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

by Marisa G. Franco

I welcome you to not just soak in all the information but also to use it to show up differently in your friendships. Because it won’t matter if you learn that initiating is essential to developing friendships if you’re not willing to muscle through your fear of rejection to say hello. How can knowing that self-disclosure is the life-force of friendship serve you if you don’t channel this knowledge toward welcoming vulnerability?

Scientists have found that of 106 factors that influence depression, having someone to confide in is the strongest preventor.

When we feel shame over our bodies, it’s because we sense our skin hangs saggy, flabby, or jiggly beyond comparison (also normal). 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.

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

As Anaïs Nin, the French Cuban writer, puts it, “Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”

uncertainty is also an offering—an opportunity not only to expand, evolve, and grow, but also to deepen our friendships by letting others be agents of our transformation.

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. Our past friendships, the evidence suggests, prepare us for connection throughout our lives.

We see our perceptions—refracted through our attachment style—as reality.

The grave cost of appearing cool all the time, it seems, is feeling estranged from yourself.

I was assuming friendships should happen “naturally” (which looked like Lauri initiating with me). And the reason I thought this way was so I wouldn’t have to face my fears of being disliked or rejected. But friendships require initiative, and that means we must confront our gravest fears.

thinking others are judging you has the same effect on you as others actually judging you. Our thoughts often hurt us more than our bullies do. The truth is, no one cares about your social clumsiness as much as you do. They’re too busy worrying about their own.

Shame is the sense that our secrets make us unworthy of human connection. It’s why, when we’re vulnerable, it doesn’t just feel like our secrets are at stake, but our entire being.

When we package our vulnerability to seem less helpless, we run a greater risk of receiving a flat response—not because people don’t care, but because they don’t sense that this is a moment when caring is important.

We talk so much about the risks of vulnerability that we forget to acknowledge the risks of invulnerability, risks that plague avoidants,

“Self-compassion creates a solid core of stable self-worth. And that gives us a safe place to land no matter where showing vulnerability leads us,”

spaces where men can be vulnerable exist, but finding them requires risks. Men who want to bring more vulnerability to their friendships will likely have to go first.

It’s when we accommodate others out of fear or mindlessness that inauthentic feelings creep in.

Anger of despair masquerades as protecting the self but is also about damning the other,

If we get defensive during conflict, we also miss out on an opportunity for enlightenment. Conflict is one of the only times we get honest feedback about ourselves. Without it, we obliviously cause harm.

our truest selves are not revealed during conflict. Often our most triggered selves are.

generosity is complicated. It can make us friends, but it can also reopen our wounds, turn us sour, or overwhelm us. It can feel like an expression of love, or one of desperation, like it did for Melody. It can bring us closer to others, but it can dissolve us in the process. It is different from many of our other friendship skills, because it’s especially finite. The more we give, the less we have left. It’s love on a seesaw. And to handle its schism, we have to work with generosity’s contours: to learn when, how, and whom to do it with, so we can make friends without losing ourselves.

in the words of Prentis Hemphill, a healer, Somatics teacher, and writer, “Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me at the same time.”

in the words of author Neil Strauss, “Unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments.”