Part 2 of Making Friends
As I started writing this post, a story published in the New York Times on Monday (April 20) was sitting atop the list of most e-mailed articles at the paper. "What are friends for? A longer life," was the title of reporter Tara Parker-Pope's story. Longevity is just one of the benefits; friendships can also be good for health, happiness, confidence, and feeling good about yourself.
Judging from the response to my last post, "Living Single" readers do not need to be persuaded. They already get it about the appeal of friendship, and are interested in discussing the topic of making friends.
To say that some singles sometimes want advice about making friends is NOT to say that singles are generally deficient in friendship skills or in the giving spirit that friendship can entail. Quite the contrary! Data from two national surveys have shown that single people are more likely than married people to provide emotional support and practical help to friends, and to spend time with them.
Still, in a matrimaniacal society in which so many social events are organized by the couple, making friends can present some special challenges to singles. At the same time, some of the time-tested truths about friendship (for example: if you want a friend, be one) care not a wit about marital status.
Readers posted many wonderful suggestions about how to make friends, including the one about being a friend. If you are interested, I hope you will read them all and enjoy them. (Personally, I was especially gratified to see how adept "Living Single" readers are at recognizing singlism and responding to it.)
There's a lot to say about making friends, so there will be more posts to come. In this one, I'll start with a consideration that is paramount to social psychologists: The situation. In what contexts are you most likely to figure out real friend-potential?
Be a psychology detective: What's the potential friend really like?
The question we are grappling with is not just how to make any friend but how to make a CLOSE friend. For that, you may need to put on your psychologist's hat and figure out the best settings for finding clues. Here in Santa Barbara, there is an annual writers' conference, featuring workshops in which students take turns reading their own work and critiquing the other students' work. If you have any interest in writing, I think that's a great context for scoping out potential friends. You get to listen to their writing voice, and that can tell you a great deal about how they think and feel, about their sensibilities and maybe their sense of humor. You can also see how they interact with others in a delicate situation. (Giving other people feedback about their writing can be very touchy.) The downside, for me, was that a lot of the participants came from out-of-town, and I prefer to have in-person possibilities for my closest friendships, at least at first.
I liked Kristen's story (from the comments section of my last post) of how she found friends when she moved to a new town. She went to the animal shelter to get a cat, watched the other people there, and felt drawn to them. She started volunteering there and now has close friends.
Groups such as book clubs and hiking clubs (mentioned by several people who commented) can also be terrific. For about a decade, I was in a cooking club with about 7-10 other people. We had our core group, and in addition, we took turns inviting mystery guests. Conversing all evening over a leisurely meal is another way of getting a good sense of whether you might like someone as a friend and whether that person might be open to a new friendship.
Just about any activity that brings you together with another person for an extended period of time can be a great way of developing a friendship if there is any potential there. A long car trip is one example. A colleague once told me about driving cross-country with someone he did not know all that well at the start of the trip. He asked the person to tell him all about his life, starting at the very beginning. Within an hour or so, the person telling his life story was totally into it. Every time he had to stop his narration (for a pit stop or whatever other reason), he couldn't wait to get back in the car and start up again. (The risk here is obvious - you might soon realize that you can't stand the person, and now you have countless hours to spend in the car with him!)
Coming Attractions
In future posts, I'll continue discussing the question of how to make friends. The movie "I Love You, Man," is a cinematic answer to that question, so maybe I'll mull over some of its proposed how-to's (and how not-to's).
I'll also explain why I think Anon4 was right on target when he or she said that sometimes close friendships are made at emotional times, when big changes are happening and you may be feeling vulnerable.
