you know get to know people shoot your shot hey like i'd love to hang out sometimes it's been really great to talk to you do you want to meet up oh man that's so brave that i feel like that takes some bravery my go-to is always being very awkward and then oversharing um immediately for some reason or trying to be like shock value funny which again

doesn't really go well. So I feel like I can tell by the look of their eyes, I scare people. Listen, I scare people with my over like, but I do have incredible relationships that have gone on for years and years and years. I just find it difficult to make time to nurture those relationships. And I think a lot of people can probably relate to this. It's like, oh man, how did I let that relationship fall through the cracks. And now it's been so long, it feels weird to just call some up out of the blue and be like, hey, I miss you. But I have a feeling that's probably what you would recommend doing. Yeah. Well, there's actually some research on this that when we reach out to reconnect, we underestimate how joyful people are to receive that active reconnection. This is just like

this general finding in the science of connection that we really underestimate how much people value it, how much people want to hear from us, how loving people are towards us, how they appreciate our acts of kindness towards them. So I would recommend reaching out to someone you've lost connection with and just being like, hey, I was just thinking about you. Like made me realize that I've been meaning to check in for so long. How are you? And reach out to people to start that connection. The other thing that I would suggest is because, like, I know that we are really busy and there's a lot of things going on and it's hard for us. So I tell people that if you reach out particularly in what I call what I call diagnostic moments,

which are these moments we use to diagnose the health of the overall friendship. And there are moments when we are undergoing high emotion, either positive or negative. So I got a promotion or I got a divorce or, you know, my kid's really sick or my kid got into college of their dreams, right? These moments of high emotion, when it comes to like how our memory works, we remember moments of high emotion more. So how people showed up in those moments of high emotion, when we look back on the overall friendship, that tends to stick out to us. So even if you're busy, you feel like it's hard for me to show up all the time. Can you show up when you hear good news or bad news and really reach out and show your

friend's love in those times? The other thing that I would suggest is, like I said, the repeated unplanned interaction and shared vulnerability, could you put something in your calendar that's just there every month. Like, this is our monthly dinner group. It's already in our calendar. We know it's there. It's going to be a priority amidst all of the other things. You know, this is our monthly catch-up call, our monthly walk, or your weekly, whatever it looks like with the time that you have. Kind of like how you structure, like, I don't know, work. It's already in your calendar, like using that same approach for time with friends. Yeah, I think that's so, so good.

I also love the idea. My therapist actually recommended this. He's like, well, if you have a day where you go grocery shopping, why not invite your friend to go grocery shopping with you? Like, why not use it as you're doing this chore, I guess, anyways, and have a friend to do it with you. And I thought that that was such a simple idea. And I reached out to a friend and I was like, hey, you want to have like a weekly Costco date? I know this is bizarre. But, you know, we both are going anyways. Why not go together? And she was like, I love that idea. And yeah, so I do like the idea of scheduling it in and having something that's reoccurring. So it's just kind of baked in, as I've heard someone describe it as part of your regular routine. And if you don't have like time for coffee, maybe doing it like, yeah, doing chores together.

Maybe something you can do as well. Okay, this is so good. Why do you think we put more emphasis on this romantic? relationship than we do the platonic relationships. Here's what I honestly think when I've looked into like what historians say about this. Friendship used to be a more intimate relationship than spousal relationships. Because, you know, in early 1800s and before, the genders were considered so distinct from each other that the idea was that you could only really deeply connect with someone who shared your gender.

So women, men were both holding hands with their friends, sharing beds with their friends, carving their names into trees. It was just very, very intimate. And that was encouraged, especially amongst women, because it was thought this was going to prepare you to love better in marriage. But what was different at that time was that women didn't really have rights. So women, you needed to get married. You needed to have a husband to get property or like you didn't really have access to career or anything like that. But as women had the option to not engage in marriage, because they had now rights that weren't tied up in marriage, we had this growth of this idea of the love marriage.

Now what's going to keep you in the marriage is you're only worthy if you have this partner. And we're telling you that it's the be all, end all of your life. And it makes your life complete. And so what used to be this sort of economic push into marriage became now the psychological push into marriage that has, you know, in recent, very recent times, I'll say in the last like century or so created this this huge hierarchy when it comes to connection yeah i mean i think of it just hearing you say that it's like find your soulmate find your other half find the person that completes you yeah there is a lot of pressure that one other human being is going to be your

absolute everything in this life yeah and if you listen to terminology around friendship it's like we're just friends or if guys are really close it's a bromance it's now romantic it's not actually it's just a very close friendship so there's just all of these subtle ways that we are we are messaging each other around which relationships are really significant yeah and i see this with my mom so my mom is a very like introverted person she definitely has like avoidant detachment is that what we call yeah attachment yes so she's never been like a really emotional vulnerable person. She never really had friendships. It was just her and my stepdad, right? They were best friends. He passed away and she's only 70, but she's really left in this place of

loneliness. Like she doesn't have anyone else really in her life. She doesn't have a tribe. She doesn't have a community. She doesn't have close girlfriends. And looking at this and kind of like seeing similarities, I'm like, oh, I have put all my eggs in my husband's basket. Like, I'm like, he's my whole world. He's all I need. But even if he doesn't pass away, I don't think that's true. I think we're supposed to have a tribe, a village, a community, and especially as women of other women, but kind of coming to this realization when you're halfway through your

life is like, oh, okay, I better, I better change everything, like literally flip it all in the head. And it sounds like that's really what you did after your breakup. So how can we kind of look at this differently and kind of shake it up and go back to the way things used to be where the emphasis was on many and not this one soulmate? Yeah. So there's a couple of things I've done to try to, um, resist this paradigm. One is I remember I had a friend who's coming back from Mexico. She wasn't getting into like midnight. I was like, I think it would be nice to offer to pick her up at the airport, but midnight, I hate staying up late. I don't really know if I'm going to do that. And this is a friend I really wanted to get close to. And I know that acts of generosity tend to foster

closeness. So I asked myself, would I do this for a romantic partner? And the answer was yes. I would. And so once I had to almost use that romantic paradigm when trying to assess what I'm doing and willing to do with my friends, knowing that romantic love has monopolized most of our ideas about what it means to be loving. So that I need to go through that comparison. The other thing I'd suggest is Raina Cohen. She's also studies friendship has this great book, Other Significant Others. And she says a couple things. One is what would it look like if we approach relationships top down rather than bottom of? up. So instead of being like, you're a friend, what it means to me to be a friend is to hang out once a

month and go to happy hour, thus I will slot you there. Instead, what is the nature of our connection? And given the nature of our connection, how, what would I like out of it? So instead of imposing this paradigm of friendship that is kind of weak in our society, you know, how do I actually feel on this connection? How often would I want to engage with you? What sort of love would I like to have with you? And so starting from yourself and your sense of that person. The other thing that was really, I think, important that Raina has told me, too, because she studies, like, platonic life partners, people that choose friends as their life partners is, like, often when we choose to do something that is atypical, like, really prioritize friendships, we'll think about the costs. Like, oh, I'll have less privacy or I'll be, like, more stimulated. but we won't think about the costs of disengaging.

Like, oh, I'm losing something. I make gain my privacy or gain less stimulation. But I also lose something. I'm losing connection. I'm losing that reward. I'm losing that togetherness. And so when you think about the costs of like engaging with friendships, also think about the costs of not engaging with that friendship.

Right. So that for me, you know, at my best friend, she was kind of nomadic this year, remote and she needed a place to live because she wanted to leave New York. And I have a one-bedroom apartment. And at first I was like, no, I'm not going to invite her to stay here. Like, if I don't have any space, like, we're just going to be on top of each other. That's going to be uncomfortable. But then I was like, well, are those costs enough to deter me from having precious best friend time, like unencumbered that we might never have again where we can see each other day in and day out and have all that time together and really deepen our relationship.

And so when I not only, when the costs weren't the period, end of the sentence, but I was also able to think of the benefits of the connection because I think we're really get stuck on how friendship costs us. Then I was able to see the bigger picture. And she actually ended up staying with me for six months in my apartment. And I'm really glad I did it. We got a lot closer. And even if it wasn't typical, like it was really meaningful for both of us.

Oh, I love that. You said something that just resonated with me. You talked about, like, love, like, loving your friends. You just mentioned it. And I never really thought of that because I say, like, oh, I love my friends. But I don't really think of it. Like, I don't act towards them. Like, I love them.

Does that make sense? Like, the way I talk to my spouse or my children in even my parents, there's, like, a deeper love there, but I do feel that deeper love for my friends. too. I just don't express it in the same way because I think it feels awkward. Does that make sense? So I don't like touch them. I don't go out of my way to hug them. I don't really get deep and vulnerable sometimes with them. I overshare in the beginning with vulnerability salad all over their face. But then after that, I try to keep it light because it feels, I don't know. But yeah, there is no reason that we can't express our actual love for our friends like we express our love to other people that are like blood family.

Totally. Yeah, super, super interesting. Okay, do you think there's any like cultural influences here? Because I'm just saying this, I, we live in a place where there's like a lot of new immigration and we're seeing multi-family homes. And I see, you know, they're going for big walks and there's like this huge family all spending time together. And I'm like, wait, wait a minute. That seems really nice. We don't really have that. We all kind of live far away. And I said to my husband, I said, wouldn't it be so nice to buy a huge plot of land and have like each of our kids have houses on it and with their families. And my kids are like, I don't want to live right beside you. My husband's like, I don't want to have to cut their grass. And I'm like, what are we talking about here? Right. Like, it's very normalized, I guess, for us, even our core family group to kind of spread out and separate and create our own little core families where it's like a husband and a wife and the kids. And that's it. And we're very, very separated. Where I'm seeing perhaps in other cultures, that's not really happening. Now, this is, I'm just, it's just a perception. But, um, how? Have you seen this or why do you think this is that we're kind of like all going in our separate

corners? Yeah. I definitely think it is cultural. I mean, we live in a very individualistic culture. And the sociologist, Durkim, who says we live in a state of enemy, which means that the norms of society are antithetical to what we need to thrive and what we need to flourish. And, you know, if we're not in touch with ourselves, we will easily just live according to these cultural scripts. So one that I think about a lot is like, oh, like as you have more money,

live alone or move to the suburbs and get a big house, right? But not actually thinking through, do I want to live alone? Do I, do I, would I rather have a smaller space and, you know, be around more people? You know, like we just kind of follow these cultural scripts. And I don't think we can trust culture to give us what we want in terms of connection, because 50% of us are lonely. And those rates have only been rising for the past several decades. The youngest generation is now lonelier than any other generation before it. So if we just rely on doing what cultural expects of us, that's going to be one of us. And I think my book Platonic is really about, you know, I acknowledge that it's harder now to make friends than it ever was because it used to be

embedded in your community. You never left your community. You would your your work would be out of your home, not you wouldn't then you know people move to urban areas for factory work but but that meant you saw the same people you've lived with the same people there was a lot more relationship stability um you could take for granted that you had connection in your life but that's not true anymore um it's really not true anymore and it means that if you want connection in your life you could just you can't just say i want connection in your life and hope that it comes to you you really have to be about reaching out to people and about creating it and about like living the life that you want and you have to have the audacity to know that this might not be typical or this might not be

normal but what is typical and what is normal actually is it so great right now when it comes to connection yeah man isn't that the truth and i i love how you talk about the younger generations being lonelier and lonelier we see with my son he's 12 like when i'm I was 12, we were outside playing with the neighborhood kids. We moved to the country. There's really no kids around. And he's also like his only connection with other kids is through a screen. And even when we say like, hey, how about we go and get together with other friends? He's like, oh, no, I'll just play with them online. Like I don't want to see them in person. I just want to see them online. So I think about my own community. And my first thought is my clutterbug community of

people I don't even know on the internet where we're just like messaging each other kind of thing, which isn't the same. Do you think like technology is definitely playing a part in our disconnection from other people? Absolutely. I mean, the loneliness trends started to spike in 2012. What was happening with them was the kind of rise of the smartphone. You know, and this really started interestingly in the book bowling alone he talks about how like this actually started with the television before the 1950s you spent your leisure time around other people then people started to spend their leisure time in four walls and the thing about technology is it gives us this paris social connection which means we feel kind of connected with the influencers we're following the

shows that we're watching it gives us this snack of connection but we're never truly getting the meal And so we're constantly a little bit malnourished when it comes to connection. And I see this with my students because I assign them to, I teach a class on how to make friends to spend a day without their phones and see how that affects their experience of connection. And what I realize is they're not letting themselves get lonely enough because once they spend the day without their phones, they're like, I was so lonely that I ended up starting to talk to this person at the grocery store. I was so lonely that I actually knocked on my neighbor's door to connect with them, right? And so because the phone short circuits our ability to get lonely enough and thus use our loneliness as a motivator to go out there and get connection. It's like we're constantly living in a state of like, I don't know, like disconnection

purgatory where it's bad, but it's not so bad because we're using the phone as a crutch that might actually be motivated to change the situation. Yeah, that's so true. It is. Even when I'm like, I'm on TikTok or I'm scrolling, it feels like I'm listening to other people. I feel like a slight connection to people, but it isn't deep and it isn't meaningful. And that I think is what my son is missing out on is developing like deep meaningful relationships. And without practice of talking to other people and interacting and having friendships, it's going to be really hard for him when he's older to actually make. meaningful friendships because he hasn't practiced or, you know, gone through. I remember being a kid and it's like, oh, she's so mean to me. We're dealing with conflict, right? You like have friendships that end and starting new ones and dealing with that. That's kind of going away, especially now with texting. So if I have a negative reaction with a loved one, like a cousin, I've had this with cousins. I've had those like my parents.

We can just kind of like, well, deal with it through text, right? Instead of actually dealing with it face to face, which feels very different. Totally. Totally. I think you're exactly right. Like this social skills are a practice and they're a muscle like anything else. And the more that we avoid them, the harder that it gets. And, you know, we have to just, you know, I assign this to my students, hey, talk to five

strangers this week. And because this is based off of research that when you talk to strangers at the end of the week, people feel more confident, like they'll enjoy it more, like, you know, they can carry out a conversation more. And they're less likely to fear rejection. So there's this way that part of the ways we get better at connecting is actually just doing it. Like there's all this stuff going on your head around, oh my God, it's going to be seen weird, clingy, you know, just do it and just try. And maybe it is weird and maybe it is awkward, but like that's okay. Like that's not something that you need to avoid. Like that's actually like part of the process of connecting. Like I said with the mere exposure effect, mere exposure effect means that when you meet someone at first, you're going to be

uncomfortable. They're not familiar yet. And the problem is like even me in college, I would go to one social group and never come back because I thought that discomfort was a sign that connection wasn't working rather than a sign that I am in the process of connecting. This is part of the stages of connecting, some discomfort, some awkwardness that we try to continue to show up and we end up feeling more comfortable over time. Yeah. Oh gosh, that's good. You know what? Something I got to start doing. Listen, when somebody calls me on the phone, I like want to throw, I'm like, why aren't you texting? Why are you calling me? Just text me. But the truth is, there's a lot that we can even gain from a phone call over text. So here I am like,

texting my mom or texting. It's not even text to my kids. They're in the same house as me. This is bonker dogs. I feel like this is something small that I can start doing. Like instead of sending a text, maybe I can call. And the person on the other end is not going to want me to call. They're going to want me to text. But maybe this is something all of us need to practice doing more because it's such an easy way of avoiding intimacy and avoiding connection and avoiding real conversations when we can just send a five-word text. Exactly. Yeah.

And something that I also suggest is because when it comes to the idea of connection, we think about it's scary, it's awkward, I might be rejected, but when we actually do it, we find it's enjoyable, it's rewarding, I'm glad I did it. Knowing that one tip that I use is that instead of asking myself, do I want to do things, do I want to connect with this person, I ask myself, will I be happy that I've connected? So I can get over that prediction and instead get to the ending and think about myself in that ending period and looking back on the connection that I fostered.

Yeah. And I mean, if you're listening to this, you might be like me and sometimes tell yourself, oh, I like being by myself or, you know, oh, it's so much work. And I know I'd rather just stay home. But the truth is, I know all of us are craving this. I think this is human nature to need to have friends. and to need to have a bigger community of people that we love and that we trust and that we can count on. And so maybe I talk a lot on the podcast about it's important to clean your house

and it's important to organize and it's important to declutter. But I think it's also really important to nurture our connections with other human beings too because at the end of the day, that's probably the most important thing that we can do. Yeah. And I honestly think of, connection is the metaphor for cleaning your psychological house like i don't know that there's research that finds that if out of 106 factors that predict depression having someone to confide in is the number one thing that prevents against it and when we're lonely we find ourselves ruminating thinking about small hassles all over and over and over again like psychologically we're sicker and we might not always see that but then when we connect with people we're like oh my gosh why

I suddenly feel more at ease or more joyful or more centered or more grounded or like this thing that was really big to me is suddenly a lot smaller in my head. And yeah, connection is just really so important for all of that maintenance and staying clean and healthy. Oh, that's so true. You're right. Because without it, we're overthinking. We're over analyzing. We can sit and over research. We can just kind of get stuck in our heads. And other people are what can really pull us out and ground us and be like, no, this is not that big of a deal or here's some ideas of things you could do or I can help you. Like imagine, especially us living in a spot where we're like, oh, everything's a disaster. I can't get my life in order.

Having a friend that's like, hey, I'll come over and we can like tackle your closet to get there. Exactly. It's so nice. So nice. Okay, well, thank you so much. I'm feeling really inspired. first to stop texting everyone and start calling instead. And also to just really express my love to the people in my life. Like to really ask the question, how would I treat this person if it was my

significant other? What would I say to this person? How would I react to this person? How would I show my love to them? I'm not going to start making out with my friends. You know what I mean. But like there's other subtle things that are very different, how I show up for the people in my life versus how I would show up if it was my husband, Joe. So that is a really, really just simple, like, mindset shift that I think can have a big impact on our relationship. So thank you so much for that. And please let my listeners know how they can follow you and how they can order your book

and just learn more about you. Absolutely. So I share tips on how to make friends on my Instagram, Dr. Marissa G. Franco, that's D-R-M-A-S-A-G. F-R-A-N-C-O on my website, Dr.Murisa G-Franco.com. You can take a quiz that assesses your strengths and weaknesses as a friend or reach out for any speaking engagements related to connection and belonging within work or outside of it. And you can get my book, Platonic, How the Science of Attachment, can help you make and keep friends anywhere books are sold.

This is so good. Thank you so much for being on the Clutterbug podcast. And thank you for everyone listening today. I hope you got something done in your house while you were listening. and I also hope you're feeling really inspired to reach out and connect and strengthen those relationships. Thanks again and we'll see you guys next time. Bye.