Friendships Don't Just Happen!: The Guide to Creating a Meaningful Circle of GirlFriends

by Shasta Nelson

" These reality shows and painful childhood stories reinforce some of our own memories of friends who disappointed us over the years; and if we're not careful, we risk devaluing what friendship can be in our attempt to protect ourselves from what we don't want it to be.

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There are numerous studies and articles that link a circle of supportive friends to lower stress levels, greater happiness, prevention of diseases, faster recovery rates from surgery and accidents, and greater chances of reaching life goals.

The Happiness Project, by Gretchen Rubin,

she is adamant that friends play the most significant role in our pursuit of happiness:

"One conclusion was blatantly clear from my happiness research: everyone from contemporary scientists to ancient philosophers agrees that having strong social bonds is probably the most meaningful contributor to happiness."

" As a life coach, the question I always ask my clients, regardless of their stated goal, is "Tell me about your friends." The response is always revealing. Whether they want to lose weight, get a new job, make a decision about a relationship, or start their own business, who they have supporting them and influenc...

In a study out of Brigham Young University,

They concluded that low social interaction can be compared to the damage caused by smoking fifteen cigarettes a day, being an alcoholic, or not exercising. Ponder all the attention we give to our weight in this culture and sit with the fact that feeling disconnected is twice as dangerous as obesity (and what if it's not the obesity itself that is as damaging as the shame and isolation that often accompany that label?).

We have laws and government-funded health campaigns designed to motivate us to stop smoking and at least twelve grades of school curriculum to teach us the importance of exercise (not to mention fitness centers and multibillion dollar industries devoted to producing magazines and books about it), but we have some catching up to do when it comes to understanding exactly how important a circle of friends can be to our health.

"The idea that a lack of social relationships is a risk factor for death is still not widely recognized by health organizations and the public." This tells us that our friendships are not a nice-to-have as much as they are a necessity.

A landmark study of 3,000 nurses with breast cancer found that women without close friends were four times as likely to die from the disease as women with at least ten friends.

Friendship has a bigger impact on our psychological well-being than family relationships."

In our friendships there is no blood relation or marriage license holding us together, rather we're simply acknowledging that we are willing to give and receive with each other. That willingness will change us for the better.

Since I'm not anticipating any city putting up billboards next to their anti-smoking efforts saying, "Make a friend. Save your Life." anytime soon, I figure we better take on the cause for ourselves.

Misunderstanding #1: How Friendship Used to Happen Automatically

Friendship may have felt like it just happened to us when we were kids

What did just happen was consistency.

Seeing each other regularly without our ever scheduling it in.

We played with the same kids over and over, every day, all day long sometimes, without ever having to...

Repetitive time together is what happened automatically back then, not friendships. There's a difference.

Some of us still get that consistency with people we work with—it's why we are more likely to become friends with people at work with whom we'd otherwise probably never hang out again if we just met them randomly. We see them regularly and that makes all the difference.

Without built-in consistency we have to be more intentional to find an hour here and an hour there to connect with our friends.

Misunderstanding #2: What Friendship Is Supposed to Be

Dr. Irene Levine, in her book Best Friends Forever: Surviving a Breakup with Your Best Friend, reports that most of us will make around 396 friends in our lifetime, staying in touch with only one out of every twelve.

we often stay in touch more consistently with acquaintances than we do the women we consider our real friends, especially if our close friends aren't local, which is increasingly the case as fewer of us live in our childhood or college hometowns.

More recent research pushes it one step further and shows that we are now replacing half our friends every seven years.

now.) That statistic implores us to admit that we must keep welcoming new friends into our lives, and reminds us that we will be letting go of friendships as well.

Our lives do have a revolving door, whether we want them to or not. As friends go out the door, it's our responsibility to welcome new ones in at the same time.

No one's life stays static, and therefore it's impossible for our friendships to be anything but dynamic. Even a long-term friendship has to find new ways of being.

More important than anything, then, is to not only know how to start new friendships, but to also know how to enhance, repair, transition, and end others.

It is hard to say, "I need friends."

We associate loneliness or a sense of social disconnection with those people. We picture some angry, hurt, unfriendly, socially awkward, and unlovable woman sitting in a dark house, with the curtains closed, alone. Maybe with a dozen cats.

Our self-image equates loneliness with unlikability,

"The perception is that being proactive about making friends is inauthentic," says Rachel Bertsche in her book, MWF Seeking BFF: My Yearlong Search for a New Best Friend.

Two years after moving to Chicago she decided to intentionally friend-date for a year in an attempt to create a local BFF.

But needing new friends is normal. It's normal in the same way that needing to move to a new town to start school or to start a new job is normal;

Life does change. Our relationships change. Our needs change—for all of us, no matter how good we are, how balanced we are, or how healthy we are. Life changes are what we all experience.

With Americans moving on average every five years, we barely have time to enjoy the friends we just made before it seems either they or us are moving away.

My youngest sister, Katrina, talked several of her college friends into moving to Portland after they all graduated, which helped her not need to make as many new friends in a new city. I thought that strategy was brilliant until she and her husband moved to Amsterdam a couple years later and it became clear that she couldn't convince all her friends to move every time she did.

Misunderstanding #4: What Friendship Actually Takes

It somehow seems easier to keep waiting for someone to fall from the sky who already knows us and loves us, than to figure out how to meet strangers and become friends without the help of recess.

But it's damaging to keep pretending that friendships are something done to us, rather than something we make happen.

nearly half of us report being only one confidante away fro...

Many of us don't even have that on...

We waited too long to follow up, and then felt silly getting back in touch. In other words, we waited for friend-making to feel easier, more natural, and more automatic.

We'd never admit that we're hoping that she just miraculously shows up on our doorstep announcing that she is our new best friend. But in some ways we want just that. We want to know her when we see her. And we want her to know it in the same second that we do so that we don't ever risk it not feeling completely mutual. And then we hope that somehow our busy schedules will just free up, that she'll fit right into our openings, and that we can just go on singing our theme song, "Believe it or not, it's just me." But friendships don't just happen. We make them happen. And not only have we done it before, but we must do it again.

CHOOSE TO HOLD FRIENDSHIP WITH OPEN HANDS

to only accept arrivals and not departures; there are valid times for travel in both directions.

When we say we want friends, it's usually some form of the Sex and the City foursome that we imagine.