The Liz Moody Podcast - The 5 Friend Theory: Uncover The Type You're Missing & Unlock Your Dream Friendships

Starting point is 00:00:00 Even though I have friends, I still feel really lonely sometimes, and I know that's a big thing that you guys struggle with as well. You'll write to me and you'll tell me how lonely you feel, but that you're not sure why or what to do about it. So I dove into the research around friendships and loneliness. And it turns out that there are five specific types of friends that we all need. And if you are missing even one of these friends, your brain is literally wired to feel lonely no matter how many friends that you might have. So today, we're going to be going to go through all of the five friend types, and we're going to get into exactly how to make the friends that you might be missing. Welcome to the Liz Moody podcast where we share real solutions

Starting point is 00:00:38 that fit into your actual life to the trickiest problems so that you can feel as good as possible every single day. I'm your host, Liz, and I've been a journalist for two decades. I love diving into the research. I love the actionable, pragmatic tips you can apply to your life. So my very first question was, what are we actually getting from our friendships? There was a meta-analysis of 148 studies looking at over 300,000 people. And it showed that we are 50% less likely to die if we have good friends. That is wild. The impact of having strong social relationships on our health is literally bigger than obesity. It is equivalent to quitting smoking. So I was like, okay, clearly friendship is important. But what is specifically happening? Like, how is it having

Starting point is 00:01:25 this effect. And what I realized when I dove into the research is that there's a number of specific mechanisms by which friendships are having this impact on our bodies and on our brains. And because of that, I came up with the five specific types of friends that are going to have these impacts. So there are scrapbook friends, there are Expander friends, there are Eras friends, there are last call friends, and there are anchor friends. And here's the key. If you are missing one of those, you're going to feel an impact even if you have the other four. This is the reason why you can feel like you have all of these friends, but you still feel lonely because you are missing the type of friendship that has that specific impact on your brain and on your body. To start off, I want you to picture a graph in your head.

Starting point is 00:02:10 So on one side, we have the levels of friendship, the depth of friendship. I talked about this in an earlier episode. That's going to go from the creation era friend. I think even as I say that, you're probably like, I kind of know what that means. Creation era is at the beginning of a friendship where you're still kind of learning about each other, you're learning preferences, you're learning what's okay to say and what's not okay to say. And then that's going to go up to the cozy era. That is when you can sit in silence with this person. You get to be your whole unedited, complete self. So that's one axis of the graph. The other axis of the graph is these five types of friendship. So for all five types, you can be anywhere from the lowest level of friendship that we just met,

Starting point is 00:02:49 we're just discovering each other, all the way up to the deepest level of friendship. the cozy era of friendship. You can go all the way from creation to cozy era in any of these five types. The first type is what I call scrapbook friends. These are your friends that are the holders of your memories. These are the friends from childhood or from high school or from college. These are the friends where you get together and a lot of what you're talking about is from the past. Like you're like, oh my God, do you remember when Jack got really drunk at that party? I'm going to be really honest with you. This is a type of friendship that I used to feel really nervous about. I was constantly trying to take scrapbook friends and move them into another category

Starting point is 00:03:30 because I was like, oh, it's really not good that our relationship is just based around memories. We shouldn't be just sitting around and rehashing the past. And people can be multiple types of friends like scrapbook friends can become eras friends or last call friends. But it turns out that if you dive into the research, scrapbook friends on their own are incredibly important, incredibly valuable, incredibly irreplaceable. There was a landmark study trying to figure out how we view ourselves, how we construct our sense of our identity, and it was testing whether we view ourselves the way that we see ourselves, the way that other people view us, or the way that we think other people view us.

Starting point is 00:04:09 And the one that won by far was how we think other people see us. So this study found that our identity is constructed almost entirely based on our interpretation of how other people view us. found that I do not view myself based on my own self-construction. I don't view myself based on what you actually think of me. I view myself based on what I think you think of me, even if that is completely wrong. So how does this tie back into scrapbook friends? With newer friends in our lives, we're always kind of trying to guess how they see us, which makes our identity feel a lot more in flux. We're like, do they think I'm funny? What do they think of this? Because our identity is based on

Starting point is 00:04:51 what we think other people think of us. When we are not sure what they think of us, our identity doesn't feel stable. The scrapbook friends make our identity feel really solid because we know what they think of us. Even if it's not good, even if we're like, oh, this person doesn't think I'm funny. We still know which makes our identity feel more solid. One of the limitations of scrapbook friends is that they can trap you in older parts of your identity. So one of the tricks of having good scrapbook friends is allowing them to hold these memories, to hold these previous versions of yourself, to hold this stable foundation for your identity, and then also allowing yourself to grow and evolve and change from there. Next up, do you know those friends who are always

Starting point is 00:05:36 doing exciting things or sharing new things that they're learning or making you feel really inspired and energized when you leave a conversation with them? Those are our expander friends. Those are the friends who show us the possibilities for our lives. Expander friends can be Expander friends for fun. They can show us the adventures, the excitement, the joy that's possible in life. They can be expanders for parenting. I didn't know parenting could look like that. They can be expanders for relationships.

Starting point is 00:06:03 I know for me because I was not raised in a household where there were any good relationships modeled, I was really looking for expanders to show me what a good relationship could look like. Expander friends are incredibly important because they serve as proof points for what is possible. Seeing somebody who is like you, but living a life that you aspire to, even in just one very specific way, moves these options for life into your realm of possibility. You're like, oh, if Ellen is parenting in this way, then that is available to me too. If Jenny has all these hobbies and all this joy in her life, then that's possible for me as well. Seeing that person as a living, breathing proof point of what is possible is incredibly important for our brain.

Starting point is 00:06:55 And the second mechanism, sorry, guys, I feel so nerdy when I say this, but I really like to know why. For me, understanding why things work the way they do is so helpful for me understanding its importance versus just being like, oh yeah, I'm sure that's important. You should have that. somebody said that you should have that. So the second mechanism that Expander friends are working by is essentially our brains do not assess threats objectively. We assess threats relative to our perceived ability to handle threats. So the more resources that you feel like you have, the less threatening something is going to feel.

Starting point is 00:07:30 If layoffs are coming but you're feeling really good about your resume, you have a 12-month emergency fund, you're going to feel like those layoffs are less threatening. They're not objectively a certain amount of threatening. The same layoff is going to be different levels of threat to different people based on their perceived resources for handling said layoff. So what Expander friends do is they literally change our stress calculations because they expand what we believe our resources are. Expander friends are providing parenting resources, pleasure resources, career resources

Starting point is 00:08:05 that are going to make us feel like we can handle whatever threat. come our way. Jenny is Aces at fun. Ellen is amazing at parenting. We get access to those resources through them so we feel less stressed about potential threats that might come our way. So even in those moments where those threats aren't there, we feel less stressed because we feel more resourced. Okay. Next step are our Aura's friends. These are the friends that are in the same phase of life as us. I think that this is one a lot of us are missing. We're in a time in our lives where so many of us are in really different life phases, even if we are the same age. Like, some of your friends are having babies. Some of your friends are at Coachella. Some of your friends are

Starting point is 00:08:46 having babies and they're at Coachella. We need friends who are in a similar life phase to us. We just do. It is so lovely and so wonderful. I've done this with a million friends where when we enter different life phases, one of them has a baby and I don't have a baby. And we maintain that friendship and we really work around each other. And beautiful, beautiful stuff can have. happen there. And if you are having a baby, you need friends that are having a baby. If you're single, you need friends that are single. If you are starting a new career path, you need friends that are starting a new career path. We need friends that are in a similar era of life to us to help calibrate our experiences to provide advice and recommendations to do things with on a day-to-day

Starting point is 00:09:31 basis. It is such an important type of friendship. And I think a lot of us feel like, oh, it shouldn't matter what life phase we're in. If we're really great friends, it will not matter. It matters. You can keep friends from other life phases from other eras while you are in one era. You just need friends that match your era. You just do. Also, this is important. The era's friend needs to become another type of friend if they're going to stay in your life past that era. You're going to make your era's friend, like for the specific era that you're in, for parenting, for the phase in your career, for being a single girl out on the town. And then you need to also have them become a scrapbook friend or an expander friend or a last call friend if you want them to stay in your life longer than that era.

Starting point is 00:10:20 Because otherwise, when that era is over, you won't have anything to connect with them on anymore. This is the only type of friendship that you need to actively transition them to another type of friendship in order for them to stay in your life long term. So that's an important thing to note about ERA's friends. They are so critical, so important, and they are not forever. Okay, next, do you know those friends where when you hang out, you are closing out the restaurant, and then you're going to the bar, and then you're closing out the bar, and then you're going to your house, and you're sitting on the couch, and you're still talking until both of you are basically falling asleep. Those are our last call friends. Those are a Yap friends. Those are a Yap friends.

Starting point is 00:11:01 Those are the friends that we are digesting and processing the world with. This can be in real life. This can be by a voice note. This can be by a phone call. And these have a ton of benefits. They are giving you new perspectives on life. They are giving you endless hours of entertainment. And they're also, so when we get our thoughts out of our heads, those thoughts, instead of

Starting point is 00:11:23 looping and looping and looping in our head, they're out in the world. And they feel much less threatening. And then we feel calmer without changing. anything in our lives just by getting those thoughts out of our heads. This is one of the reasons why journaling works really well. This is also one of the reasons why therapy works really well. And having a last call friend provides some of those same benefits. Last call friends are also going to help us take this jumble of thoughts in our head and form them into a cohesive narrative of our lives. Having a cohesive narrative of your life has been shown in so much research

Starting point is 00:11:59 to have measurable positive impacts on our psychological health, on our physical health. Our last call friends are the people who are helping us build a story so that these things don't just like happen and then another thing happens and another thing happens and it's all really random and chaotic. Last call friends are helping us build a story that helps us make sense out of our entire lives. And then last, but certainly not least, we have our anchor friends. Our anchor friends are the ones that we know are going to be there. We might talk to them every day. We might not talk to them for months or even years.

Starting point is 00:12:36 But we know that if we needed them, we could call them and they would answer. There is so much research that shows that for our brains, knowing and trusting that people are going to be there is like a solve for our nervous system. It allows us to move through life with a baseline sense of trust that just makes everything feel easier. Just knowing that if you needed this person, you could pick up the phone and they would be there allows you to move through the world with less of a sense of threat. It's going to make life feel less scary and it's going to make life feel more satisfying and enjoyable and it's going to make you feel less alone. Did you know that more than two-thirds of protein powders tested have

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Starting point is 00:20:53 slash Liz Moody. Okay, so those are the five types of friends. You probably immediately are like, okay, I definitely have an anchor friend. I can think of my scrapbook friend, but maybe I'm missing an era's friend for this phase of my life or maybe I'm missing some expander friends. For me, personally, we go back to the top of the episode where I was like, I'm feeling lonely and I don't know why. I realized that I was missing ERA's friends.

Starting point is 00:21:21 I have a lot of friends my age who are parents and a lot of friends who are younger than me who aren't parents, but they're in really different places in their lives and their careers. And I don't have a lot of people in my life who are really truly in the same places as me, who are living on a day-to-day basis in a very similar way to me, which is why it felt so lonely trying to navigate it, even though I have all of these other friends. You can have one friend who is a lot or even all of these types of friends. Like one person could be an ERA's friend, a last call friend, and an Expander friend all in one. But you just need at least one person in each of the five types of friendship.

Starting point is 00:22:03 So if you had one friend and they were a scrapbook friend, a last call friend, an ERA's friend, an Expander friend, and an anchor friend, you would feel less alone than if you had 50 friends and they were all ERA's friends. You need to have all five types of friendships met to not feel lonely just based on what our brain needs and what our brain is looking to get out of friendship. And also remember, these people can span from creation to cozy in any of the five types. You could have an Ares friend who's just very surface level, but you're both embarking on the same career journey or in the same place in your career and you talk about that and that's great. And you could also have an Ares friend where you're on the same career journey on the same path in life,

Starting point is 00:22:45 but you go really deep with this person. You feel really seen. You feel like you can be your whole self. Both are great. And you really want to span. Like you want to have some cozy friends, some creation friends. You really want to have people you can feel like your whole self with. And you also don't need everybody to be that to you. But you do need at least one person, even if it's the same person. You need somebody in every single category. And I do think it's so important to recognize and to talk about because otherwise we're like, well, I have these really deep good friends. Why isn't this enough? Like, why isn't this hitting? Why do I still feel lonely? And it's because even if you have all cozy friends, if they are not going across all of the five categories,

Starting point is 00:23:30 you are going to feel like something is missing because some of your brain's neurological needs for friendship are not being met. Which begs the question, how do you make the types of friends that you're missing. So let's go in order. Scrapbook friends. Step one is just recognizing their value. Again, this was a type of friendship that I was dismissive of. I was like, this is a fake friendship because we're not talking about our lives now. That is not true. These are incredibly valuable, important friendships and the act of that nostalgia and that remembering that unto itself is valuable. And it's important. So treating it as such is step one. Step two, you can also reconnect with people who have been gone from your life.

Starting point is 00:24:16 You can look them up online. You can reach out to them and say, hey, I was just thinking about high school, college, those early years that we lived in New York City in our 20s. I was thinking of you. How are you? What's going on in your life? People love that. People will almost always respond well to that.

Starting point is 00:24:31 I have friends from high school or college who will see my face pop up on their social media feeds just by nature of my job. It's kind of embarrassing. But then they'll reach out, and I'm always just so excited to hear from them and to hear what's going on in their lives. If you have high school reunions or college reunions, go to those. Those serve a valuable place in your life. You can also treat current close friendships as scrapbook friendships in the making. So reference and revisit the experiences that you've had together.

Starting point is 00:25:03 Like, oh, remember when we did that last month, last year? create rituals and document what's happening over time, take pictures together and create those memories and intentionally be like, we are going to remember these memories later. This is also a really great opportunity for the novelty rule. Shout out the novelty rule. But you want to have experiences with people so that you're building these scrapbook friendships over time. You're not just like meeting up and talking about what happened in your week. You're having adventures together. You are building that scrapbook of memories. Okay, too, Expander Friends.

Starting point is 00:25:38 Expander friends are largely found one step outside of your already existing social world. So that is a friend of a friend, a friend of a coworker, maybe your cousin's coworker, something like that. These are called weak ties. They give you access to worlds and networks that are different than your own than your strong tie networks because they are that one step removed. So ask your friends who else they could introduce you to, or or ask your coworkers if you could join them at their happy hour with their friends after work. You could also intentionally put yourself in communities where you're going to be exposed to more weak tie people like a tennis class that you wouldn't normally take.

Starting point is 00:26:18 These weak ties, these people who are just one step removed from your community, are really great places where expander relationships are formed. Also, if you have expanders in your life, one, tell them. Everybody fucking loves to hear that they're an expander for other people. And then two, cultivate that relationship. Ask them questions about their lives. Like, hey, I really like how you approach your career. It's going to make you think about your own life differently. It's going to motivate you differently. And it's going to make you approach your challenges and your opportunities really, really differently. Next, Ares friends. Again, I think this is the one

Starting point is 00:26:57 that so many of us are missing right now. This is the one that I was missing. And we really dismiss the importance of it. If you are single, make single friends. If you are a new parent, make new parent friends. Find the new parent groups. Ask your friends, hey, do you have other single friends that I could meet? I would love people to go out with on a Friday night. To be so clear, you can go out with your non-single friends on a Friday night. I am not saying that you cannot do that. I am a non-single person and I'm going out with my single friends all of the time. And I recognize that I am not going to occupy the same space as people in the same era. Also, the more that you can pay attention as you go about your routine, the more that you're going to find other people who are in

Starting point is 00:27:44 similar phases of life going through that same routine. So if you're walking your dog every day, who else is at the dog park? Can you spark up a conversation with them? You are more likely to be in a similar era. You're at the same yoga studio, the same job, the same co-working space. So just zoom out and look around and take notice of those people. Okay, last call friends. The thing I think about here a lot is that so many of us want to get vulnerable and deep and have these more meaningful conversations, but we underestimate how much other people want to do that as well. I think that the biggest thing for last call friends is starting to ask those deep and vulnerable questions and sharing those types of things about your own life yourself. I do want to shout out conversation cards

Starting point is 00:28:29 like conversation card decks or games, because I think they're a really great way to start if you're like, oh, this could be a last call friend. Like, maybe there's something here. Do some conversation cards with them. You will quickly see if they are a match for the way that you think about and process the world. It doesn't mean, by the way, that you need to think about and process the world in the same way because you actually kind of want different perspectives, but you will know very quickly

Starting point is 00:28:53 if you're viving and if they're interested in going deeper. I also think that for Last Call Friends, creating context to have those deep and meandering and vulnerable conversations is really, really helpful. So things like road trips and vacations together and cooking together and co-working together. Spending that time together where the conversation kind of like meanders in and out and you're processing the day as you go through it and about it together is really, really helpful for building Last Call friends. All right, Anchor Friends. My best hack for building anchor friends is standing dates. These can be virtual.

Starting point is 00:29:32 These can be in person. But they are just things that you do at the same time on a daily, weekly, or monthly cadence so that you're building that reliability, that predictability into the relationship. So that can be like if it's a neighborhood friend, we go for a sunset walk together every day. That could be if it's a long distance friend. Like we voice note on Sundays with our rose bud and thorn of the week. And then also just be on the lookout because I do think that anchor friends are often certain types of people. Like there's the people in the world that you just are like, this person is reliable.

Starting point is 00:30:06 This person is trustworthy. This person is going to be there for me no matter what. And if I'm being honest, I think that we undervalue these people and we don't treat them as well as we should. So my other best tip for anchor friends is to recognize when they are in your life and appreciate them, nurture them, cultivate them and do not take them for granted because they're a really important type of friendship to have. I'm so curious to hear from you guys. What kind of friend are you to the people around you? Like, are you somebody's expander friend? Are you somebody's last call friend? Are you the anchor friend for a lot of people? And then what types of friends are you missing? Like, I realized

Starting point is 00:30:49 I was missing ERA's friends. So now I'm on the hunt for that because I know that my brain needs it. and I will feel a little bit lonely until I find it. But please let me know in the comment. I am so curious what types of friends you feel like you have and what type of friend you feel like you are and what types of friends you have difficulty making. And also just let me know if you have any questions about this whole framework or things within it.

Starting point is 00:31:15 Like, I'm really struggling to make an anchor friend. Whatever, I'll go through the comments and I will answer as many as possible. I hope this is helpful. I am on an infinite question. to help us all fight loneliness in this community and to feel as connected and happy and satisfied in our relationships as possible. So I hope this all helps. I love you. And I will see you on the next episode of the Liz Moody podcast. Oh, just one more thing. It's the legal language. This podcast is

Starting point is 00:31:42 presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, a psychotherapist, or any other qualified professional. You've probably seen red light everywhere lately and honestly I was very skeptical of it like how can one thing help hair growth and skin and period cramps and thyroid health and energy. So I brought Dr. Vivian Chen, who is the founder of Loombox, onto the podcast and she finally explained the science in a way that made it all make sense. The short version, Red Light targets your mitochondria, which are the powerhouses of your cells, so it literally gives your cells more energy to repair, regenerate, and function better. That's why you get these localized benefits like less knee pain or better

Starting point is 00:32:27 scanner, calmer stomach, and more systemic energy. In fact, there are over a thousand studies showing benefits from quicker COVID recovery times to healthier thyroid function, to less depression and anxiety, to better joint pain, to skin health and hair health and scalp health, and all of these things because the red lights work on the mitochondria in the different places that you put it, and then it's also going to work on your body as a whole. Dr. Vivian gifted me her red light, and I dove into the research around it and then Zach and I both tried it for over six months and I loved it so much that I literally begged her to become a podcast partner so that I could get a discount code for you. I have been gifted so many redlights over the years. It is a perk of this job. And this is the

Starting point is 00:33:12 only one that I feel like actually helps with those deeper issues. That's because it has something that is called higher radiance, which is essentially the dose and a metric that a lot of red light companies do not even disclose. And also it uses red light, which is a lot of red light, which helps with the surface stuff, like your skin and stuff like that, and near infrared light, which is going to penetrate deeper into your cells. You just put it over whatever area you want to target. So I'll put it over my lower belly to help with period cramps. And it makes a huge difference.

Starting point is 00:33:39 I use it for headaches. So I'll, like, put it over my head. And it makes them basically go away. It's amazing. Or I'll just sit with my loombox during a short meditation or breath work for mitochondrial support and having it like on my skin on my face. I've gotten a lot of compliments on my skin health recently. and I fully give Loombox a lot of credit for that.

Starting point is 00:33:58 Loombox is third party tested for radiance. Remember, that is the dose. That is the thing that most red light companies are not even testing for, much less disclosing, which is crazy. It's also third party tested for wavelength and its FDA registered, which is so, so rare. I think of a lot of red lights is more like beauty gadgets, and then this is more like a medical device that can also be used for all the beauty purposes, too.

Starting point is 00:34:21 Plus, it's portable, so you can use it anywhere on your body, and you can also like take it on vacation with you. Now is the perfect time to try Loombox. You can use my link for 40% off. Just head to The Loombox.com slash Liz. That is The Loombox.com slash Liz for 40% off. The mattress that you sleep on is one of the highest exposures that you have. Like if it's off gassing, you're breathing that in for basically a third of your life.

Starting point is 00:34:50 And most conventional mattresses are loaded with synthetic foams, flame retardants, microplastics and more. Plus, if it's not comfy, you're going to be tossing and turning, you're going to be really hot. And sleep is the foundation of health. It is so important. Because of all of this, if I were not going to invest in any other part of my house, no other things in my house, I would invest in my mattress. And in fact, I have four years well before I had much money to spend on any of these things because it is such a big needle mover. The birch mattress is incredible.

Starting point is 00:35:21 It is made with organic cotton, natural latex, and ethically sourced wool. so it has literally no off-gassing. You can not smell anything right when you unboxed it. It has no microplastics, no synthetic foams or flame retardants. And the wool makes it so breathable, which if you've listened to this podcast for more than five minutes, you know that I run very, very hot. Like I am a furnace. Zach has basically accepted that sleepy next to me is like sleeping next to like a little

Starting point is 00:35:49 fire. And the birch mattress has been a game changer for that. It's made me sleep so much better. Like I can see my sleep score going. up because I'm not hot all night long. It's also hypoallergenic, which is really worth paying attention to if you find yourself waking up stuffy or congested. Dust mites in a conventional mattress can actually impact your breathing and your sleep quality without you even realizing it. And again, we need to be able to breathe to get good sleep and getting good sleep is the foundation

Starting point is 00:36:14 of our health. And then comfort wise, Zach sleeps on his back and then I sleep on my side and my stomach. So we have two completely different sleep styles and we both wake up feeling really good, Aaks and Pains. CNN actually named the Birch mattress, the best mattress for side sleepers, and Wired named it the best organic mattress period. So there you go. Burch has options for every kind of sleeper in your household. They have three firmness layers. I like the Lux Natural, which is the medium one. And then parents, they even have a Birch Kid's natural mattress. Birch ships right to your door. It sets up in minutes and it comes with 120-night risk-free trial. So if it is not for you, they will pick it up for free. You have nothing to lose here.

Starting point is 00:36:57 I want all of you to enjoy a deep, restful night sleep with a new mattress from Birch. Go to birchliving.com slash Liz Moody for 20% off. That is birchliving.com slash Liz Moody. And you're going to get 20% off birchliving.com slash Liz Moody.

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