Why Friendships Matter
Friendship is an important part of our lives. Several well done studies show that having quality friendships, however you define that for you, leads to increased life satisfaction, reduced loneliness, and potentially longer life span through increased social connection! I would add to that the more loving people we have to co-regulate or stabilize and ground, calm, our nervous systems with, the healthier and happier we will be for the long run.
So let’s dive in to talk about friendship, and why having quality friendships matters, especially for us, coming from our codependent, people pleasing and perfectionist habits. One of things we often do is put all this pressure on our romantic partners to be our everything, to be our one and only, so we end up projecting all of our wants and our unmet childhood needs onto our primary partner, we take a community worth of expectation and put them on our intimate partner and expect them to be our BFF, our life coach, our therapist, our financial planner, our chef, our co-parent, our everything, which sets us up for disappointment time and again when we ask one human being to do the work of so many. It’s not kind, it’s not loving, and it basically sucks for everyone involved.
And I used to do this! Of course I did! I was swimming in the same codependent soup you’re swimming in for decades, my tender ravioli! And as soon as I stopped demanding that my intimate partners fill roles that aren’t theirs to fill, I was able to appreciate and love them for being themselves, and to pour so much more energy into my friendships and my romantic relationships because I was clear on each person’s important and well boundaried role, and vice versa was able to start to say to partners: “Babe, I adore you, use the phone a friend option on this one.”
Like I don’t ask my date S to get in the weeds about fashion with them, because they are not attuned to fashion the same way this Argentine Leo is, and it’s not loving to expect them to be. It’s neither their jam nor their jelly. Instead, I reach out to my friends who love to talk fashion.
I call Jessie to talk about poetry, Elia to talk about relationships and spirituality, Anita to talk about supplements and functional medicine, Marie to talk about, well, 10,000 things, and S calls Mel to talk about sports (not interested in sportsball over here!), their Marie to talk about spirituality, on and on. We accept that the other isn’t interested in all the same things, and don’t expect them to be because we’re not the same person.
Having different interests is a beautiful thing, and talking to our friends about them is important, versus expecting the other to be interested in stuff they’re just not about. Which doesn’t mean we don’t share about those things.
And it’s important to have friends you can share experiences with outside of your romantic relationships too.
I talk a lot about acceptance because it’s so vital, and from our codependent belief that we can will the world and other people to be different than who and how they are, that we can fix and change them, knowing when to talk with someone other than a romantic partner about something is a huge part of part of accepting people for who they are, and from there, looking for what you want from people other than your partner or date.
From mutual respect we are able to accept one another and thus not expect each other to be our whole world, our only sounding board.
Acceptance is vital in friendships too because our friends are just there for us to love unconditionally, not to meet any particular need, to show up in any particular way or to be anyone other than we are.
And we get to practice unconditional love and acceptance with our friends and get to cultivate friendships where we are accepted and loved and can show up as the most authentic and real version of ourselves. A skill we can then take to our romantic relationships, where doing so may currently feel harder from our codependency, perfectionism and people pleasing.
We also need people outside of our partnerships to talk to about relationship issues.
If you’re mad at your date, annoyed with your wife, resentful of your husband, confused about a boundary your partner set, friendship is a beautiful place to talk it out, to work it out, to get clear on what you think, feel and want to say before you bring it to your partner.
And friends give you different perspectives and can be a different kind of sounding board than a partner. Because we have a different kind of attachment in romantic relationships than in friendships, it can be hard for our partners to turn us down when we ask to process something, and a date may not want to take the risk of hurting your feelings by being direct or blunt. Meanwhile, there is less risk in a friend telling you hard things because they are less likely to be projecting their childhood attachment wounds onto you, and vice versa.
It’s also a gift to lean on people beyond just our partners when the going gets tough.
Also… friends are fun! Different people bring out different parts of ourselves, and so with friends we get to experience different parts of ourselves, which is really important. With our friends there isn’t the same set of circumstances as with a partner, especially when you live together. There isn’t the background din of who did the dishes, we need to replace the roof, will the kids get into the best middle school—there can be simple, light fun, in addition to the deep talk and processing.
With friends, you have a team to bounce things off and to help you reality test. We can have a hard time knowing what is real in our lives because of our codependent, perfectionist, people pleasing thought habits, especially when it comes to our relationships. Our friendships give us a place to work it out and to get an outside perspective.
We can experience different types of attachment with different people. My darling perfect nerds, from the studies on relating we know that until we bring consciousness to our romantic partner relationships and work on getting to a more secure place there, we tend to replicate the kind of attachment we developed as children, which for us is most often an insecure style.
In friendships, there is more space to experience yourself attaching in new ways and living into a new and more secure attachment style.
I talk a lot about the importance of coregulating our nervous system, where regulating our nervous system is learning how to respond instead of react and to stay with our nervous system so we can process our feelings with our bodies and bring ourselves back into calm through ventral vagal, the safe and social part of our nervous system. What can be so helpful is we can practice coregulating with different kinds of friends, and can use those experiences to broaden our capacity to stay with ourselves and our feelings in more challenging moments.
Prioritizing and celebrating our friendships broadens our scope of thinking about intimacy.
I love the Marianne Williamson quote a friend shared the other day, and I tried googling it and couldn’t find it so I may be paraphrasing here: we can make our friendships more romantic and our romances more friendly.
And that really resonated with me. We can take intimacy out of the bedroom and can take our sexual partner off the pedesstal of being the only person we can have intimacy when we cultivate intimacy in our friendships, which deepens our conenciton with our friends and ourselves and shows us that we can be safe while expanding our capacity to be vulnerable.
When we can do this in one setting it broadens our capacity in all settings. And friendships provide a way to practice being emotional and vulnerable in a safer context. Many of us have a lot of hurt around romantic connections, and we can learn to regulate and grow with our friends in ways that may not currently feel possible with a date or partner.
This shift also allows us to start to see our sexual partner as a whole human when we don’t expect them to be our only source of intimate connection.
This allows us to accept them for who they are and what they can bring more. Being more friendly in our romantic relationships also allows us to lighten things up and not make every little thing feel so darn heavy and meaning-laden when we’re getting support from multiple people and can be more of a friend with our partner, more willing to be emotionally generous and understanding.
It’s also important to remember that we live in a world that talks about singleness as a problem: you are not mature, you haven’t arrived if you’re not in a long term relationship. We can challenge that notion—that romantic relationships are the only ones that matter—by strengthening our friendships and leaning in there. Not necessarily in lieu of romance— unless that’s your thing—rock it out, assexual people, do your thing.
Prioritizing the importance of friendship also challenges the notion that monogamous romantic relationships are the only ones the matter.
I’m all about monogamy if that’s your thing, but that’s not actually the point. The point is we can expand the story that one person has to be our everything. And we can experience intimacy in such a beautiful way by creating intimacy with our friends.
Community matters. Self-actualization in community matters, and creating intimacy with friends is a powerful way to get to know yourself, to challenge yourself, to support and care for others and to grow as a person, beyond your individual work, beyond the relative isolation of a relationship built in codependency, which can be a very isolating place to be for sure.
And if you’re sitting there judging yourself because you don’t have close friends or lots of friends, take a breath my darling. There is nothing wrong with you, nothing at all. Deep breath in and long slow out my tender little duckling.
You’re perfect and you’re worthy of amazing friendships, you may just need to cultivate them if they’re not a significant part of your life right now, and that’s okay.
How do we cultivate friendships?
I want to acknowledge that it can be challenging for adults to make friends once we’re done with school or training!
So, we do what we do. Start with awareness. Look back in your history and ask where it felt easier to make friends. Start by asking yourself what you enjoy doing and talking about, and consider taking a class, joining a group or going to a meet up around something you value.
And don’t discount old friends! Last summer I reached out to my friend Jessie, my BFF from growing up, my first real friend in the US, and we hadn’t talked in a minute, and I missed her, and the feeling was mutual, so she came to my birthday party, which was a blast, and now we text and call each other often. We were able to rekindle a 37 year old friendship, which has been such a gift.
What’s important to remember is that friendship is a two way street. You gotta put in the effort.
And for me, it’s really about quality and depth over quantity. I’m interested in friendships that can grow over time and that stand the test of time. I don’t want or need 1000 friends, I need a solid 6 with whom I share values. And finding and cultivating friendships based on shared values is key for me in creating bonds where there can be interdependence, where we can both grow and be seen and heard and cherished, and if your relationships feel more codependent than interdependent, check out episode 110.
Some of the things I value in a friendship are:
- Friendships based in honesty, where we trust one another and show the other we are trustworthy.
- Friendships based on common interests, and can teach other new things and can grow from being a mirror for one another.
- Friendships based on common values, principles, and life goals. We don’t have to be in the same field, but when we’re both interested in growing in similar ways, there is so much mutuality there.
- Friendships based on good communication and mutual support, where you can turn to one another without giving it a second thought, especially knowing that the other person has good intentions and boundaries, and will clearly state when they are or aren’t available to hear about it, whatever it is. Because when I can trust your yes, I can trust your no, and that’s a beautiful gift to give a friend.
- Friendships based on emotional generosity, acceptance and forgiveness are key for me. I mess up. I often suffer from acute foot-in-mouth disease, because I’m a human. I mess up, and my friends do too. They launch into a story without asking consent sometimes, they do silly things without thinking, and I do too, and we process it and move on, because we are emotionally generous with one another.
- Finally, the friendships that matter to me have an intimate quality. We touch, we hug, we share the deep shit, we honor each other’s process and encourage one another to grow. We call each other on our bs, we express our love and care for each other and have deep intimacy as friends, sharing the deep stuff and the daily stuff equally.
And remember, much like in dating there are life cycles of friendships.
Not all friendships are forever, and that’s okay.
And friend breakups hurt just as much as romantic breakups sometimes! That makes sense. Give yourself the grace and love because it’s okay for it to hurt when someone steps out of your life. You get to take responsibility for whatever part is yours, grow from it, learn from it and release the rest without globalizing or catastrophizing or making it mean anything bad about you, okay my darling buttercup?
And when you are the one growing and changing and working on yourself, know that you’re old friendships may no longer feel quite right, and that’s okay too. It’s okay to walk away from friendship, no matter how long you’ve known each other if the connection, the spark just isn’t there anymore, if your values are no longer aligned or if you are no longer having fun or helping one another to grow. No guilt or shame needed, just be loving, kind, honest and trust that you’re doing the best thing for everyone involved by ending a friendship that no longer feeds you.
So my darling, friendships are a crucial part of living a fulfilling life.
I want to encourage you to tell your friends you love them—I do it all the time. When I am with them (with consent), we hold hands, we touch, we snuggle, we lie in hammocks, we have puppy piles. We cry and we laugh and we play and we process our pain. We are not sexual, we are intimate, and having intimacy beyond your romantic or sexual relationships matters so deeply my darling, for our growth, our self concept, our wellness, our health, our hearts, our community, our liberation. Tell your friends you love them. And know that I love you. Truly.
Thank you for taking the time to read Feminist Wellness. I’m excited to be here and to help you take back your health!
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