You probably have seen articles about how important friendships are for our psychological, emotional, and physical health. Friends help us celebrate good times, but they are especially important when times are tough.
When life is hard and the world is confusing, friendships are particularly important. Just being with a friend can lower your stress level, boost your self-confidence and self-esteem, and improve your mental state. Research has shown that friendships can improve your overall physical health, as well.
But uncertain times are also hard on friendships. These days, political differences and conflicting personal beliefs are wreaking havoc on old connections and making it hard to trust new ones.
Protecting old friendships
How can you nurture and protect old friendships and, even harder, make new ones to support you through these difficult times?
In order to answer this question, you will first need to think hard about what you mean when you call someone your friend.
Meredith*, for example, who lived alone through the pandemic, told me, “I don’t know if I would have made it without my friends. At the time, most of them were my sorority sisters from college. We had all hung out through college and had stayed close afterwards, even though we were in different cities and some of us had high-pressure jobs. It was hard to get together, but we had managed it.”
She told me that the pandemic brought them closer again. “We had Zoom wine nights, watched shows together on FaceTime, played bridge online, and we shared our pain and our zany efforts to manage the isolation.”
Even so, she said that a few friendships ended during that time. “Some of my friends started taking risks that I couldn’t support, and they got angry with me when I questioned their choices.”
Like Meredith, other clients found that their friend circle became smaller, but deeper during the pandemic. “The big friend groups just seemed to naturally evolve into more intimate relationships,” another client told me.
Now happily married, Meredith still treasures her friendships, but there is a problematic new twist.
“I love my friends, and I’m always eager to make new ones,” Meredith* told me. “But these days you have to be so careful. You can’t talk about politics, the war in Ukraine, or the events in Gaza.”
She added, “One of my dearest friends just told me she can’t spend time with me anymore if I don’t agree with her positions. I know it’s not just me. I’ve heard from other friends going through similar struggles.”
Research cited by my PT colleague Gwendolyn Seidman has shown that we gravitate toward friends with similar personalities, lifestyles, and beliefs as our own. They validate our beliefs and make us feel understood. In a group of like-minded friends, we feel comfortable, like we belong. Yet the downside of spending time with compatible folks is that they can also reinforce our blind spots.
Exploring other perspectives
Getting to know people who don’t share our perspective can open our eyes to new ideas and possibilities. And sometimes a small shift in perspective can introduce new ways to solve challenging problems.
Interestingly, friends who see things differently can also validate us and help strengthen our connections to those who agree with our beliefs.
But making new friends and protecting old relationships is increasingly difficult as we get older. Jobs, family, housework, and just living our lives eats away at the time we once could devote to our buddies.
So what can you do to nourish old friendships and create new ones in these complicated times?
The internet is filled with suggestions about how to connect to people with similar interests and beliefs to our own. But creating and maintaining connection is a little different.
Still, the answer to “how” is surprisingly simple. It’s a matter of shifting the prism, just a little, on how you look at friendships.
Recent studies show that there is a way to make friendships flow more easily. It’s a matter of re-defining what we mean by “friend.”
Defining ‘friendship’
Broadening your definition of “friendship” can change your ability to find, make, and keep friends.
In my own research on women’s friendships I discovered that many women—and plenty of men—think of friendship as consisting of deeply meaningful conversations, perfect understanding, lifelong connection, and unbreakable bonds. But friendships come in many shapes and sizes. Most of the women I interviewed had been out of college for at least five years, and some for as long as sixty years.
Many had lost touch with old friends, in some cases because they no longer had much in common, and in others because they simply didn’t have time to maintain the connections. Most had “activity buddies,” friends who they knew from their kids’ school or from work or from a pottery class. Some had “wine night” friends who they saw occasionally for a glass of wine and a general catch-up. And others had “movie friends,” men or women with whom they went to a show or a concert.
They missed the close intimacy of college friends, but there was no time in their lives for those connections. Family and work filled their days and their minds.
Consider activity buddies
It turns out that activity buddies are just as important for our mental and physical well-being as the deeply intimate (and often angst-filled) relationships with our BFF.
According to loneliness expert Andrew Blizard, even sitting alone at a concert or a Broadway show with people you don’t know all around you can provide some of the needed human connection that you might get from a friend.
Meredith found this approach confusing at first, but ultimately helpful. She said, “I realized that my friendships work better when I don’t think my closest friends have to feel exactly the same way that I do.” She mentioned this idea to her old friend Becca* and was surprised by her response.
“She told me that she was so relieved to hear this,” Meredith said. “She’s been worried that we don’t feel exactly the same way about the upcoming election, and she was afraid to talk to me about it. But when I told her that we could still be best buddies if we had different beliefs, she started to talk about some of her concerns about the election. We had an incredible conversation. I think I may have given her some new ideas, and she certainly gave me some. We didn’t change each other’s minds, but I think we both actually feel a little better about the possibility that our candidate might not win. And we feel lots better about each other.”
When you recognize that friendships come in many shapes and sizes, it makes it much simpler to protect and grow these important connections.
And giving them space to grow in their own way means that you have more possibilities for reaping the benefits of friendship in these difficult times.
*Names and identifying info changed to protect privacy.
