Good Life Project - Dr. Marisa G. Franco | How to Make Adult Friends (and Why They Matter)

Episode Date: October 20, 2022

Friends matter, more than you even know. A lack of genuine, open, loving friends can lead to profound loneliness. And that very loneliness can be devastating to both your mental health. But, it goes further than that, the health effects can also wreak more havoc and increase risk of illness, dementia and death, on a level that dramatically exceeds addiction, obesity, and pollution, sometimes combined. What’s the solution? We tend to look to find our one person to solve the loneliness problem. That dream partner who makes everything okay. Except, as we’ll learn today, that can, and often is, a recipe for disaster. Better approach - reconnect with, or find and make new, platonic, yet intimate, engaged, and loving friendships.Sure, you say, easy to do as a kid. But, what about as an adult? Here to walk me through the world of friendships, why they matter and how to make new adult friends, is research-driven psychologist, speaker, and New York Times bestselling author, Dr. Marisa Franco. She is the New York Times bestselling author of Platonic, with a research focus on the powerful role of our communities in shaping who we are and why we flourish. You can find Marisa at: Website | InstagramIf you LOVED this episode you’ll also love the conversations we had with Kat Vellos about approaching friendships as a design problem to be solved.Check out our offerings & partners: My New Book SparkedMy New Podcast SPARKEDVisit Our Sponsor Page For a Complete List of Vanity URLs & Discount Codes.About the Journey: What does it mean to travel better? Travel journalist Oneika Raymond connects with locals who can speak to the heart of the dynamic cities we’re traveling to. They’ll tell us where to go, what to do and how to see the world in more sustainable and meaningful ways. Listen to About the Journey wherever you get your podcasts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Friendship in adulthood is not like friendship in childhood. You cannot rely on the same set of assumptions. Friendship in adulthood does not happen organically. I'm going to repeat that. It does not happen organically. You have to try, right? And I think people are so afraid of rejection, but the reality is people are less likely to reject you than you think. Like we have this whole culture of lonely people looking for connection, you know, and I think sometimes we assume everybody has their friends when, you know, the data is telling us, no, they do not. Okay, so here's the deal. Friends matter more than you even know. A lack of genuine, open, loving friends, it can lead to profound loneliness. And that very loneliness can be devastating to both your mental

health, but also it goes further than that. The health effects on your physical body, your physiology can wreak more havoc and increase the risk of illness and dementia and even death on a level that dramatically exceeds things like addiction, obesity, pollution, sometimes combined. So what's the solution? Well, we tend to look for our quote, one person to solve the loneliness problem, our most intimate or romantic relationship. And that dream partner, you know, who makes everything okay, except as we'll learn today, that can and often is a bit of a recipe for disaster. Better approach, reconnect with or find and make new platonic yet intimate and engaged and loving friendships.

Well, sure, you say that's easy to do as a kid, but what about as an adult? No doubt things get harder. Still, there are a simple set of principles that anyone can adopt that make the process of finding and attracting and engaging and building amazing new friendships. Yes, even as awkward, maybe sensitive or introverted adults. And I'm raising my hand here way easier than you imagine. It's more straightforward than you think and wait for it. You can even learn a ton about yourself and others and have a lot of fun along the way. So here to walk me through that world of friendships, why they matter, especially as grownups, how to make new adult

friends is research-driven psychologist, speaker, and New York Times bestselling author, Dr. Marissa Franco. She is the New York Times bestselling author, Dr. Marissa Franco. She is the New York Times bestselling author of Platonic, with a research focus on the powerful role of our communities in shaping who we are and why we flourish. Marissa uses her expertise to advise clients and companies on how to nurture deeper connections, and she believes that connections underlie everything, our health, our motivation, our work, and our sense of who we are. So hold on to your seats as we take a deep dive into the world of adult friendships, why they matter, how to cultivate them, even when you think maybe you can't. So excited to share this conversation with you.

I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. The difference between me and you is you're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes.

The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. I've been fascinated just by the human condition, by how we relate to each other, and got really fascinated by the topic of belonging a number of years ago. And that introduced me to the work of John Cacioppo, who is no longer with us since 2018. Of course, you know his work as well. And his sort of development of the field of social neuroscience, and then this intense focus on loneliness and was blown away by the pervasiveness of loneliness and also by what it does to us.

Take me deeper into this, because this is sort of like one of the opening moves or central points of your work. Yeah, it is wild how loneliness affects us. I think we think of it as just a feeling, but it's actually an entire mind state, right? I mean, John Cacioppo's work shows us that lonely people, you know, it's just a chronic stress state. Like loneliness is a state of chronic stress. Your body's undergoing more inflammation, you're more poor immune system functioning, you're more likely to wake up in the middle of the night because you're, what's basically happening is like your mind is scanning for threats. Because if you think about it, when we were like evolutionarily on the Savannah in Africa, and we were separated from

our tribe, we were in a lot of danger. But the problem is that our body still thinks we're in a lot of danger when we're lonely. And so, you know, lonely people report thinking people are rejecting them, even though they're not. They report that they don't like people as much. Like if a lonely person interacts with you afterward, they report liking you less than someone who's not lonely, liking their roommates less, having less compassion for humanity, being more self-centered in conversation, right? So I guess it creates this kind of, sadly, right? At a time when we most need to connect, our body is triggering a series of behaviors that make us want to withdraw and disconnect. And we become kind of more self-centered, reference ourselves more in conversation, right?

So, you know, it's funny, some of the analyses on how to intervene against loneliness have actually focused on changing people's thinking patterns. Because clearly, if you're thinking everybody's out to get me, everybody's going to reject me and do me harm, it's very hard to then connect with people. And so actually, like making people have like hope and optimism and the sense that people do want to connect with me is really, really important for getting them out of that self-reinforcing cycle of loneliness. That makes so much sense to me. Like it's, it's interesting because if you think about like loneliness and you think about like, well, what is the opposite of loneliness? And the answer isn't quite so clear, you know, it's,

it's sort of like unhappiness, but what's the opposite of, or happiness versus unhappiness. But loneliness, it's more complex than that. And it affects us in so many different ways. And there are so many different opposite states to it. What I was really just sort of coming back to was this notion that I think intuitively so many of us get the fact that loneliness from a psychological and emotional state can be devastating, but that it also affects our physiology, our risk for disease, for illness, for pain, for like literally it can change physiologically who we are. That's less intuitive.

And yet I feel it's an equally, if not even for some people, more compelling reason to say like, we need to actually dive into this. Yeah. Because like, you know, there's so many social policies that address like healthy eating or exercise. I mean, we have a class, gym class for exercise, right? But loneliness actually affects how long we live more than our diet, more than how much we exercise. And there's not the same degree of attention. I mean, England has a prime minister of loneliness now, the UK does, but in the US really, there's just not attention to making sure that we are well-connected. And there's just such a disconnect

to me between like the research that's out there on how toxic loneliness is. And you're right, particularly for older folks, you know, there's this interesting episode of This American Life that was talking about how there were like a certain high number of collateral deaths from Alzheimer's because Alzheimer's deteriorates so much more rapidly when you're isolated. So in the pandemic, all of these people with dementia, Alzheimer's died so much more quickly than they would have if they were able to connect with people. So it's just like, we need food, we need water, we need oxygen. And as social creatures, we also need connection to function in a healthy way. Yeah. And it's interesting also. So I sort of identify as being on the more introverted end of the social spectrum. And I think sometimes there can be a tendency to say, well, I really don't need that much socialization. Like I don't need that many people in my life.

And I think sometimes it's easy to almost trick ourselves if we are more on that side of the spectrum into feeling like it's okay if we withdraw a lot. And yet still, I feel it, you know, because I still need to be with people in the way that is nourishing to me and the people who are nourishing to me. And even on the quieter, more sensitive or more introverted side, it still really matters. Yeah, it absolutely does. And related to your sense that we trick ourselves, there is research that finds that when we predict how much we'll enjoy social interaction, we underestimate it, right? We think, I don't know. I don't know if it'll be fun hanging out with those people or, you know, I feel fine right now. But then after we have the interaction,

we're like, oh, you know, I needed that. That really did do something for me. And as a corollary, you know, one of the symptoms of loneliness is like a bad mood. So when I'm in just a bad mood for no reason, I'm like, oh, I'm actually experiencing loneliness and disconnection. And I don't actually know it, right? Because when I interact with people, all of a sudden my mood improves. So I think it's like, I don't know, in some ways it's important for us to like understand how loneliness manifests, like the different symptoms, the different mind states that will

come up when we're lonely. Because I don't think we always just know that we're actually lonely because of this, like you said, we can trick ourselves. So like when you're thinking things like, my friends don't really like me, right? You're going back and thinking about friends and ruminating on something they did wrong and being so all of a sudden feeling a lot more resentful towards someone, right? You're feeling like no one really loves you, that people are out to get you, that if you do reach out to someone, they are surely going to reject you. They're surely going to feel like you're a nuisance in their lives, right? When you're just in this bad mood for no reason,

or you're experiencing this anxiety for no reason, because connection helps us with anxiety. It helps us with our mental health and wellbeing, right? All of those are like hidden symptoms that we are actually experiencing loneliness. Yeah. And it's almost like we can write them off as different things, you know, because those are also symptoms of other things that may be going on in our lives. And I wonder if we sometimes point to other reasons, you know, like for feeling a particular way, because loneliness, I feel like it still has a bit of a stigma. It's almost like owning it, like owning the fact, like saying out loud to somebody else, I'm lonely. We're a little bit terrified of that. I think we are. And it's

wild to me because I'm like, literally some reports find that the average American is lonely. And I think we still have this idea that the lonely person is the oddball quirky recluse, right? Who comes off as so like awkward to everybody else. But like, that's not the case. Like you're the person you're interacting at the grocery store. You know, they're the average lonely person. Your friend is the average lonely person. Like we're all the average lonely person in this society in which we live in. Yeah. I mean, it's when you normalize it, it's when you can say to yourself, okay, so I'm not the odd one out. Maybe it makes a little bit easier to own it and then actually start to ask the questions, well, what do I do

about this? Now I know for you, like this is in part your deep dive into like not just the area of loneliness, but adult relationships and friendships and platonic relationships beyond romantic, you know, this has become a sustained professional devotion for you and you've gone deep into the work, but it's also personal. And a lot of it started in a very personal way. Yeah. I mean, for me, it was, you know, especially as a woman, just receiving all these messages around romantic love is what makes you worthy. If you don't have a romantic partner, you don't have love. You're not worthy. Something's wrong with you.

Right. And that made me really take when I went through these breakups when I was younger, it made me really take them hard and feel like so bad. And it definitely magnified my grief. And I decided to start this wellness group with my friends to feel better where we met up and every week we practice wellness. It was meditating. It was cooking. It was doing yoga. It was eating cupcakes. It was cooking dinner for one another. And it was such a potent force in my life. Like literally it was so visceral every week I had these people that loved me who I love. And it just got to the point where I was like, I can't deny that this

is meaningful. I can't deny that this is beautiful. I can't deny the gravity of this form of love in my life when I have it being shown to me every week with these people I feel so safe with. And it was for me looking around and thinking, I've been taught that this love doesn't matter. I've been taught that it is ancillary, superfluous, unnecessary. I've been taught that I should center my life around a different form of love. And I felt like I had no love in my life. And how does that make any sense when I have like all of these people that have loved me for such a long time? And so I just felt like, oh my gosh, these messages that I've received are so damaging. And I really feel like it's just so important for me to unlearn them.

And not just that, I think that my experience, like the personal is political. You know, I think Audre Lorde says that, that my experience reflects a larger societal political kind of reality, right? That all of us have this like internalized, this internalized hierarchy, I'll say, of relationships with these romantic relationships at the top. And I really began to question that hierarchy and to want to see, to want to give myself permission to see friendship for a sacred relationship that it could be and to almost stop compartmentalizing love in a way, right? It's like, it was almost like a fetishization of love that romantic love is like this ideal, like this lofty ideal, right? Nothing comes close to it. And now obviously having been through a lot more relationships, seeing that every relationship is good and also has difficulties

and romantic love is beautiful, but platonic love is also beautiful. And there's really no reason to put our relationships on such a hierarchy. And I think it makes so many of us so isolated, whether we're single or we are in a relationship, because if you have this hierarchy and you're in a relationship, then you try to get all your needs met through one person. And tons of research finds that like, that is a recipe for disaster. It harms your mental health. It harms the mental health of your spouse. So I really wrote platonic wanting to be like, Hey, can we take a look at this like cultural script? Like, can we take a look at some of the ways that it's actively harming us? Like, can we take a look

at how we're so lonely and this may be a part of it? Like, to me, it's like, we've always had this gold under our feet in friendship, but we've just been taught to see it as concrete. We don't see it glimmer and we don't see it glitter, even though it's right in front of us. So I just kind of wanted us to all see that like platonic love can be so, so profound. I love that. And, you know, the notion that romantic love, you know, like finding that one person and then demanding from them everything you need in every relationship at all times. It's like when you sort of lay it out that way, you're like, oh, that is utterly absurd.

And yet that's the ideal we hold ourselves to. Like every rom-com movie, every like book, it's all like, this is what we aspire to in life. And like, once you hit that magic place, you know, you don't really need anybody else. And the reality is just like the complete opposite. And like you said, often that assumption causes so much harm to us individually and to the relationship and to like those we might be in partnership with.

It's also just not true. You know, it's those other relationships. And so often I feel like, and I'm curious whether you see this in your work, when people, even if you're somebody who finds that one person, you end up jettisoning so many of the other like truly loving, sometimes long-term sustained relationships from your life. And it actually does harm to those relationships, not intentionally, not because you want to do it.

It's sort of like part of the set of assumptions that you say yes to when like you're trying to build with this one other person. And yet it's like, we just allow these other things to fall away because all of a sudden they're not supposed to matter as much. And you know what? I just think biologically, we have always needed an entire community to feel whole. And that's no less true now. There's actually, you know, we talked about loneliness. There's actually three types of loneliness, only one of which can be fulfilled by a spouse, which is intimate loneliness, the desire for a very close, intimate relationship. There's relational loneliness, which is desire for a relationship that's as close as a friend. And then collective loneliness, which is a desire for example, that find that when I become friends with someone, no, I'm less depressed, but also my spouse becomes less depressed. But when I have conflict within my marriage, my potential marriage, I'm not married, but I experience stress hormone release in dysregulated ways or wacky ways. My stress hormone release just gets off kilter, but not if I have quality connection outside of that marriage. Other studies find that for women who particularly tend to be

more experienced, more intimate friendships, when they go through difficult experiences in their marriage, they tend to be more resilient to those experiences. And then these people that focus on one person, what we see for them in the research is that their mental health really ebbs and flows with the health of their relationship. Like if their relationship's not okay, their mental health is not okay. Whereas these people that have those connections outside, they can stay centered even when their relationship is going through the natural ebbs and flows. That is such a resource, right? For me to get into conflict with my spouse and return to them in a way where I'm centered. I'm no longer in fight or flight mode because I've relied on other people to bring me back to that centered place. And then I'm able to address this conflict with you in a way in which I'm listening to you. I have the capacity to hear you. I have the capacity to try to communicate in a way that's not attacking or threatening you. Sometimes I think we see these two relationships as antagonistic. You're spending time with your friends. You're

not spending time with me, but really they're synergistic. You're spending time with your friends. We're going to have more quality time together then. So thank you. Yeah. And that makes so much sense. And yet I feel like sometimes you'll hear about people who look at those friendships that exist outside of a central intimate or romantic relationship as a quote threat to the relationship. Whereas in fact, what you're laying out is like, no, like there's science on this, you know, and the science says, no, if anything, you know, they're going to help support that relationship.

They're going to make it easier for you to come back to each other or move through challenging moments in a more grounded and open space. I'm fascinated by just how we layer these assumptions and expectations into relationships in a way that culturally we're told is the way to do it. And yet the data is clear as day. And it's like, no, it's actually kind of the exact opposite. So I love the invitation that you've been it's actually kind of the exact opposite. So I love the invitation that you've been offering to really kind of like just reimagine,

you know, how we build relationships. But also I think it's important to note that doing this as a grownup is not the easiest thing. A couple of years ago, we had a woman named Kat Bellos on the show. So Kat is a UX designer, a fantastic designer, and also somebody who started looking at friendship. And she's like, you know, like it gets so much harder to find and make close friends as grownups. And she approached it as a designer. She approached it as a design problem. She's like, as a user experience design, like this is a human design like problem. How would I step into it? You know, so it's interesting to sort of like think about her lens and then you approach it from more of like a science-backed

approach. Like, okay, so if this is, we're running an experiment, like what are the key elements? How do we actually step into forming and sustaining and growing new relationships as an adult? But I don't want to skip over that notion. Once we're grownups, it just feels so much harder than it did as a kid to find those relationships. It does. And you know what? It is harder. Like it just, it is. And there's this sociologist, Rebecca G. Adams, and she says like for friendship to happen organically, we need repeated unplanned interaction and shared vulnerability. And that's what we have as kids, like gym, recess, lunch.

I see you every day. We have these settings where we can let our guard down, right? As adults, we don't have that. Like you can think of, okay, the one place I see people every day is work, but am I actually vulnerable in work? Like, do I actually like share a deep, maybe you do Jonathan, but for most people, right there, they tend to go to work and show like a certain side of them, a certain dimension of them, um, a certain persona, you know, a lot of the time, which is why one study find that found that the more time we spent together at work, the less close that we feel. So what that means is that friendship in adulthood is not like friendship in childhood.

You cannot rely on the same set of assumptions. Friendship in adulthood does not happen organically. I'm going to repeat that. It does not happen organically. You have to try. There was this one study that looked at people that saw friendship as happening based on luck were lonelier five years later, whereas those that saw it as happening based on effort were less lonely five years later because they made that effort. And I think people are so afraid of rejection. But the reality is people are less likely to reject you than you think. Like we have this whole culture of lonely people looking for connection, you know? And I think sometimes we assume everybody has their friends when, you know, the data is telling

us, no, they do not. And, you know, this is based on research on something called the liking gap, where when strangers interact, they underestimate how liked they are by the other person, right? So that brings me to one of my favorite tips that tends to really resonate with people. You know you have to initiate. You know you have to contact someone and say, hey, it's so great to connect with you. Like, I'd love to connect further, right? You know you have to do that. But the psychological thing that has to happen is you have to start assuming people like you, like start that practice

of reminding yourself people like me, right? And what this will do for you, according to this research on something called the acceptance prophecy, that when people are told that based on your personality profile, we predict that you'll go into this group and be liked, they actually become warmer and friendlier and more open. Whereas you will notice that when you think people are rejecting you, how does that impact your behaviors? Like according to the science, people that see rejection all the time, they tend to be colder. They tend to be more withdrawn. If you think you're going to be rejected, you reject people first. Like that's what you do, right? And so fundamentally how you show up is like people might be rejecting you when you think

you're being rejected because you actually are rejecting them in terms of how that's affecting your behavior. So assume people like you and then you're going to have to initiate. Yeah. I mean, it's like if we could only all see the thought bubbles like over our heads, like when you're moving into a new situation new situations, like we're all terrified. Just chill and like assume that people, you're going to be okay. I like you.

You like me. But we just like, we automatically, it is so much, it's fascinating how much of a self-fulfilling prophecy that becomes, right? It's like we step into an interaction just, and the slightest thing will trigger us to say, oh, they don't like me. And then it's sort of like, it's off to the races. Then we do all the things that would make them like be less accepting of you without even realizing that a lot of it is coming from us. The Apple Watch Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist,

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Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. You talk about this distinction also between what you phrase as covert and overt avoidance. Tease us out for me. Yeah. So I think when we're like, I want to make friends, people are like, okay, shine up for that group. You know, join that meetup group. Right.

And, you know, I think back to, you know, join that meetup group. Right. And, you know, I think back to myself in college, I want to make friends. I think I joined like some sort of like cultural group. And I went to one meeting and nobody talked to me. Nobody said hi to me. And I was like, they're very clicky here. I'm not going to return. And how wrong I was. This is what I would tell my younger self, right? To make friends, you have to overcome overt avoidance, which means you show up, right? Overt avoidance is I'm scared, so I'm staying home. But you also have to overcome covert avoidance, which means when you are engaged in covert avoidance, you show up physically, but you check out mentally.

I'm on my phone. I'm walking away from the group. I'm talking to the one person I already know, right? You're not introducing yourself. Whereas overcoming that looks like, I'm at that group in college and I'm saying, oh, hey, I'm Marissa. It's so good to meet you. How have you liked being a part of this group? Tell me more about it. I'd love to hear, right? It's not just showing up that's going to make you friends. It's that you actually have to engage with people when you get there. Because like, to be honest, like making friends is really, I used to think these are all my college misconceptions that, oh, if I want to make friends in college, I have to be funny. I have to be charismatic. I have to be, you know,

smart. I have to say something that's going to make people flock to me. But what I know now, based on the research and lived experience, is that according to this theory called the theory of inferred attraction, people like people that they think like them. And the number one thing people look for in a friend is someone that makes them feel loved and valued. So being good at making a friend is not about changing your personality. It's changing how you treat people. It's treating them in a kind and loving way, right?

And fundamentally, anything that you do to convey to someone that you like them, whether that's kindness or being generous towards them or praising them, right, is going to make it more likely that you're going to form friendship with them. So even when you overcome that covert avoidance and you say, hey, my name's Marissa. Like, how have you enjoyed this group so far? It's so good to meet you. What that's doing is it's conveying to someone, I'm interested in you as a person, right? And that's the sort of underlying mechanism that explains why it makes us friends. Yeah, that makes so much sense to me. So here's what's popping into my head as you share that. I'm nodding along saying yes,

I completely agree. And of course the research validates this. And again, sort of leaning into that social wiring that I have, as I learned not too long ago through conversation with Elaine Aaron, I'm also likely like qualify as early the HSB, the highly sensitive person as well. So I show up in a new situation. I'm like, yes. Okay. So for me to actually make a new friend and have like an interesting conversation, I have got to actually go and talk to somebody, introduce, take the initiative, not engage in covert or overt avoidance. And yet every fiber of the way that I'm sort of like socially wired is saying, just don't do this. And it's not even, I don't have a lot of chatter in my head that says I'm

going to be rejected. And I'm not the person who actually has a lot of spin who tends to be concerned about that. But for some reason, there's something in me that feels like stepping up and there's like a level of social anxiety probably that just keeps me from doing it. Ellen Hendrickson, who's done a lot of work around social anxiety once said, you know, she's like, one of the things that can be super helpful in those situations is if you show up in a new social situation and you're looking to find like an in or a way to feel easy and then like bump into people is to assume a role. So like if I'm at a dinner party, I'm probably helping the person who's, you know, like doing the cooking and like cleaning and setting up. And that sort of like creates

these mechanisms that build initiative. It's like, it gives me another reason to bump into people to start a conversation. I'm curious what your lens is on, on ideas and tools like that. First of all, you've been speaking my language because Kat Bellos and I, we are friends and me and Ella Hendrickson, we're also friends. We're all author support groups. So yes, you're literally talking to, I think some, some really brilliant people on this topic. And, um, I love what Ellen says. I think it is a great piece of advice. What I would add, I think another tip that I really enjoy is from another psychologist, Rick Hansen, and he studies how to internalize or savor good experiences. And he has this whole model called the HEAL model, which is have a beneficial experience, enrich it and absorb it, and then link it.

I'll go over the first three steps because I think they're relevant here. So you have, you're at this like social group and it feels very scary. And that's probably why your body's like, don't talk to me. It feels like they might reject you, right? It feels very risky, right? And your body's like, no, like don't, like you're like, so that social death feels like death. It really does, you know? And so if you use this heel model, it's about tuning into what is safe in the environment because your brain is really, it's really triggered to scan for the opposite, right? So he says, you know, have a beneficial experience can be such a small one. Did someone hold the door for you?

Did someone smile at you, right? Did someone seem engaged? Did someone glance the door for you? Did someone smile at you? Did someone seem engaged? Did someone glance your way? Is there one person that you do know that you can feel that sense that they do receive you well and take that into the new interaction? Just scan for something positive. Scan for something loving. It doesn't have to be a big thing. And then, you know, enrich the experience, which means focus on that positive moment until it triggers a positive emotion in you, until it stirs something in you. So for me, I try to, you know, someone smiles at me, I put a hand on my chest to receive it and I take a deep breath and I focus on it till I feel joy or acceptance or love. And then you enrich it by literally picturing that moment

kind of melting into your body. Like, oh, that acceptance literally becoming a part of my body. And his idea is that what is state becomes trait. What we practice when we look for the moments of safety, eventually it starts to happen more automatically for us. So I think that practice of you're being around new people, your brain is telling you threat, threat, threat, threat, but your body and your prefrontal cortex, the thing that is under your control is like safety, ah, safety. And I think taking in those moments of safety very intentionally and savoring them can help loosen our bodies a little bit and make us feel a little less scared initiating with someone. Yeah, I love that. And also really curious

about what that last bit that you just shared, it can help loosen our bodies a little bit. And I almost feel like it helps us sink into our bodies a little bit also. And I wonder if so much of what people respond to when we're looking to initiate a new conversation and potentially turn it into a friendship or something that's nearly deeper. I wonder if a lot of what people respond to is our physical presence when we're with them. It's not just about what we say. It's not just about the interesting quip or funny thing or idea. It's like literally physically they're picking up an energy about us. Are we tense? Are we relaxed? Are we easygoing? And I feel like so much of that is this nonverbal communication that transmits so much and that

often two people aren't even aware of the conversation that's happening nonverbal level, but it is so central to the feeling that we get about each other. What's your sense of that? I mean, I don't know much research on this, but my body agrees with you. I just love being around a nervous system regulating person, like someone who just really makes my nervous system feel so calm and so chill. And I talk about in the book how I define authenticity, right? Because I think it's a really confusing term. Like your true self, what the heck is your true self, right? And to me, coming to this conclusion that our authentic self is who we

are when we feel safe. When we feel unsafe, we are often acting in inauthentic ways. It's triggering fight or flight mode, and that's kind of replacing our personality, right? And so I think when you're around these people that make your nervous system feel so calm, they give you, it's almost like an invitation to be authentic with them. Because it's like, I feel so safe with you. I can like be who I am and I don't have to worry about feeling so rejected. So I think it can be really powerful to be around those people that just kind of calm us or ground us or bring us down. And I agree. I think I respond so much to that as well. I think we all do, even though we probably don't realize that at least in part, that's what we're responding to when we're around different people. And I think also some people

love to be around calming and grounding people. And some people love to be around the exact opposite type of person who's frenetic and filled with energy and bouncing off the walls because that's exciting and alluring to them. And it feels like there's no sort of like one size fits all prescription. Like it's not like everybody should look like

for somebody where their physical presence is downregulating their nervous system. It's like, it sounds like the invitation is more tune in to the fact that there's something going on beyond what's being said in spoken language and see if you can sense what the role of that is in whatever you're feeling as well. Yeah. I love that message. And I think a sort of adjacent message is also that, because I always get asked about introverts and what are your tips for introverts? And I often think that when this question is asked, people are conflating introversion with like being anxious or being awkward, which it's obviously

not. But the other thing that I want to convey is that extroverts have their skills for socializing. Introverts have their skills for socializing, right? If you want that high energy, waking you up, making you feel like, oh my gosh, so much fun, extroverts are more likely to give you that. If you want that down regulation, that listener who's making you feel really safe, right? That's likely the introvert. So I just think we can all lean in to our unique skills when it comes to socializing instead of seeing an implicit hierarchy for who's

better at socializing based on introversion or extroversion. Yeah. I love that you made that distinction because I think there is this public assumption that says, well, extroverts are better at the conversation thing and they're better at socializing and they get to know everybody. They're the ones who walk into a room and they walk out like, you know, they can be a hundred people at a cocktail party and they'll walk out with 99 new friends. And the introverts are the ones who walk out either alone or with like a half of a new friend. And it's like, it can be that way, but I think that's also, it's the self-reinforcing, you know, like assumptions rather than the way it actually has to be. You just move into the situation differently.

And I think your expectations are also different. Like I think if you're sort of like you have a quieter social wiring, you're really good if you leave some sort of new experience with one new, like having had a great conversation with somebody new, you know, whereas if you have a different social life and you're more extrovert, you're probably looking for a lot more than that. So I think part of it, I would imagine is about expectations too. I absolutely think so. Right. Cause it's like, if I'm thinking, if I'm an introvert and I think that means I'm bad at socializing and I think introversion is like a quality inherent to my personality, that's unchangeable, then it's like you're dude. Right. And if you're instead like, Oh, introversion comes

with a set of skillsets. What are those? Let me lean into them. Right. It's, it's knowing yourself and it's not shaming yourself and it's valuing what you bring to any given social environment. And I think the more that you value yourself and you see the value that you bring, the easier it is to create healthier relationships with people. Because again, when we are in this self-protection mode, when we think we are less than, when we think others are out to get us, it is antithetical to the ability to build relationships with other people, right? All the things we do in that state of self-protection, I'm not initiating, not going to be vulnerable,

not going to be generous, not going to express affection. That is all going to keep me safe from the risk of you rejecting me. But what it will also keep you safe from is true and healthy connection. So, you know, over time, I think being in this state of self-protection for too long is actually self-harm if our biggest resource for getting through things is our ability to connect with people. Yeah, that makes so much sense to me. And you just listed off a few of the things that are also, I know you notice as key ingredients

to building these new friends. It's one of them being vulnerability. And vulnerability certainly has become a much bigger part of the conversation. I feel like over the last five or 10 years, in part, at least, you know, Brene Brown has been this champion of vulnerability in a lot of different ways. But I also hear people using the word differently. So when you're talking about vulnerability, what are you actually talking about? I'm talking about sharing something that's authentic, right?

And real. It's really anything that you are sharing that it feels risky to share. It feels like other people could reject you. So that could look like sharing your joy for some people, sharing your secrets, you know, for other people, sharing that you're interested in getting to know someone that you're interested in being someone's friend, sharing some things about your past that make you feel guilty or make you feel shame. I talked to Dr. Skylar Jackson. He's a professor at Yale. And he talks about how vulnerability in some ways is a social construct. It tells us what have you been taught is shameful

or what have you been taught will get you rejected, right? Like me growing up in the US, right? Like I may have less, like sharing that I've had sex before marriage may not feel as vulnerable to me as someone who's growing up in another country. So there is, I think also this very subjective piece to what, like it gives us information about ourselves, right? What feels vulnerable to you tells you what that's part of your story. At some point in your story, someone told you that this wasn't a good thing to be, right? What point is that now? And how is that impacting your desire or openness to share this thing about yourself now? Yeah, I love that. I've often thought that,

I'm curious what you think about this or whether you actually are aware of any research around it, that we tend to connect more quickly and more deeply through commiseration than we do through celebration. So, but we do the opposite. Like we show up and we're like, oh yeah, like I've done this. I've accomplished this. This is my job. Like we tend to lead with like our accomplishments, what we're proud of, because we think that's

going to connect us to other people. But in fact, it's like the places we stumble, it's like those vulnerable moments, the things where like, you know, you messed up and you had to own it. And maybe it was a little bit funny, but also a little bit shameful, but it's like, and somebody else can feel it. Like it just lands in your heart and you're like, oh my, I have felt that too. And then they want to share their version of it with you. And I, my sense is that we connect more quickly and more deeply through that side of the conversation. And yet, but the impulse, I think, is to do the exact opposite. Yeah.

Yeah. That is a really interesting point. I'm trying to wrap my head around it because when you shared it, it made me think of this study that it counterintuitively found that how people respond in our moments of joy predicts how satisfied we are in the relationship, even more so than how they respond in our moments of joy predicts how satisfied we are in the relationship, even more so than how they respond in our moments of suffering. But I think that's a little different than the question you're asking, which is like, what determines like what bonds us in a way, right? And fundamentally vulnerability is, it's just so deeply bonding, really. Like,

I think we have, I don't know, this misconception that being vulnerable is going to make people perceive us as weak or a burden, but there is a meta-analysis which combined all the existing research that found that when we self-disclose, other people like us more and people that express less negative emotion actually have fewer friends. And I think it is just the sense that like the depth and closeness of a relationship is really defined by like, to what extent am I sharing all aspects of myself in this relationship? And vulnerability, it's not just a way to share those different aspects of myself to make me feel closer to you. But it has the secondary gain of making you feel now freer to express your vulnerability. Like, you know, the more you're vulnerable, the more likely someone else is to respond with their vulnerability. So like, it is just like such a powerful way to truly connect with people, to truly feel close to people. And to also feel, I think,

you know, Dr. Skylar Jackson makes this point that if we're not vulnerable with people, if we feel like, oh, there's a part of me. And if you knew this, you wouldn't really like me. It becomes hard to trust that people like us, right? Because it's like, well, if you knew this thing, then you wouldn't feel that way. Right. And so there's a ceiling. He kind of described it as there's a ceiling to how much we can receive others love when we're not actually vulnerable with them. Like it's going to make us feel like, hmm, I'm kind of an imposter because you if you knew this other thing, you wouldn't you wouldn't actually love me in this way. And so when we're vulnerable, it's like we open ourselves up to being loved more deeply

because we're seen fully. And if someone still loves us, then we can trust that their love is real. We can trust that their love reflects the depths of who we are. And just thinking about that research that you offered also around joy versus shared sort of like complaining or suffering. And I wonder if an angle on, and I obviously haven't seen this study, but pop it into my head. And I'm curious whether you would actually know whether this was more referential to

what they were talking about in terms of joy is what in Buddhism, one of the four measurables is translates roughly to appreciative joy. My Jewish grandmother would have called it nachis in Yiddish, you know, and it's the feeling that you get when you care about somebody so unconditionally that you experience their joy as your own. And that type of appreciative joy, almost like there's a transference of joy. It's like somebody else experiences a win that makes them joyful. And you care so, so purely about them that it becomes your shared joy. And I wonder if there's a distinction that is made in the research between acknowledging somebody else's joy or being in relationship on a level that

allows it to become a collective joy. Yeah, that is a great question. I really love how you described joy. And what that's called in the research is it's called inclusion of others in the self, which is when I get close to you, I include you in my sense of myself. So when you hurt intimacy. Like me sharing in your joy, it conveys to you, you're included in my sense of who I am. Like what happens to you happens to me in some ways, like our emotional hardware is now overlapping. Like that's what it means to experience closeness with you. So I could see like what you're saying, like in research jargony terms as like, oh, you include me in your sense of self. I feel more deeply loved by you because of how you received this joy from me. Yeah, no, that resonates with me. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is?

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You know, in the context of deepening this sense of vulnerability also whether it's like stumbling towards joy or stumbling towards whatever it may be you know i'm also reminded of arthur aaron's research which you know became wildly popular it was when mandy lynn writes his modern love column about you know to fall in love with anyone, do this. And it, and it reveals the 36 questions that he had been using in a lab for years to take students who are strangers, sit them down, you know, and have them move through this, these three sets of nine questions. But when you look at the questions and like fundamentally it's about mutuality and it's about progressive revelation and vulnerability, it's like, let's start surface level because that's kind of where we're comfortable. And then he creates a container

where there's like a structure to walk you through getting a little bit more vulnerable and a little bit more vulnerable and a little bit more vulnerable. And like that research was showing that after 45 minutes or so, a lot of those people would walk out feeling closer to the person who was a stranger just before that than they were to people they had known for years. Yeah. His research is fascinating. Arthur Aaron, he has some good stuff, man. He actually created inclusion of others in the self too.

That's his theory. Yeah. He's like super brilliant. And you're exactly right. These questions that create intimacy. I actually like when I do like speaking events designed to help people connect, I throw them some of his 36 questions because of how effective they are. I will say like the only caveat that I see in his study, and this is like part of my

book too, is I talk about attachment theory and how that relates to friendship. And what he finds is that actually people that are avoidantly attached who feel very uncomfortable with intimacy and try to be very independent and not need anyone, they actually don't report feeling closer to others when they're vulnerable. Whereas all the other attachments do, which is a good reminder too, I think that like, hey, when you're vulnerable, if someone doesn't receive it well, that doesn't mean you necessarily did anything wrong. It might be their own attachment stuff to work through. Yeah. I mean, you brought that up. Let's lay out sort of like the rest of the styles of attachment, like three different fairly well-defined styles of attachment, what those are and why those

actually matter in this context. Yeah. So I'm writing this book, reading all this research, and I discover, okay, this is like the thesis of platonic, that our personalities are fundamentally a reflection of our experiences of connection or lack thereof. And not only that, for those that have experienced healthy connection, they go into their relationships with these positive set of assumptions about others that facilitate continued connection. So it's like how we've connected affects who we are, then who we are affects how we connect. And then my editor pointed out, well, that's basically attachment theory. And I was like, oh yeah, that's attachment theory, right?

Like attachment theory, the idea that our relationship with our parents and then our relationships afterward, they kind of produce this unconscious template for how we think people will respond to us, right? And that unconscious template affects how we then behave in our relationships in such a way that it makes our template a self-fulfilling prophecy, the theme of today, right? And so what is that? What does this mean like tangibly? I think I'm speaking a little abstractly now. If you're securely attached, you have this history of healthy relationships. You go into new relationships assuming I can trust people, I can be vulnerable with them, people like me, right? And what that means is according to the

research, the securely attached, more likely to initiate relationships, more likely to maintain them, less likely to dissolve relationships, better at bringing up conflict in ways that are not attacking or blaming someone else. They report being higher in like validating and caring for other people. They're like super friends. They're the friends that we all want. They're the friends that, you know, can really regulate a good nervous system when needed. But then you have anxiously attached people and anxiously attached people. They have felt like in the past, people have been inconsistent with them, haven't shown up for them all the time. So their kind of unconscious template is other people will abandon me. And what happens is psychologically, their amygdala, the part of their brain that's active

when they're threatened, it's triggered more deeply in reaction to perceived experiences of rejection or slights than the other attachments. They tend to see rejection when it's not actually there. They tend to cling really close, form relationships very quickly. Their relationships tend to be, friendships tend to be more volatile. When someone transgresses, they're less forgiving, right? Because it's the idea that you're abandoning me. You're rejecting me, right? That's, they don't really give the benefit of the doubt. They tend to ignore all of their needs and try to fulfill someone else's. So they get into these really unhealthy relationships because

if I fulfill your needs, that means you're not going to abandon me. So it's almost like this kind of egotistical giving that they tend to engage in. And then we have avoidantly attached people. And they've learned that if you get close to me, if I get close to you, you're going to harm me. Like I can't trust you, right? You're going to betray me. And so what they do is they keep everyone at a distance and they push people away and they are independent. They really value being hyper independent in themselves and in other people. They spend less, they don't initiate friendships, don't maintain them, are more likely to dissolve them, are more likely to ghost. They enjoy their friendships less. They're just kind of taking

themselves out of the game of intimacy. Right. And funny enough, they tend to be in relationships with people that are anxious because the cure person is like, well, you're never reaching out to me. You know, you're not actually seem like you're enjoying this. And so I'm going to go find someone else. But the anxious person is like, oh, let me get you to like me. Let me get you to like me. Right. When someone pulls away, they work harder. They don't walk away. That's the sort of anxious strategy. So these two opposite attachment styles that both kind of fear each other tend to end up being friends with each other, being in relationships with each other. But the other thing that I just want to mention about attachment is that, first of all, we

should not shame ourselves for our attachment because it is adaptive in an environment where people aren't trustworthy and won't treat you well. it's adaptive to be anxious or avoidant, right? The problem is that you just continue to take this same framework to new relationships where it's no longer adaptive. good for those people with healthy relationships and sucks for me. I guess I'm doomed that that is not what I'm imparting. Your attachment style can change over time. Some research finds that it's more likely to change than it is to stay the same. As we get older, we naturally become more secure. So there's certainly ways all of us can become more secure. And I'm glad you said that because that was absolutely my next question is like, can this change over time? It's kind of fascinating how it's almost like in a way it's like, I don't know whether you would call like anxious and what was the third one? Avoidant. Avoidant, a dysfunctional attachment

style. But it's almost like, you know, the dysfunction attracts dysfunction in the quest to try and make each other functional. But in fact, it seems like it just amplifies the dysfunction attracts dysfunction in the quest to try and make each other functional. But in fact, it seems like it just amplifies the dysfunction without really realizing that's what's happening. But the notion that we got to the point where we're reckoning with that, if we're reckoning with it, because it also probably played some sort of constructive role. It may have kept us safe, you know, in an earlier part of our life where like we needed to avoid certain things and certain experiences and certain people. And we needed to actually use anxiety in some way, make decisions that would maybe keep us from other people, but also

keep us from harm. Exactly. So it's like you said, there's no shame here. There's no blame. There's no shame. And the good news is, you know, if you reach a point where you're like, you know what, I think this is hindering my ability to actually develop healthy, intimate relationships as a grownup. There are things that you can explore. There are things, there are processes, there's therapy, there's all sorts of stuff that can potentially help. But, you know, attachment style also, it's got to be essential to one of the other things that you really talk about in the context of adult friendships, which is the notion of conflict, you know, which is the notion of people are going to make mistakes, people are going to mess up, people are just going to get angry, either like for good reason or for no good reason at all. Conflict is going to arise. And, you know, the way that we handle that

in the context of either an emerging or established friendship, I think is so critical in whether that deepens the friendship or just completely blows it up. Absolutely. And I think, Jonathan, you raised another point that I want to share about attachment, that it's a spectrum, not a category. Different relationships can trigger different attachment styles within us. I'm currently undergoing internal family systems therapy, which is just such a wild and cool form of therapy. That's like you have a whole family of selves inside of you. And the goal is to be run by like your highest self at any given time. And each of these selves can like hold a traumatic memory for you and kind of take over in a very reactive way.

At times when you go through an experience that's similar to the original trauma, right? And me exploring myself because I, you know, identify as more securely attached. But when I explore my different selves, I'm like, some of these sounds very avoidant. Some of these sounds very anxious, right? Of like, oh, okay. Like I mostly feel run by a highest self, but even as all this work that I've done, I've literally written a book on how to become more securely attached that, you know, there's still those cells that can peek out once in a while, right? So there's no perfection when it comes to attachment, like securely attached people are not always secure and anxiously and avoidantly attached people are also not always anxious or always avoidant,

right? And then I want to get to the question that you actually asked, which now I forget. Could you please repeat it? Yeah, it was around conflict. Yeah, like there are going to be moments in even the best friendship that is deeply loving and open and secure where you don't disagree, where maybe harm has been caused, where there's anger that gets centered in the relationship and how you handle those moments is probably no small part related to your, I'm guessing now at this point, attachment style.

But also like learning how to identify and navigate those moments, I would have to imagine is like a success critical skill in building long-term intimate relationships and friendships. Oh my gosh. Yes. Jonathan, thank you for asking this question because this is where I was going to go with it. That conflict is where my anxious attachment comes up the most. Like you said, like your body kind of taking over and feeling like it's on fire. Like that's what happens for me over conflict. And I tell the story in the book about how literally my best friend had done a series of small things that I had not addressed. And I literally could see myself starting to withdraw from her. And I felt kind of stuck because I started to recognize it's not helping this relationship for me to avoid this

conflict because now I'm withdrawing. But also if I address this conflict, my anxiously attached side is telling me it's going to get grisly. We're going to be attacking each other, right? It's going to be antagonistic, right? And I read this study that really changed things for me. It's in people that are more secure around conflict. This might not be a revelation, but it was for me. And it found that having open empathic conflict is actually linked to deeper intimacy. And that people that are good at conflict actually are less lonely. So I'm like, oh, these people that are and people that really value friendship are more

likely to have conflict with their friends, bring up conflict with their friends. So I'm like, oh, these people that are, and people that really value friendship are more likely to have conflict with their friends, bring up conflict with their friends. So I'm like, oh, okay. So conflict is part of healthy relationships, part of a healthy behavior. Like ignoring things is actually a dysfunctional way to show up in your friendships again, because you're just going to withdraw. It's not going to go away. So not only did I read that study, like research is like my spiritual advisor, I'll say. I'm like, I'm so confused. I'm not going to call a mentor. I'm just going to start Googling psych info, all the research studies. So the research kind of showed me that I could learn the skills of bringing up conflict in a way that would make it more likely that this is going to go well. So it first starts with framing the argument, which involves framing the conflict as a sign

of love and intimacy and reconciliation. So me saying, hey, I bring this up because I really want us to stay close and I don't want anything to get between us. So I just want to make sure I'm bringing things up as they come up so that doesn't happen because I love you so much, right? Sharing the I statements. I felt hurt when you didn't respond to me at that really important moment. Perspective taking. But I was wondering what might be going on on your end in that moment, right? This was a big one. Jeff Simpson, he's a researcher, he told me about, because he said, secure people make other people look good in conflict because they deescalate, right? So there was a time when my best friend, I brought up this conflict. I told her, you know, she said this thing that kind of hurt me. And she was like, I'm going to feel like I'm walking on

eggshells around you. Like, I feel like I do everything wrong. And of course I could have escalated at that point. You know, I was a little triggered, but instead I said, you do so many things, right. And I'm so sorry that I haven't conveyed to you all the things that you do, right. All the ways that you show up so well in this friendship, like literally there is this thing that I want to talk about and work through, but like, there's nothing, there hasn't been anything else. Like all the other times we interact, like I've just felt so good and so comfortable and so loved by you. And so being able to like deescalate, like hear them out, validate their feelings, show them love when they're like kind of being reactive towards you. Like it's like a next level conflict skill.

And then ask for what your needs are like, okay, next time this happens, could we do X, Y, Z? Like, how would that be for you? And then I'm like, oh, this is what conflict can be. It's like do. It was like, I think I sent her my book proposal and I never heard back from her about it. And she did respond to me. I didn't see the email. So I realized by not bringing up conflict, I am holding you guilty without giving you a trial. It's like, that's really unfair for me to not bring up this problem when you might have had some extenuating circumstances or fundamentally I might've been perceiving things wrong, right? And that will change how this sits with me. So it's almost like, let's just reconcile. Let's come to a mutual sense of reality right now that's going to help us emotionally be able to move forward in this friendship. Yeah. I mean, the way that you lay that out, it's like a reframe of what

conflict actually is and then the process that you laid out. And I also just want to highlight there that you very specifically said, once you sort of create that prime around, it's like a constructive prime for the conversation. And then the next thing is, I feel not you did. Exactly. Which is not the way most of us start into conflict. It's like, you did this and this and this and this. And then maybe we get to like the way that it made us feel. But like, first we just kind of want to like get that put out. And then it's like immediately, you're just starting an attack mode. And of course, like the average human being is just going to put up the shields and try and like pick apart the argument and argue how I did not rather than, you know, like, well, well, I feel like somebody can't really, well,

they can, but like, it's much harder to negate your lived experience, you know, cause you're just being honest about like, I feel this way. And I think this is what, you know, like this is the way that I saw things happen, which led me to feel this way and then flipping it back and asking for the perspective. Can we have a conversation about this rather than just like, you know, like you did this, you need to change or else, which kind of never ends well.

No, not demands. Don't make those demands. Make the request and see how it sits with the other. How can we collaborate, you know, on moving? That's the anxiously attached person. They're not going to bring up the argument. And when they do, it's going to be a series of demands. The avoidantly attached person is just going to ghost on you. I mean, John Bowlby, father of attachment theory, he talks about two types of anger. One is anger of despair, which I think is what we typically associate with anger. And he provides this example of this baby who had been raised by all these different people. And most recently, maybe he's like, I don't know,

five years old now, he'd been raised by a nurse. And the nurse leaves him for a couple of weeks to go get married. And he's angry at her. And she comes back and he says, my very own Marianne, and I hate her. And clearly he's looking to use his anger to punish and to get vengeance. And I think that's how we typically look at anger. But then Bowlby describes this securely attached child. And this child was sick in the hospital and her mom could only visit her so much. And they're watching this video of her time in the hospital without her mom. And she's mad at her mom too. She's angry. But instead of attacking her mom, she says, mommy, like, where was you? Where was you? Right. And so the anger of hope is what, what is the counter to the anger of despair?

The anger of hope says, I am angry. And it's a sign that I want us to heal something so we can resume being in connection with each other. The anger of despair. I am angry. I have no hope that you are going to respond productively from this anger. But what I can do is coddle my pain by trying to attack you and trying to incite revenge. And so that is, I think, what insecurely attached people can get more stuck in. But the securely attached people are

more in this anger of hope. Like, I love you. You love me. We're responsive to each other. We can trust each other to try to show up in these difficult times. So I want to bring this up so we can repair and maintain our closeness. Yeah. And that anger of despair, right? I mean, I feel like that's the negative spiral into contempt, which from everything that I've ever read about is about the single most difficult state to recover from in any kind of relationship. It's like once you go there, it's really hard to come back. And yet that's sort of like the path that we sometimes set in motion. And it also stops. I want to just like bring this into the conversation before we come full circle. I think it also, when you don't handle these moments well, it makes it really hard to access any impulse for

generosity or appreciation or affection that you might have, which like you also say is those things matter. But when you're just, when you're walking around holding a baseline level of like anger, it's really hard to then like look at that same person and figure out, hey, how can I be generous to them today? How can I be kind to them today? Because like, if you feel like, you know, somebody is actually like, you know, like harming you presently, how are you going to access any impulse to then actually go above and beyond that and elevate their experience? Yeah. It can be so blinding, I think when we're in anger of despair, but the other thing is like, if we do bring out anger of despair, the unfortunate thing is that

our brains tend to remember things more when they are highly emotional. So what that means is that if I'm attacking a friend with anger of despair and like yelling at them, screaming at them, telling them how awful they are, all the things they did wrong, being very critical, right? That is fundamentally going to impact their view on the entire friendship. Even if we've been friends for like 10 years, we have this like one moment, like just because of how our memory works and we remember these intense experiences more, it's going to harm our friendship so much. It doesn't feel fair. And it really isn't fair, right? Because I think sometimes we have the sense that I talk about in

the book, like our truest selves are revealed in those moment of conflict. Like, oh, that's who you really are. Like, that's who you've really been all along. But to me, it's like, that's not your truest self. That's your triggered self. I think our authentic selves are who we are when we feel safe, right? But like, even on the receiving end, that if you're engaging in this anger of despair, then it's going to be disproportionately destructive to, um, to the amount of time it takes in the larger story of your friendship. It's just going to have a lot more gravitas over how the other person thinks of you and thinks of the friendship, which is why these conflict communication skills are so, so important. Like I think sometimes we think, oh, the only option is I ignore this and try to

make it go away or I completely blow up. Right. And I'm here to tell you, and so is John Bowlby, the father of attachment theory, that there is a third option. Like you don't have to pretend things are okay when they're not. You don't have to blow up. Like conflict can be an act of love. Like researchers, this is like, ugh, funny researcher joke. They have this term, the anger orgasm, trying to avoid the anger orgasm. But another root word, you know, another way to think of anger is like, oh, this is an experience of illumination, right? And for me, it's like my body still feels weary and conflict. And it is a lot of work for me to be like taking deep breaths and thinking about where I'm feeling those triggered states, right? It's a lot of work, right? And it should be a lot of work. Like conflict should be a lot of work. You shouldn't just being saying like off the cuff, the first thing that comes to mind, because it's going to be a defense mechanism of self-protection where you're triggered and you're trying to protect yourself at the cost of your relationship. So it takes like a lot of work to stay centered and be like, I see myself trying to say that thing, but I'm not going to say that thing. And I'm going to say the thing

that is going to meet my ultimate goal of like us maintaining this close connection to each other. But the work is worth it. Exactly. At the end of the day, it's like, like, what am I doing this for? Why am I in this work? Let's talk about generosity for just a moment, because it is like one of the elements that you feel is really important. You make a really interesting distinction between mutuality and reciprocity and the

way that you step into generosity with other people. Yeah, this is a, this is a great point to bring up. But I was struggling in this chapter with generosity because I do feel like the two ways of seeing it for me have been so extreme, where especially as a woman, it's like, martyr yourself and self-sacrifice and give and give and give. Otherwise, you're a bad person that you don't want to give anymore. And what I saw from the research is that these quote unquote unmitigated givers,

they actually experienced worse mental health and worse relationship outcomes than people that gave, but were also like had boundaries for themselves. And that these people that gave when they had nothing left and when they didn't really want to, their receiver actually felt worse receiving this giving that felt obligatory, right? They could kind of sense that you're, you're kind of resentful of this. So the giving, giving, giving, being generous, generous, generous does not work. Right. But on the other hand, I think there's

just like a lot of talk about boundaries in the zeitgeist. That's like, if your friend calls you upset, like tell them you're unavailable till the time that's very convenient for you. And, you know, just like, I think this reactive sucker punch against the giving, giving, giving, that's been like, you know, take, take, take boundary, boundary, boundary. Like don't only give if it's like you feel really centered and everything's perfect in your life. And then you have a moment and then you can sort of decide to give. Obviously I'm being a little facetious here, but I was trying to figure out how do we reconcile these two things? And I came across this term of mutuality, which is, it's something we

give to our closest relationships where we think about their needs and our needs and prioritize, which are more urgent and critical in the moment. And we also think about, are there ways to fulfill both of them, right? So I share a story of like a guy who let his friend stay with him when his friend lost housing. But at the same time, he asked his friend, can you walk my dog every day? And what that did for him is it made him give more in the long run, right? Because now his friend was walking his dog. So he's able to be more generous by asking for something in the midst of his generosity. And I think another example of mutuality, an example I share in the book is like, let's say it's like 1030, you're ready to go to bed and your friend calls you because they want

to discuss like the latest episode of Survivor. I don't know if Survivor is still on, but an episode that they watched of Survivor, a rerun of Survivor. And you're tired. And the boundary you can totally set is like, oh, I'm tired. Can we talk about this another time? Right? But if your friend calls you at 1030 to say, oh my gosh, I just found out my kid is self-harming, right? If you're not thinking about mutuality, you're going to be like, oh, I'm sorry. Like, I'm really tired. Let's talk about this tomorrow. But if you're thinking about mutuality, you're going to think, well, does my tiredness, is that more urgent in this moment than my friend's distress over their kid's self-harming? Actually, I don't think so.

So in this way, I'm willing to be inconvenienced at times when it's particularly important to someone that's important to me, right? When my needs are particularly important, I'm willing to inconvenience other people. And what this does is it makes us more generous in the long run, right? When my needs are particularly important, I'm willing to inconvenience other people. And what this does is it makes us more generous in the long run, right? And it's a way for us to be generous while also have boundaries because the other person is invested in ourself and we're both equally invested in both of us, right? And it allows us to show up for the people in our lives while also showing up for ourselves. Yeah. I love that. And it makes us sustainable, right? It gives us the ability to really like

take care of ourselves and take care of those around us. And when there are extreme moments, acknowledge that this is an extreme moment and I'm going to make a call that might not be sort of like the everyday call I would make, but it's the right call for now. And if that means me being more generous or exceeding boundaries, like it's not about the fact that I have something like that's established as a boundary. It's about understanding why it exists and when it's appropriate to be adaptive with it. And I think it's just, yeah, I think so much of the conversation is really sort of like if you zoom the lens out, it's about really, really being willing to just step back into conversation relationship with

other people, be real, be open, be vulnerable and do it in a way, you know, that doesn't make you melt down in the process and go running for the hills. Because as you shared in the beginning of this conversation, these relationships matter. You know, it's like there's, even if you do have that one person who's a deep and like they're your quote person, you know, like quoting Meredith Gray, right? That's Sandra Oh. You know, there's, we all still need others. And those other platonic, intimate, deeply loving friendships feels like a good place to come full circle as well. So in this container of good life project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life,

what comes up? You must see others and be seen. Thank you. Hey, before you leave, if you love this episode, safe bet you'll also love the conversation See others and be seen. Thank you. go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app. And if you found this conversation interesting or inspiring or valuable, and chances are you did since you're still listening here, would you do me a personal favor, a seven second favor and share it maybe on social or by text or by email, just with one person, just copy the link from the app you're using and tell those you know, those you love, those you want to help navigate this thing called life a little better so we can all do it better

together with more ease and more joy. Tell them to listen. Then even invite them to talk about what you've both discovered. Because when podcasts become conversations and conversations become action, that's how we all come alive together. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die.

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