Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends

by Marisa G. Franco

The students were almost always nervous, and my co-therapist and I had to build our tolerance for sitting through long stretches of silence. The quiet would eventually be broken by a student whose anxiety about sharing became surpassed by their anxiety about silence.

As these students re-created the problems they had in the outside world within the group, they revealed how our mental health issues are fueled by kinks in how we relate to others.

Lauren, Melvin, and Marquee each took major steps forward because they were in a space where they felt connected to others, which ultimately allowed them to grow. The group was safe not only because it was a place where they could share their shame and still be loved, but also because it was a place where people could gently and honestly give them feedback to help them evolve. And the strong relationships they developed with the other group members helped them appreciate and accept this feedback, not as putdowns but as acts of love.

connection affects who we are, and who we are affects how we connect. When we have felt connected, we’ve grown. We’ve become more open, more empathic, bolder. When we have felt disconnected, we’ve withered. We’ve become closed off, judgmental, or distant in acts of self-protection.

As writer James Baldwin puts it, “Nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

The other thing the group revealed was that when we feel accepted and loved, it helps us develop certain qualities that lead us to continue to connect better (the rich get richer, as they say).

“For our life to feel significant, we crave someone to witness it, to verify its importance. Shirleen was my witness,”

The power of friendship isn’t just a relic of ancient thinking. It’s demonstrated by science. Psychologists theorize that our relationships, like oxygen, food, and water, are necessary for us to function. When stripped of them, we cannot thrive, which explains why friendship powerfully influences mental and physical health. Scientists have found that of 106 factors that influence depression, having someone to confide in is the strongest preventor. The impact of loneliness on our mortality is akin to smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. One study found the most pronounced difference between happy and unhappy people was not how attractive or religious they were or how many good things happened to them. It was their level of social connection.

Our ancestors lived in tribes, where responsibility for one another was diffused among many. Friendship, then, is a rediscovery of an ancient truth we’ve long buried: it takes an entire community for us to feel whole.

One study, for example, found that hanging out with friends was linked to greater happiness than hanging out with a romantic partner or children.

“If one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.” Our spouse, our children, our parents, they’ll all ping us with mudita, but with many friends to celebrate, joy becomes infinite.

Through friendship, we can self-select into some of the most affirming, safe, and sacred relationships of our lives, not because of pressures from society to do so, but because we elect to do so.

British author C. S. Lewis once said, “Eros [romantic passion] will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities.”

When choosing friends, we are freer to prioritize the truest markers of intimacy, such as shared values, trust, admiration of each other’s character, or feelings of ease around each other.

Friends don’t just support us personally; they benefit us collectively.

This happens when, all the while, research finds that friendship is what gives romantic love its strength and endurance, rather than the other way around.

The only reason they aren’t is because the rest of us unnecessarily compartmentalize friendship into happy hours and occasional lunch dates.

In fact, our friendships have likely already transformed us, molding us into who we are and foretelling who we will become.

Our shame, according to Sullivan, comes less from the inherent agony of our experiences and more from the agony of these experiences severing us from humankind.

When we confide our shame, and friends accept us or even identify with us, we learn our disappointments don’t make us unhuman. They make us deeply human. Our friends permit us to accept our flaws, to allow them to be a piece of who we are rather than our scarlet letters.

Because we avoid what we feel shame over, we miss out on the opportunities to explore those pieces of our identity.

When we feel shame, we feel fragmented, like Selina. Shame prompts us to ignore, bury, or distance a piece of ourselves. But in our obsession with hiding that flaw, it absorbs us, and ironically, as we try to detach from it, it becomes engulfing.

Whatever alleged flaw triggered our shame becomes a part of who we are, not the entirety of who we are. This is how the empathy we receive from friends makes us whole.

Research finds that at this awkward time, we don’t turn to family or the boyfriend we invented when we were younger to seem interesting. We turn to friends. Friends have such a lasting impact on our identities because they are there during this critical and tumultuous time when we are figuring out who we are.

There’s also research that looks at empathy and friendship unfolding in the brain. It finds that seeing friends excluded activates the same part of our brains triggered when we are excluded. This is not true for strangers. Empathy, then, is part of friendship. And friendship does not only make us empathic toward our friends. It makes us empathic generally.

The fifth graders with friends were less depressed, more moral, and had higher self-worth as adults.

We’re not always conscious of the way friendship transforms us, but it still does. And it doesn’t just make us into better versions of ourselves. It helps us figure out who we are.

The study was revolutionary because it illustrated that learning doesn’t just happen when a teacher lectures at the front of a classroom. We take on what we experience. Our classroom is what we witness firsthand.

Our friends advertise the kaleidoscope of ways we can live. They expose us to new ways of being in the world, showing us another life is possible.

The theory emphasizes that our identity needs to constantly expand for us to be fulfilled, and relationships are our primary means for expansion.

Inclusion of others in the self is actually part of why we’re empathic toward friends; it feels like being empathic to ourselves.

When trying to assess differences between ourselves and close others, we get confused because they feel like part of us.

“We choose people for relationships because we want to become like them, after all,” he shared. “It’s a way for us to enrich who we are.”

Kids with moms who had higher levels of oxytocin exhibited higher levels of oxytocin and better friendships.

While the evidence is still growing, studies suggest that having quality friendships in our past triggers our oxytocin and makes us more empathic, moral, and attentive and, in doing so, positions us as better friends.

In the words of Esther Perel, a famous couples’ therapist, “the quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives.” Oxytocin is the common denominator.[*]

At one point in our lives, friendship was at the center of all our universes, like it is for Selina. And in that time—if it was healthy—it elevated our character, making us more moral, empathic, and whole. Callee’s story demonstrates that, through self-expansion, friendship helps us figure out who we are.

Friendships are tiny interventions of love and empathy and oxytocin that calm our bodies, keep us healthy, and ready us for connection.

In this chapter we’ll explore attachment theory, a groundbreaking framework that answers this question, and along the way, we’ll solve other questions about friendship, like who are we as friends and how did we become this way?

We’ll find that hundreds of studies reveal that the way we view others, interpret events, and behave have predictable impacts on whether we make and keep friends.

They are more satisfied at work and are viewed more positively by co-workers. They feel less regret and are better able to roll with the punches of life. In typically stressful events, like math tests or public speaking, they keep calm.

Attachment is what we project onto ambiguity in relationships, and our relationships are rife with ambiguity. It’s the “gut feeling” we use to deduce what’s really going on. And this gut feeling is driven not by a cool assessment of events but by the collapsing of time, the superimposition of the past onto the present.

It’s common for people to exhibit more insecure attachment patterns when stressed. For example, I scored highest on secure, but higher on avoidance than I typically do. I’ve been so busy (working a full-time job and writing this book), which limits my resources to provide emotional support for others. After working so much, I just want to barricade the door, splay on the couch, and watch trashy and dramatic television.

It’s tempting to assume secure people are setting themselves up for disappointment. By thinking others are trustworthy, won’t they get hurt? And won’t they overlook people out to harm them? But actually, assuming the best sets secure people up to receive the best.

“If you trust people, you make them more trustworthy,” said Ernst Fehr, a professor at the University of Zurich and one of the authors of the study. The study lends credence to a psychological theory called reciprocity theory, which emphasizes that people treat us like we treat them. If we are kind, open, and trusting, people are more likely to respond in kind. Secure people, then, don’t just assume others are trustworthy; they make others trustworthy through their good faith.

One study found that when people were primed with security, their heart rate variability (changes in the time between heartbeats) didn’t fluctuate as significantly when they were socially excluded. But when people weren’t primed with security, it did. Heart rate variability fluctuates when our heart is responding to stress, leading the study’s authors to conclude, “Attachment may provide an important mechanism to increase adaptive responding to the distressing experience of social exclusion.”

The secure live the answer to this question. As mentioned, they’re more likely to initiate new friendships, as well as productively address conflict and share intimate things about themselves.

A solid sense of self, unrattled by the skirmishes that inevitably arise in close relationships, gives secure people the composure to grant others grace, which explains why, research finds, they are better at maintaining friendships and less likely to get into conflict.

authentic. They are comfortable with intimacy and with engaging in behaviors that promote it, such as giving and receiving support and being vulnerable. Terry Real, a therapist and author, was right when he wrote in his book How to Get Through to You, “Sustaining relationships with others requires a good relationship to ourselves. Healthy self-esteem is an internal sense of worth that pulls one neither into ‘better than’ grandiosity nor ‘less than’ shame.”

Secure friends make you feel safe. You’re scared to tell someone you experience bouts of depression, or broke ties with your great-aunt, or put ketchup on your eggs, and your secure friends make you feel loved regardless. Researchers found that secure people report being more accepting of others and better listeners. In chapter 1, we discussed how friends can make us feel human again when we experience shame. Secure friends do this better than anyone else. They provide us with friendships that heal.