Platonic Quotes

“What we try to suppress defines us (more on this in the vulnerability chapter), or, in the words of one of my psychology supervisors, “Anything unspeakable to you is affecting you.” That’s why we don’t heal shame by hiding it.”
― Marisa G. Franco, Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends

“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.”
― Marisa G. Franco, Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends

“For our life to feel significant, we crave someone to witness it, to verify its importance.”
― Marisa G. Franco, Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends

“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.”
― Marisa G. Franco, Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends

“We are at our most powerful the moment we no longer need to be powerful.”
― Marisa G. Franco, Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends

“We live in a society in which it is acceptable to cancel plans with friends for work, but never vice versa.”
― Marisa G. Franco, Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends

“Anything unspeakable to you is affecting you.”
― Marisa G. Franco, Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends

“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.”
― Marisa G. Franco, Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends

“Friendships are tiny interventions of love and empathy and oxytocin that calm our bodies, keep us healthy, and ready us for connection.”
― Marisa G. Franco, Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends

“The theory emphasizes that our identity needs to constantly expand for us to be fulfilled, and relationships are our primary means for expansion.”
― Marisa G. Franco, Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends

“As writer James Baldwin puts it, “Nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
― Marisa G. Franco, Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends

“Anything unspeakable to you is affecting you.” That’s why we don’t heal shame by hiding it. When we share it, and our friends love and accept us, we are released from the labor of guarding our shame.”
― Marisa G. Franco, Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends

“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.”
― Marisa G. Franco, Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends

“Had I not killed her, she would have killed me.”
― Marisa G. Franco, Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends

“None of us wants to be misunderstood, but when we downplay our feelings, we invite misunderstanding.”
― Marisa G. Franco, Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends

“Hanging out with different friends dilated my personality like a peacock fanning its tail.”
― Marisa G. Franco, Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends

“Don't take friendship for granted. Don't be passive, letting friendship fizzle because you forgot to reach out. Don't dip out when friends need you. Don't wait for calamity to rock you into realizing friendship is priceless. Engrave friendship on your list. Make being a good friend a part of who you are, because a deep and true core that needs to belong lies within us all.”
― Marisa G. Franco, Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends

“But even when we assume we're unlikable, and we are, consequently, withdrawn and cold, people still like us more than we think.”
― Marisa G. Franco, Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends

“Most of us look forward to the day when our identity hardens, like a cast protecting against life's dings. When we're younger, we yearn for the moment when we'll be fully formed and have life figured out. Maybe it's when we find love, or have kids, or write that book, or retire. And then we get older and realize that moment never happens. You're never done figuring it out, but hopefully you're better equipped to tolerate not knowing.”
― Marisa G. Franco, Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends

“If you don’t have anybody who’s generous and loving and full of grace in your life, then go be that in somebody else’s life. It’s not about what you get. It’s about what you can contribute to this relationship. What can you bring as an offering? And that’s how community is built. It’s built on the offerings of the generous and the loving.”
― Marisa G. Franco, Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends

“When we’re so consumed by how others treat us, we desire to hold them accountable without holding ourselves accountable, demanding more from our friendships than we offer them.”
― Marisa G. Franco, Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends

“People overcome their anxiety by repeatedly exposing themselves to their fears and coming to realize that the lion they feared is actually a Shih Tzu with a shadow. When you no longer avoid that which you fear, eventually the anxiety dissipates, but consistent avoidance crystallizes the fear.”
― Marisa G. Franco, Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends

“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.”
― Marisa G. Franco, Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends

“When secure people assume others like them, this is a self-fulfilling prophecy termed “the acceptance prophecy.” Danu Anthony Stinson, a psychology professor at the University of Waterloo, and her colleagues hypothesized that “if people expect acceptance, they will behave warmly, which in turn will lead other people to accept them; if they expect rejection, they will behave coldly, which will lead to less acceptance.”
― Marisa G. Franco, Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends

“Secure people know their worth, so they assume others do too. They assume people like them. Insecure people, however, assume the opposite. Rejection sensitivity—the tendency to project rejection onto ambiguity—is a key feature of anxious attachment, and it hurts anxious people and their relationships.”
― Marisa G. Franco, Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends

“How people thought their romantic partner viewed them, the study found, was less a reflection of how their romantic partner actually viewed them and more of a reflection of how they viewed themselves. People say, “You have to love yourself before someone can love you,” because if you don’t love yourself, you won’t notice when they do.”
― Marisa G. Franco, Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends

“Conflict with our spouse, one study finds, makes us secrete an unhealthy pattern of stress hormones, but only if we lack quality friendship outside the marriage. Studies have found that even for men who feel as if they have found their romantic soul mates, good friendship is still linked to better self-esteem. This research, combined with another study that finds that people are more resilient to negative events within their romantic relationship when they have friends (particularly for women who tend to have stronger friendships), suggests that maintaining friendships while in a romantic relationship is a part of what healthy romance looks like, one that isn’t crushed by the weight of each partner having to be everything to the other.”
― Marisa G. Franco, Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends

“We live in a society in which it is acceptable to cancel plans with friends for work, but never vice versa. One in which giving up a promotion to have free time for the people you love is wasted potential.”
― Marisa G. Franco, Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends

“My tendency to entertain only a tight circle, rather than a sprawling network, my cliquishness in friendship, masks my feelings of unsafety and fears of rejection around more casual connections.”
― Marisa G. Franco, Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends

“The friends I do maintain are wholesome, reliable, emotionally intelligent, and “person-centered”—they don’t just talk about themselves but are curious about others.”
― Marisa G. Franco, Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends