The friendship cure
Friendship can heal body and soul, and hold our hearts together through the toughest times of our lives. Kate Leaver celebrates this precious gift and shares what she’s learnt about nurturing it.
Gillian and Liz have been friends for two decades. They met at university, when they were asked to read aloud a scene from Harold Pinter about two elderly ladies airing grievances over tomato soup and complimentary bread. They became instant friends. Now, entering their 40s, they are captains of each other’s support teams, having grown up together and seen each other settle into adult life. They mean more to one another than they can ever truly say in a birthday card, text message or whispered confession over wine.
They are the perfect example of why female friendship is so special and so powerful, because they help one another negotiate a female existence. They fully intend to stay friends for a lifetime – in fact, they have a Facebook event scheduled for the year 2040. There are just two attendees: Gillian and Liz, as older women, and they intend to order tomato soup with complimentary bread, watch the world go by a cafe window and natter about life with the sweet grouchiness only old age can entitle you to.
That’s the dream, isn’t it? To stay friends an entire lifetime, to see each other through the joys and cruelties of human existence, to plan a future together? It is an increasingly challenging dream to actualise, though, as we grow older, get married, have kids, work on our careers and allow friendship to slide down our priorities list. In fact, studies show that we shed friends as we age – partly, I’d like to think, because with wisdom comes a more refined quality control impulse and a better knowledge of who belongs in our lives. But it’s partly, also, to do with our preoccupation →
with romantic love, our dedication to family and our all-consuming work lives. We do not value friendship with the same reverence and longevity as we do the love between romantic partners so we allow it to vanish from our lives more easily. Oxford University evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar says that we lose an average of two friends every time we start a romantic relationship.
Journalist Julie Beck wrote for The Atlantic, in an article about this very friendship-shedding phenomenon: “The voluntary nature of friendship makes it subject to life’s whims in a way more formal relationships aren’t. In adulthood, as people grow up and go away, friendships are the relationships most likely to take a hit. You’re stuck with your family, and you’ll prioritise your spouse.” We are not biologically obliged to keep our friends in our lives, and we have no formal certificate to officiate our connection. So friendships tend to get sidelined, especially when things get busy. Popping out for a Friday night drink, a Sunday brunch or a mid-week coffee becomes an endless relay of texts declaring earnestly but perhaps emptily: “We should catch up”. Our intention to spend time with our friends is there; it just gets waylaid when there are kids to feed, careers to build, relationships to maintain, finances to manage, laundry to be done, exercise to fit in, parents to care for and extended family to see.
When I first read Julie’s article and came across Robin’s startling statistic, I was 29. That, as Robin’s research suggests, is the peak of our lives in terms of friendship. We develop a lot of strong, lasting connections in our late teens and 20s, facilitated by university, work and the fully developed state of our frontal lobe, which is responsible for making smart emotional decisions. These friendships are often consolidated by social lubricants like alcohol and dancing, which Robin tells me have helped social connection happen all over the world and throughout history.
I was so frightened by the idea that I might lose my friends as I settled down, got married, had kids and became a fully fledged adult, the first thing I did was text them all to make them promise to stay in my life forever. The second thing I did was start researching a book (The Friendship Cure) on the importance of friendship in an increasingly fractured modern society.
Over the year following my revelation about dwindling friendship, I would speak to my own friends, friends of friends, academics, evolutionary psychologists, psychotherapists, scientists and strangers from the internet to compile an 83,300-word reply to Julie’s article on losing friends as we age. It was a deeply moving process and I now have a profound respect for what friendship does for us as human beings. It can, quite literally, be life-saving.
When I’ve been desperately numb with depression, a couple of my friends have genuinely reminded me why life is worth living.
My darling friend Elise once sat with me during a depressive episode, perched on the edge of my bed in the dark as
I napped, singing me a capella pop songs and feeding me fresh strawberries. She somehow intuitively knew that’s what
I needed: company, the sound of her voice, distraction and a little sugar. Friendship has been a salvation for me many times through a life of recurrent chemical melancholy, and I am immensely lucky to be able to say that.
We are currently living through a severe loneliness epidemic: 82 per cent of Australians believe that loneliness is increasing and 60 per cent say they often feel lonely. Social isolation can cut our lives shorter and make us more vulnerable to physical and mental illness. It is more dangerous than smoking 15 cigarettes a day and more closely linked to mortality
“I now have a profound respect for what friendship does.”
rates than obesity. Friendship, happily, can reverse the effects of this, making us more resilient and reducing our chances of developing cancer, dementia, stroke, heart disease, depression and anxiety.
New research proves that goodquality, uplifting social interaction over a lifetime and the knowledge that we can depend on people during crises can literally extend our lifetimes. Oxford University PhD student Katerina Johnston has proved that friendship is a more effective pain reliever than morphine. It is, quite simply, one of the smartest things we can do for our health.
So, how do we maintain friendship over a lifetime? For a start, we can pledge to ourselves and one another to proactively nourish the friendships we already have in our lives. We can rebel against the study that says we lose friends when we fall in love. We can bump friendship back up our priority list. That means deliberately making space for friends – ideally, that’s seeing someone in person but it can also mean taking advantage of our omnipresence on social media to stay in touch when things get busy. A phone call, a text or a well-chosen emoji between friends can keep the friendship alive between coffees, and we so often forget to do even that.
We should also know that it’s never too late to make new friends – and it’s so important to have the courage and the kindness to recruit new people into our lives. We let so many opportunities for friendship pass us by, so the first place to look for new buddies is actually just around us. Whether it’s inviting a neighbour in for tea or choosing to get to know a work acquaintance better, it’s vital to push past small talk, ask investigative, profound questions and actively listen to the other person.
Having meaningful friendship, especially as we get older, is all about exposure, vulnerability and mutual respect, so actively cultivate those things.
The most powerful thing we can do for our friends, both old and new, is to make sure they know that we are there for them if and when they need it. Friendship, particularly between women and especially as we get older, is an exchange of vulnerabilities predicated on the promise of solidarity. We must be emotionally transparent with one another, insistent on providing moral support when it’s needed and conspicuously present in each other’s lives when tragedy, grief, conflict or illness hits.
Friendship is about joy and love and humour, but it is also about loyalty, stubborn support and reassurance. The best friends make us sure of who we are in this world, so the best thing we can do for one another is actively remind the people we cherish that they matter. Then, with a little luck, we can all make it to our 80s or 90s, sitting in a cafe like Gillian and Liz, looking back on a lifetime of friendship. AWW