How to make (and keep) friends | from A Slight Change of Plans

Hey, everyone. Chris here. If you had to rank some of the major relationships in your life, I'm talking about your partner, your family, your colleagues, where would your friendships land? Chances are they're probably not at the very top of the list. They might be pretty far down. And that might not be the right spot for them because not prioritizing our friendships can harm our health and our well-being. So today, we are bringing you an episode of another podcast that examines how friendships can expand our sense of self. This episode comes from a slight change of plans, a podcast that everyone here on our show really loves. It is hosted by Dr. Maya Shankar, a cognitive behavioral scientist, and she explores who we become in the face of change, how we can better navigate moments of opival and why change might just give us an opportunity to unlock great possibilities. So in this episode, Dr. Marissa Franco is going to join Maya to share evidence-based strategies for making new friends, for enriching your existing friendships, for keeping friendships alive through times of personal transformation, and for navigating a friendship breakup with clarity and kindness. Enjoy this episode, and if you like what you hear, find a slight change of plans wherever you get podcasts. And then go call a friend. Tell them about the show. You know, I looked around at my friends and I was like, well, why doesn't this love matter? Why have I been told that this love doesn't count? It called into question some of the beliefs that I had about romantic versus platonic love. I thought that those messages were actively harming me and that they might be harming other people too. That's Dr. Marissa Franco, a psychologist and an expert on friendship. Society often teaches us that friendship is secondary to other relationships, like family or romantic partners. And Marissa wants to change that. In our conversation, she shares some helpful strategies to enrich the quality of our friendships, including a concept known as mutuality. Mutuality is different from a lot of the ways that we think about friendship in terms of like, we might think of it as reciprocity. Like, I reached out this time, you should reach out the next time. But mutuality is taking a step back to look at the broader dynamics that are going on for each of us. And figuring out whose needs make sense to prioritize in this given situation. On today's episode, we explore the science of friendship. Why it matters more than we might think, and what we can do to make new friends and keep the ones we have. I'm Maya Shankar, and this is a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become in the face of a big change. Marissa is the author of the book Platonic. How the science of attachment can help you make and keep friends. She realized just how important friendship was to her when she was in her early 20s, and navigating a painful breakup. I think I just felt that if I couldn't maintain this romantic relationship, then I wasn't lovable. I didn't have any love in my life. And I was feeling so miserable, I think, in part because of those beliefs. And to heal, I ended up asking my friend Heather, what if we start this wellness group? We can meet up, act as wellness cook, do yoga, go on walks, have dinner. And I thought that would really help me heal my grief. And it did. Like, meeting up with these friends every week totally healed me. It wasn't because we were meditating, or doing yoga. It was just being in community with people that I loved that loved me every week. And I think another reason why that group really healed me is that it called into question. Some of the beliefs that I had that had caused me to take this breakup so hard, which was, here I was, thinking I didn't have love in my life when I had evidence of just how loved I was every week. Like I could no longer engage in that lie that I didn't have love. You know, I felt like, well, I don't think this is just me. I think this really reflects something larger in our culture that's really harming and hurting us all. And so understanding it not just as my own live experience, but as a larger societal, cultural problem or issue that we had is really what drove me to want to write platonic. Yeah. I mean, this is one of the reasons I was obsessed with having you on a slight change of plans is because I think your work does speak to this larger cultural issue, which is that we deprioritized friendship to a third great relationship. And I was thinking back to my past and the views that I had and I absolutely grew up thinking that romantic relationships sit at the top of the relationship hierarchy. And that if you don't have that, it really doesn't matter how many friends you have or how high quality those friendships are. Exactly. Yep. I had definitely felt the same way. And you know, I guess we even hear things like you need one person to complete you, which really made me feel like I didn't have a sense of self without having a romantic partner and also like, why do we think that one template fits for everybody? I think that when we have a cultural narrative that's so crushing, it can get hard for people to actually discern like, what do I actually want in my life? What's actually best for me? Like, would I prefer a life where I have a large network of friends and am single? But yeah, when your society teaches you that if you make that choice, you're less of a person, people aren't as free to actually discern what is the life that I actually want for myself. You know, the argument you make in your book is that we need to reclaim friendship and elevate it to the status that it deserves. So let's start there. I read in your book that there is a very interesting connection that exists between friendship and self identity. And that's a connection I never really thought about before. So can you tell us a bit more about this connection? So I think each person that we interact with is an advertisement for the kaleidoscope of ways in which we can live. And the ways that people show up in the world or how we learn to show up in the world too, like that learning happens through being able to see a friend engage at a certain hobby or interest. And you're like, maybe I would like that hobby or interest. Like it's that exposure that we get through each friend. And so in that way, it's like each person that we interact with can bring out a new and different side of our identity. And so when we're only interacting with one person, it's like, well, a spouse, which we've been told should be the only relationship we need to feel complete. Sometimes it's like we only have one experience of ourselves and all of the parts of ourselves that maybe aren't aligned with what our spouse likes, not because you're incompatible with your spouse, but just because you're different people with different hobbies and different interests. Those parts of you might not come out when you're only interacting with them. And so it requires us to be in community with different types of people to experience the different sides of ourselves and to have our identities fan out. And I think that this was a sense, at least I got a sense in the pandemic when I was living with the partner and still feeling like unease or still feeling like it's a weird sort of malaise when you're just like, I don't know, my identity's kind of scrunching inward. Like I would hang out with my friends and feel like I'm just filling with life. I don't know. I just have different emotions that tend to come up around different people. And so I was experiencing my palette of emotions more greatly. And I think that's really important because I think there's a lot of feeling gray and feeling bleak or feeling kind of numb. And so it almost made me feel more alive to feel like, oh, at this friend, I'm like laughing and we're joking about this thing. And we're excited about this other thing. And that might have been part of why they just made me feel like more expansive and more alive when I interacted with them. Marissa, I'm curious, is there research showing that there is a strong connection between friendship and our physical and mental health? Yeah. So there's a study that found that people that were exposed to the virus that causes the common cold, for example, were less likely to actually contract the common cold when they had a diversity of support when they weren't just relying on spouse, but we're relying on different people for support in their lives. And there's other research that just links having a diversity of support to your general sense of well-being overall. I love the research, Marissa, that shows that healthy, strong friendships are associated with more resilience and our other relationships. Do you mind sharing it that more about that? Yeah, I love this research too, because I think it's unfortunate that we sometimes perceive our romantic relationships and our friendships as antagonistic. Like, oh, you're hanging out with your friends. You're not hanging out with me instead of, well, you're hanging out with your friends. That's great. Now we can have more quality connection when you come back. Definitely. Which is the truth, because research finds that, for example, if I make a friend, not only am I less depressed, but my romantic partner is also likely to be less depressed. So what can improve one partner's mental health will likely improve the other partner's mental health? And that's what we see when people make friends. There's research that finds that when spouses are in a state of conflict, it negatively impacts their release of the stress hormone cortisol, but not when they have that quality connection outside of the marriage as well. And so it's just like, if you're just relying on your spouse, whatever happens in that relationship is going to be so deterministic for how you're doing overall. But if you have quality connection outside of the marriage, it's like you have a buffer, you know, you kind of have a shield. Like if things aren't going well, that doesn't mean that you're completely sunk internally because you can rely on these outside resources as a pick me up. Okay, so Marissa, you've convinced us that friendship is important, right? It's something that we should all be working to invest in. I'm wondering if we can get tactical at this stage. And if we can learn from you, how we can do a better job of making friends in adulthood. I think an issue that we have is that we think friendship will happen in adulthood, like it did in childhood, which means we won't have to try and be intentional. And there's a sociologist Rebecca Adams and she says when we have repeated unplanned interaction, and shared vulnerability, that's when friendships happen more organically. In your adult life, it's like, do you see people in a way that's repeated over time, even though it's not planned, like work, for example. And do you have your guard down? And at work, I don't know if people have their guard downs. Like they tend to not be as vulnerable as they might be outside of the workplace. So basically what that means is like, as adults, we don't have that same environment we had as kids to just rely on friendship happening. We can't assume that it happens organically anymore. Like we're going to have to try. And in fact, one study found that people that thought friendship happened without effort were more lonely over time, whereas those that saw it as happening based on effort were less lonely over time. And they were also more likely to actually make that effort. So I think by showing up at a place of worship or a hobby or interest group. So when we understand it as not happening organically, we understand that, okay, that means I'm going to have to make a choice to do something in my life to find friends. Can you tell us a bit more about why repeated interactions are so important when it comes to facilitating friendship? Yeah. So it's because of something called the Merrick's Sposure Effect, which the Merrick's Sposure Effect describes our tendency to like things that are familiar. And for people to like us, the more that we become familiar, if you continue to be exposed to someone they don't harm you, then you feel trust with them. And so I think when we have that repeated interaction, Merrick's Sposure increases. We like them more. They like us more. And if we do want to initiate an interaction and say something like, "Hey, I really enjoy talking to you. We'd love to connect further. You open to exchanging contact information. We're just more likely to be successful versus when we've seen someone once, maybe at like a lecture at a bar. And then we ask them to hang out." You know, one reason we fear initiating friendship is that, of course, most of us are afraid of rejection. And so what's your advice to us to help us overcome this kind of anxiety? Well, the research finds that people like you more than you think they do, me specifically, right? I'm just kidding. Yeah, you specifically. The rest of us work. It's going to be rough out there. That basically when strangers interact, they then underestimate how like they are by the other person. And the more self-critical you are, the more pronounced this underestimation is. And so generally, people like us more than we might think. Like, our brain is kind of programmed with this negativity bias where we register negative information more than positive, which means our predictions as to how we're coming off are often more cynical than the actual truth. So people are less likely to reject you than you think. And I also tell people to assume people like them because the research finds that when people are told, you know, based on your personality profile, you will be liked. And this is live from the researchers just deceiving people. But they actually go out into a group and they become warmer, open, and friendlier. And so it becomes a sort of self-affilling prophecy. Whereas we know that people are who are more rejection sensitive, who tend to see rejection when it's not there. Like, oh, my friend didn't text me back or my friend came to this show and they didn't sit right next to me. Does that mean they don't like me? They actually tend to reject people. They become more cold. They become more withdrawn. And then people reject them back after, you know, they've been rejected. So it in some ways, when we always think we're being rejected, it also influences our behavior to make that rejection a more of a self-affilling prophecy too. So to summarize, this is so interesting because I talked with Vanessa Bons for this show as well. And she calls this the liking gap, right? And I'm assuming that's what you're referring to, which is the liking gap. Yes. So there's a gap between our expectations of how much people really like us versus how much we think they like us. And the good news is that they tend to like us more than we think. So that's reassuring. Yes. And then the second is just remember that it is a self-affilling prophecy. So play the part of someone who believes they are likable and lovable and worthy of friendship love. And the more you do that, the more your best traits are recruited from you. Whereas if you go into a situation believing you'll get rejected, that will bring out the worst sides of you, right? Exactly. You know, that is a really great point. Really, when I see people act in very harmful ways in their friendship, it's because they think people don't care about them, right? So I never reach out to my friends because I think they're going to see it as a burden. It's just when we think someone is going to reject us, it licenses us to engage in all types of harmful and crappy behaviors because we're like, they're not going to care anyway if I ghost them. So I guess I'm just going to ghost them because they don't really care about me. And so in some ways, I think that's why believing people care about you and believing people love you causes you to be a lot better of a friend. After the break, Marissa tells us how we can be better friends to the people who are already in our lives. We'll be back in a moment with a slight change of plans. So we've talked up to this point about how it is that we can do a better job making new friends. Now I'd love to pivot to how we can do a better job of investing in and maintaining our current friendships. Yes. What are the factors that we should keep in mind? So when it comes to keeping friends, that makes me think about this theory called risk regulation theory, which was originally created for romantic partners, but I think applies for friends too. And it's this idea that we decide how much to invest in a relationship based on our likelihood of being rejected. And the more that we can convey to someone that we won't reject them, the more they can invest in the relationship with us. And so showing affection towards friends, being generous towards friends, anything that shows someone that you love and you value them is going to help the friendship. It's going to deepen the friendship, anything that shows care, consideration, investment in the other person, because that's assigned to that other person. Like, oh, now I can invest in this relationship. It's safe for me to invest because of how much investment they've shown in me. And so I talk in my book about, for example, like generosity, affection, even I think vulnerability in some ways, like when people are vulnerable with us, that conveys to us that they trust us. And it makes us more likely to be vulnerable with them. All of these behaviors that show investment are going to better our relationships. But we can also talk about this concept called mutuality. And mutuality is different from a lot of the ways that we think about friendship in terms of we might think of it as reciprocity. I reached out this time, you should reach out the next time. But mutuality is like taking a step back to look at the broader dynamics that are going on for each of us. So what I mean by that, Maya, is that there might be times when my friend is in a lot of stress, you know, going through mental health issues, just had a newborn baby, where I can't expect mutuality, because I understand that I have greater capacity than they do. And then at other times, you know, there might be investing more in me. Like Michelle Obama also talked about this in her new book, like a relationship is never going to be 50/50. And I see that in terms of long-term friendships too. There's going to be a period when you're giving more, there's going to be a period when you're getting more. And it's like the measure of equality is more so in like the larger scheme of things. Yeah, it's so funny that you mentioned that because one of my best friends recently came over to share that she was pregnant. And she and her husband were here and they joked, we're actually here to say our goodbyes Maya and Jimmy. It's been so wonderful being friends with you. And of course, she's nodding to the fact that, you know, first-time parents kind of disappear for an extended period in those early years. And, you know, it was a joke, but it did actually lead me to have a candid conversation with her a couple weeks later about how for the first time ever, since we met in college, when we were teenagers, our lives are diverging in this really profound way. And so I'm wondering if you have advice for me in this case and listeners as well about how to navigate friendships when our lives feel like they're entering completely different phases. I love the fact that you had a conversation with your friend because I think part of the reason why friendships tend to tear when we move into these different stages is because we rely on a set of assumptions. Like, oh, this person has a kid. They have no time to talk to me. They don't want to hear from me or people that have kids being like, my single friend just thinks my life is boring and they don't want to be around my kids so I can't hang out with them. And it's the set of assumptions that tends to pull us apart. Whereas when we can actually have the conversation, okay, like I would love to still hang out sometime. What does that look like for you? Does it mean I have to come over after the kid has put to bed? How comfortable are you hanging out with the kid around? What are your boundaries around this? Instead of I'm just going to assume that you're too busy to ever talk to me again, you can affirm an identity and a friend even though it's not your own, even it's not one that you would choose for yourself, but realizing that it's right for them. And that's actually related to maintaining best friendships over time, maintaining and deepening best friendships over time when you can do that. And so that looks like even if we don't have the same life experience, let's still show interest in our differences. Let's still show interest in what's it like for you to be a mom or what's it like for you to live your childless life? What are you doing with that? And instead of assuming that because we have this difference, it's not something that we can connect on because we do look for friendships for commonality but also for expansion. And so now this friendship is going to provide you an opportunity to expand and be like, oh, this is what it's like when someone really close to me has a kid and these are what their concerns are. These are the things that stress them out and just maintain curiosity about that. Yeah, touch us back on a point you were making earlier in our conversation, Marissa, that how friendships can be mind expanding in this really powerful way, right? You felt so alive when these parts of yourself were tapped into or you were learning about new aspects of the world. And I really love that reframe. And I think it's one I'll carry with me as my friend has this child. And another thing that she and I talked about in this conversation was the long term nature of our friendship. So we kind of acknowledge there might be some speed bumps, there might be some harder moments in time in the short term, but let's not forget that we are committed for life as friends. I love that. Yeah, I found the conversation pretty therapeutic because I think I was having a lot of anxiety around what would happen to this best friendship of mine. And so it felt good to confront it head on even though I was a little nervous to have the conversation. I think that's really awesome. I think that's really really awesome. And it reminds me of this study on like a long distance friendships that maintaining them was kind of looking at the times when you don't talk as flexible, not fragile. Like friendship can have in flow. If we have an ebb, let's not assume the friendship is over. I never reengage, but instead it assumed that this is part of the life story of the friendship. There's going to be moments where we're spread apart. And then there's going to be moments where we come back together again. Yeah. And you're reminding me this moment with this particular friend. We already share that in our history. So we were inseparable. We were attached at the hip when we were in college. And then she studied abroad for a period of time. And then obviously communication went down for a bit and then a couple years later, the intensity of our communications increased. I mean, there's been that waxing and waning already. And yet here we are in current day with a very stable, healthy friendship. And so it's nice to be able to look back at that historical data point as evidence that we can get through these periods where things go up and down. I mean, yeah. And I was on a podcast with someone who was, I think he was in his 60s and he never had kids. And he was like, just remember your friendships are going to come back. Their kids are going to leave the nest. And then it's going to be like, you're back in your 20s. Like how much time you want to spend with your friends? I'm like, wow. Yeah. She's going to need me eventually. I love it. I love it. So you know, I mentioned Merissa that I felt a little bit of anxiety when it came to raising this topic with my friend. And speaking of anxiety, one area that can cause us a lot of anxiety is fighting in the context of friendship. And in part, this is because we're led to believe that it's unreasonable for us to have big arguments with our friends because after all, they're just our friends, right? But you say in your book, it's actually quite important to fight in friendships. Empower us in this moment. Empower us to have those difficult conversations with friends where in the moment, it feels easier just pushing under the rug, but that's not actually in the long-term best interest of the friendship. Yeah. This was like my biggest growth area in friendships that I was like, being a good friend means me getting over it. Totally. Getting over the problem that I have in this friendship and then realizing, oh, I'm actually like just withdrawing. I'm not actually just getting over it. And it's hurting and harming my friendships. And so I started to read all this research that, you know, people who really value friendship tend to actually address problems instead of just ignoring them and that open and pathic conflict is correlated with deeper intimacy. And so I was like, wow, am I actually missing out on this opportunity for intimacy by trying to ignore the conflict? And there's a psychoanalyst, Virginia Goldener, who talks about how you can have flaccid safety, which is basically where close because we pretend there's never any problems or dynamic safety, where you could actually rupture and repair and rupture and repair. And then you have a president that whenever a problem comes up, we know that we can actually address it and make it better instead of our only options being to just injure or walk away. And so I just was like, hmm, maybe I actually need to address problems with my friends. And that was another way where I compartmentalized intimacy, right? Because I knew in my romantic partnerships that I was going to have to address problems and work through issues and you're about marriage is hard. You're going to have to, you know, work through all these problems together and not realizing that part of intimacy is conflict. And so friendship is also going to require the same set of skills. And the other thing that I realized was that I was confliting conflict with combat when in fact conflict could look like reconciliation. And so it was me learning to do things like frame the conversation as an active love. Like, hey, I want to talk about this because you're so important to me, you know, and I know you're having kids and I'm so excited for you. And, you know, I have some anxieties about whether we're going to stay close. So I figured I would bring it up so we could still find a way to stay close through this big life change of ours. And then using eye statements like, yeah, I've been feeling a little nervous about how this could impact our closeness and then perspective taking, which looks like the mutuality of as you share your feelings, how do you feel? What are you thinking? And then asking for what you need in the future like, you know, maybe I'd still like to see you like once a month or twice a month, how would that work out for you? And so I think healthy conflict looks like waiting into the ambivalence. Like a part of me is afraid too. We actually feel some of the same things as this big change or this issue and our friendship has come up. I really resonate with the frame the conversation as an affirmation of love. I'm thinking about one of my closest friends and you know, at times he's like, can we just let this go? Shunks, shunks is my nickname, my friends. He's like, can we just, why do we have to just discuss these things? You know, okay, we just let and I told him I was like, hey, you do realize that I don't put in this effort with everyone, right? It's because I care so much about you and our communication and our lifelong friendship that I do try to conflict resolve and problem solve. And obviously, like there's a happy medium, but it was, I think that was really affirming for him. I feel like he changed the whole spin on why it was that I was initiating these kinds of uncomfortable conversations. Absolutely. And I think as a professor, I really tried to be intentional about making my students feel safe. And what comes out of that is they demand so much more of me. And I remember hearing from this psychologist who studies nurses. She said, the most toxic person is the least confronted. And so, if your friends are coming up to you to address an issue, maybe it's not a sign that you're a crappy friend. Maybe it's a sign that they feel safe enough to actually bring up a problem instead of trying to ignore it. Yeah, that's a really excellent way of seeing it. You wouldn't invest the time in someone that you didn't you wouldn't feel vulnerable enough to bring this up with someone that you didn't in this deep way trust. Exactly. And so it's actually an ode to the quality of the friendship that you're having these conversations. There are some cases, of course, where for whatever reason, transitions in life, the nature of the relationship, you actually feel it's important to break up with a friend. And that can be extremely uncomfortable. Yeah. What do you recommend that people do in a situation like that where they just realize this friendship just it isn't serving me anymore. It's not good for either of us. You know, whatever the reason is, it feels it's such a hard space, Marissa, because there's an expectation in society that we we break up with significant others. I mean, that's just like part of the cultural narrative that that happens, but the idea of breaking up with a friend just feels almost a bit foreign and a little taboo and yeah, to help me make sense of this. Yeah. So I think it depends on whether the other person is still invested in you or not. If it seems mutual and the other person's pulling away, you're pulling away, then I think it's fine to just kind of pull away and let it be. But if the other person continues to seem invested in a friendship with you and you're no longer invested in a friendship with them, the kindest thing to do is to tell them because if you don't tell them, you trigger something called ambiguous loss, which is when we have a lot of trouble processing our grief because we don't have any closure. And it's almost like they're going to end up grieving twice because you weren't able to muster up the courage to have a conversation. So it's quite mean, but it doesn't feel mean. That's the thing. I think with something like ghosting, there's such emotional and congruence between the experience of being the ghoster and receiving the ghosting. Like, it's like, oh, I just kind of forgot about it. But the other person is like, it's keeping them up at night and they're ruminating on it. So I think it's really important to remember that in congruence because if we don't, we might be like, well, it's no sweat for me. So I think it's fine, right? And then they're just going to make up all types of stories because our brain has this negativity bias. The stories are probably going to be a lot more than what you're going to tell them. So yeah, I suggest having a conversation about it. It's not cruel. You're talking about yourself and your own experience and how your needs have changed. And I hope that this conversation happens after you've tried to address the problem with them and given them a chance to repair it. And it hasn't necessarily worked unless it's a big betrayal, of course. You know, if it's a big betrayal, then it might be one thing that really has broken the friendship. But if it's something like small around going, like sometimes I feel like in our conversations, you don't give space to like hear about me and we're mostly focused on you. Like, I hope that you have that conversation before deciding to end the friendship. But, you know, if it's coming to a point where I just like, you know, sometimes I feel like we have really incompatible communication styles and that leaves me leaving our interactions feeling like kind of sad. And that's why I'm feeling like this friendship isn't necessarily working out for us anymore. Maybe you are trying to engage with me in a certain way, but I just haven't been reading it that way. And so that's why this friendship really hasn't felt like it's working for me, you know, adding like, I just wanted to make sure I was being upfront and transparent with you moving forward. Something like that. It sounds cruel, but it's a lot less cruel than not giving someone any closure. - Yeah. One piece of advice I took away from your book is that when a friendship ends for whatever reason, we really need to give ourselves the space to grieve because you talk about the fact that in our society, pain associated with a loss of friendship is devalued. - Yeah, it's this term called disenfranchised grief, which is like when society doesn't legitimize our loss, we can't legitimize it ourselves internally, and we might invalidate our own grief process, and if there's one thing you should know about grief, it's that you can't just suppress it and push it away, that you actually have to feel the grief for it to be released from you. And so that's why I think a lot of people that lose really close friends feel very isolated, feel very alienated, can feel preoccupied with the loss for such a long period of time, because they feel like their loss isn't valid and their loss is significant while their body's telling them the opposite message that this is a big loss for you, that you have to feel this and that you have to acknowledge it. And so that's one of the reasons why some people are like friendship breakups hurt even more than, you know, divorce or romantic relationship breakup. - Yeah, I've been reading a lot of writing on this topic recently, and there are many, many people who have said that their friendship's ending exactly as you say, were far more painful than any romantic relationship that came to an end. So I'm at least grateful that you're giving us strategies for trying to end the friendships with a bit more closure to the extent that can help us heal or help the other person heal. How has working in this space changed the way that you think about the friends in your life? Like is there any anecdote that comes to mind in which you think, ooh, as a result of exploring this research for years, I'm now engaging with my friends differently? - So I aspire to hold friendship at the same regard as I do romantic relationships, especially for my closest friends in my life. So I had a friend, she was coming back from Mexico and arriving back from the airport at like 12, 30 AM. And I was contemplating whether I wanted to pick her up and I was like, I'm so tired, I'm in bed by 12 midnight. And I asked myself, would I offer to pick up my romantic partner? And I was like, yeah, absolutely. Like I would stay up to pick up my romantic partner. And so then I decided that I would go offer to pick her up from the airport too. And I did and I realized this is the work. - And what was your friend's reaction to that? Like what impact do you think that had on your friendship? - Oh my gosh, I think it really changed our friendship. - That's amazing. - I think she realized that I was really invested in the friendship. When she realized I was invested, she started to invest like all my plants died because it got too cold. And she noticed that and she just like came over and bought a plant for me. And then since then we've just been like hanging out a lot more often because I think there's this freedom that comes from knowing this person loves you and is intentionally trying to invest in you that allows each of us to engage in a lot more of the risky behaviors that promote intimacy. - I'd love to enter a conversation with a piece of research that you talk about in your book. And it's about how we tend to have the wrong idea about what people value in us as friends. And understanding this can actually be quite empowering. Can you tell us more? - Yeah, so this is a study where people were asked to rate the most important traits in a friend. And I think before studying friendship, I thought that trait was being charismatic for entertaining or funny, that it was about kind of like putting on a show to get people to like you. But the number one trait people valued was this concept, ego support, which is someone making you feel like you matter and someone making you feel really valued and really loved. And I think this message is really hopeful because some people think that if I wanna make friends, I have to change fundamentally who I am. And it's not about who you are. Making friends is about being loving toward other people. (gentle music) - Hey, thanks so much for listening to this season of a slight change of plans. I really hope you found these conversations helpful. The conversation you just heard actually inspired me to reach out to my best friend from childhood, Christine. I hadn't talked to her in over 20 years. It was a magical reconnection. If something you've heard on the show has changed the way you approach your life, I'd love to hear from you on Instagram at Dr. Maya Shankar. You can also check this account for a sneak peek of our coming season. We'll be back in your feeds in no time in late May. I'll see you then. (gentle music) A slight change of plans is created written and executive produced by me, Maya Shankar. The slight change family includes our showrunner, Tyler Green, our senior editor, Kate Parkinson Morgan, our sound engineer, Andrew Vestola, and our associate producer, Sarah McCray. Louis Scarea wrote our delightful theme song and Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals. A slight change of plans is a production of Pushkin Industries, so big thanks to everyone there. And of course, a very special thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can follow a slight change of plans on Instagram at Dr. Maya Shankar. (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) - Okay, am I sounding like I have a little bit of a lag? - Yeah. - You're sounding like you have a little bit of a lag, Jimmy. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, you have a lag. - Okay, it worked. - Hello. - Hi. - Oh, that, I think that's a lot better. Can you just tell me what you ate for breakfast? - Yes. Add some fruits, some grapes, some cauliflower toast. Then for lunch, I had some rice, and some fish, and some salad with olives and pickles. How am I sounding? - You're sounding like you're an extremely healthy person. (laughing) - Collie flower bread, what does Collie flower bread? - What you just heard was a special episode from a slight change of plans with Dr. Maya Shankar. Find more episodes of a slight change of plans wherever you get podcasts.