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Psychologists say that women have face-to-face friendships, while the male kind are characterized as side-to-side. Women like to engage in conversation, men like to bond over an activity. It’s not that novel a discovery. Anyone who’s seen men sit and watch the game while the women gab in the kitchen knows this to be true.
A husband can fill many vital roles—protector, provider, lover—but he can’t be a BFF. Matt is my most intimate companion and the love of my life. But I can’t complain about my husband to my husband. That’s what friends are for.
“Seeing the love between others can make someone feel left out, even if he knows that the others love him as well,” they write. “No one has to be left out to feel left out; a person simply has to believe that the bonds between others are more alive or intense or intimate than their connection with him.”
Teenagers spend nearly 33 percent of their time with friends, but that number drops to less than 10 percent for adults. When we do have time for friends, most people would rather spend it with already-established BFFs than having to be “on” with a possible new one. Because when we’re not busy, we’re tired.
The perception is that being proactive about making friends is inauthentic. That you aren’t going to meet your true BFF unless it happens organically.
“the rounding error” in relationships—expecting one person to satisfy every need.
“Consistent, because, let’s face it, if you meet someone tonight and you never see her again or you only meet once more, that’s not friendship. That’s someone you’ve met,” Nelson explains. “Mutual because it has to go both ways. If you are the only one doing the work, it’s not a friendship. Shared because if you are the only one revealing things about yourself, well then this person is a therapist, not a friend. And positive emotion because nobody wants to spend time with Debbie Downer.”
“[Here’s] my idea of real intimacy,” she writes. “It’s not the person who calls to say, ‘I’m having an affair’; it’s the friend who calls to say, ‘Why do I have four jars of pickles in my refrigerator?’ ” I want someone with whom I can talk about the deep stuff—hopes and dreams and expectations and disappointments—and also the minutiae. Sometimes it takes talking about everything to get to the place where we can talk about nothing.
