A Review of Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make — and Keep — Friends by Marisa G. Franco, PhD
I find it interesting how, as adults, whenever we think of friendship, we mostly think of how wholesome it is. With friendship, there usually aren’t any self-serving caveats that may come with romantic and familial relationships, such as needing a partner to start a family and needing a child to make up for what we weren’t able to accomplish.
Indeed, in Part I of Platonic, psychologist Marisa G. Franco cites evidence demonstrating how important friendship is to our well-being that are probably quite intuitive to all of us. For example, exercise decreases our risk of death by 23–30%, diet by up to 24%, but a large social network does by a whopping 45%. One study also found that hanging out with a friend led to more happiness than spending time with a romantic partner or children because with friends, we can do whatever our heart desires rather than dealing with the practical realities of everyday life. But, of course, we can go grocery shopping or even decide to co-parent children with a friend. Friendship can adjust to our needs that may be more difficult for the other important relationships in our lives to accommodate.
Moreover, studies have found that friendship actually strengths our romantic relationships. We’re more likely to be resilient to negative events in our romantic relationships if we have friends. One person (assuming monogamy) can also never fulfill all our needs and bring out all of us since we are multi-faceted. Having friends who can complete us in other ways reduces the burden we may place on our partners.
Getting into the art of making and keeping friends, an overarching thesis in the book is that those with secure attachment are better friends and have more meaningful friendships. Secure people assume they are worthy of love and can trust others to give it to them, so they give people the benefit of the doubt, are comfortable with vulnerability, express their needs, support others, assume people like them, and have intimate relationships. Those with insecure attachments struggle with that. Specifically, those with anxious attachment assume others will abandon them, and to prevent this, they cling on to people, are overly self-sacrificing to please others, or engage in intimacy too quickly. Those with avoidant attachment are also afraid others will abandon them, but they instead deal with this by pushing others away, avoiding being vulnerable, or leaving relationships prematurely.
In Part II of Platonic, Franco walks us through certain mindsets and behaviors that help us lean toward security rather than insecurity that can help us make and keep friends. I will spend the rest of this review delineating and commenting on the practices and supporting information in the book I found most insightful and useful.
Taking Initiative
- We’ve got to take initiative to make friends. Our potential friends are probably just as afraid of rejection from us as we are from them. Think about how happy we are when someone we want to be friends with makes the first move and says how much they’d love to hang out with us.
- Assume people like us. Research has found that we tend to underestimate how much people like us due to insecurities. If we think others are judging us, they’re honestly probably too busy judging themselves to be thinking about us. A good tip I’ve discovered to combat this bias is from meditation teacher and psychologist Tara Brach’s talk “Making the Whole World Your Friend.” In this talk, she describes how much more genuinely open-hearted she feels toward her conversation partner when she thinks of them as a friend even if they’re not formally friends.
- Initiating conversation with more people than we’d like to at an event gives us a higher likelihood of discovering people we actually vibe with. From a statistical standpoint, this makes total sense. We can probably think about instances when we surprisingly hit it off with a stranger at a party or networking event.
- Follow up with those you have chemistry with. These people are special and could become some of your best friends.
- Find and attend groups that meet regularly. People tend to warm up to those they see on a regular basis.
- Be the friend we want. If we think there are certain things a friend could do to make the friendship more meaningful and special, such as inviting us out, checking in with us, and engaging with us, we should take the initiative to do those things for others. This will probably also encourage our friends to reciprocate and be a good friend to others.
Expressing Vulnerability
- Expressing vulnerability, including things that bring us to tears, what we’re scared about, and what we’re ashamed of, will be appreciated by the right people and make them feel closer to us. Studies show that we underestimate how positively others perceive our vulnerability. We cannot have deep friendships without vulnerability.
- But, don’t overshare. We often overshare just to create distance from unsettling feelings, and any listener could help us do that. Instead of serving as a defense mechanism, expressing our vulnerability with someone should be motivated by our trust in and the safety we feel with them.
- Those with more self-compassion tend to evaluate their vulnerability just as favorably as others’ vulnerability. Practice self-compassion through self-kindness (being kind and understanding toward ourselves, such as consoling ourselves when we unintentionally make a mistake at work), mindfulness (having a measured reaction to painful thoughts and feelings without overreaction or underreaction, such as simply noticing when we’re feeling sad), and common humanity (seeing our experience as an aspect of others’ experiences, such as realizing that everyone loses their temper from time to time).
- Stop being vulnerable with those who hurt us when we express our vulnerability to them. They’re not worth it.
Pursuing Authenticity
- Authenticity creates truly meaningful friendships because we know we don’t need to be anyone but ourselves to be loved by each other. But, sometimes we fight with our friends. Aren’t we being authentic when we tell them how annoying they’re being? No. Acting instinctively during these situations can actually just be a defense mechanism like oversharing. If we were able to calm down and really consider how much we value our friend, we would authentically act in a way that balances their needs with ours. A quote in the book I found to be really helpful is that it should be our goal in these situations to bring ourselves to a state where “rather than attempting to change or control anyone’s experience in any way, we are asking how much can I get to know and appreciate this experience of being [with] you in this very moment?” as stated by psychotherapist Marenka Cerny.
- Making friends with those from different races is the most scientifically backed way to reduce prejudice, but studies have found that we tend to view those from disadvantaged groups through the lens of harmful stereotypes when they act authentically, such as teachers in training being four times more likely to misinterpret anger in the neutral face of a black student compared a white student. To encourage authenticity from friends from disadvantaged groups, those with privilege should actively take their friend’s perspective by listening to them, repeating back what they said, and asking questions instead of disagreeing, counterattacking, playing devil’s advocate, or justifying problematic behaviors.
Harmonizing with Anger
- We should bring up issues with our friends with the only criteria being that it upsets us. This tends to let us know how to be better for each other and prevents built-up resentment that can really erode a friendship. But, interestingly, it can be useful to remember that insecure people tend to assume malintent when they’re offended by something their friend does when their friend could have just been oblivious.
- It can be difficult to have some coherent structure when bringing up an issue if we’re still upset, so first, we should take some time to calm our emotions. Then, once we’re ready to broach the subject, we can consider using the following tips to have a constructive discussion: (a) express how much we value the friendship and this being why we want to work through its problems, (b) share our perspective by stating how we feel rather than blaming our friend, (c) ask for our friend’s perspective, (d) be mindful of our potential tendency to counterattack and choose to de-escalate instead by admitting fault, asking questions, taking a break, or not letting the conflict come between our friendship, and (e) ask for the behavior we want to see in the future.
- We should respond to the issues our friends bring up by showing we understand what they’re trying to convey, telling them their concern is valid and understandable, and sharing what we will commit to in order to improve the relationship. I’ve found knowing each other’s apology languages to be very helpful in understanding what means the most to others in an apology.
- Ultimately though, some friendships may not be worth the conflict or be damaged due to conflict. In these situations, consider the pros and cons of the friendship and decide to keep working through the conflict or to end the friendship.
Offering Generosity
- Studies find that generous people have closer relationships, are most likely to maintain a high number of friends overtime, and experience greater well-being. But, when we’re giving, again, we should think about our motives and make sure our giving is from a place of genuine love and care rather than wanting to manipulate someone into loving us.
- Give in ways that benefit others and ourselves, especially when our friends are asking a lot of us. This prevents burnout and resentment.
- Research demonstrates that the closer the friendship, the more willing we are to sacrifice for our friend’s needs. As we may have experienced, these types of self-sacrificial relationships are the most important in our lives. But, for these to be sustainable, we should consider both people’s needs and prioritize the person most in need. If we are the ones more in need, we should express that to our friend, and they should be able to understand if they genuinely care for us.
Giving Affection
- Affection can be considered a cringey thing to express nowadays in friendship, but it wasn’t always like that. Before the nineteenth century, male friends wrote each other love letters and cuddled. It was only when 19th-century psychologists Sigmund Freud and Richard von Krafft-Ebing characterized same-sex love as a sexual disorder that this sort of affection between friends died down.
- But, to make and keep friends, affection can be very important. Studies have found that people think the most important quality in a friend is how good they make them feel about themselves and that affection makes others feel closer to us rather than freaking them out. We can show affection to our friends in a variety of ways, such as telling them how happy we are to hear from them when they reach out, telling others how great we think they are, complimenting them, and reminding them how grateful we are to know them.
- If our friends do end up feeling uncomfortable with our affection, ask them what makes them feel appreciated by us. I have found that, like apology languages, understanding each other’s love languages can be very useful for this.
We’ve all encountered tricky situations when it comes to approaching a potential new friend or knowing how to manage an existing friendship, so I found Franco’s practical and evidence-based advice on how to navigate these situations to be quite helpful. I’ll end this review with the message Franco wrote in the signed copy of Platonic that I was lucky enough to pick up:
To make friends, someone has to be brave. Be brave!
Dr. Marisa G. Franco