friendship

Happiness for Cynics

Celebrate International Day of Friendship with besties Marie and Pete, who hide under a blanket fort on a bed to discuss the value of friendship – from combatting the loneliness epidemic to how it can help you perceive the world differently.

Transcript

M: You’re listening to the podcast Happiness for Cynics. I’m Marie Skelton, a writer and speaker focused on change and resilience.

P: And I’m Peter Furness a flexibility fan, adaptive, creative and gold focused obsessive. Each week we will bring to you the latest news and research in the world of positive psychology, otherwise known as happiness.

M: So if you’re feeling low.

P: Or if you’re only satisfied with life but not truly happy with it.

M: Maybe just want more.

P: Then this is the place to be.

M: And this week, we are talking about friendships.

P: Awe

[Happy Music]

M: So, Pete, we’re trialing a new model for recording podcasts this week.

P: Yes, we’re talking about friendships. And I’m being a really good friend because you put me under a blanket.

[Laughter]

M: Literally.

P: Literally, really. And I’m sitting here and I’m hot [Laugh].

M: So I was listening to our own podcast this week, and I decided that we echo too much because we don’t have the sound studio. We’re now in my bedroom. My husband is very forgiving.

P: I’m schmitzing like a schmagetthi.

[Laughter]

M: We’re hiding under a blanket. We’ll see whether the sound quality is any better for all of you out there.

P: This isn’t gonna last in summer you can tell.

M: We have air con it’s OK. So this is what good friends do, we make forts on the bed.

[Laughter]

M: And speaking of good friends were talking about friendship today.

P: Very big topic.

M: And really, I’m going to call out to a new friend that we’ve both made recently, David. David, no last name, we’ll protect the privacy of our new friends and we were talking just last weekend about the concept of your chosen family.

P: Yes.

M: And I think for a lot of us today who move away from our hometowns you choose your new family when you move to new areas.

P: I think it’s vital to find your chosen family because you need to replace those close bonds with someone else and if you don’t have your family around you. Then you need to find, you need to find your tribe.

M: Find your tribe. And you know what? When you could choose your family..

P: [Laughter] there is a little bit of that.

M: Times can be much happier.

P: Well they can be. Although there are, there are lessons to be learned by sticking with the one person for 20/30 years.

M: Yeah, True, true. So let’s get to why this is important. Why friendship is important. I think that the macro story here is that there is a loneliness epidemic right now.

P: Is there? Is there actually a loneliness epidemic at the moment?

M: Absolutely. So, there’s a lot of research right now. We’re living older and unfortunately, even when we do couple up, we don’t always die at the same age. So there’s a lot more people who are living a lot longer by themselves we’re also divorcing at higher rates, not so much in the last 10/ 20 years, but divorce rates have gone up in the last few hundred years. So there are more people in general who just are single going into their older years as well. And also we’re marrying later. So again there are a lot more single people out there who are living by themselves and particularly with Corona virus. This has been a huge problem with people just being alone, not only lonely but alone for so long.

P: Yeah, that’s true.

M: So it is definitely. They’re calling it the loneliness epidemic. So estimates as high as 30% of people are lonely.

P: Wow.

M: And feel lonely regularly in their lives.

P: OK.

M: Yes. So this is why friendship is so important. Such a big topic. And also because all the research shows that having strong relationships and finding your tribe and sense of belonging and connectedness is critical to happiness.

P: Yeah that message comes through in every single time we talk about something. It’s like, it’s really the social connections are the big ones. Friendships is another one of those social conventions. And I guess with friendship as well that comes down to a social paradigm; Because since the change of the last 100 years of social conventions and the ideas of marriage and so forth where a lot of people are choosing not to be married at all and that whole concept of staying single and being content, staying single. It’s no longer a thing of like ‘Oh, you’re going to die an old maid.’ Now it’s like ‘you’re going to die and old maid and it’s going to be great!’

M: [Laugh]

P: There is, There is. There is no..

M: Shame.

P: Predilection to being, yeah or shame being single and being, you know, cast into a life of looking after your parents in the county cottage aka Jane Austen anymore. You know, you can be single, be happy and this is where friendships do come in because you can replace those marriage ties or family ties that come with marriage with friendships. And that’s where David’s thing about the chosen family becomes really important.

M: Absolutely and even your.. I’m married and happily married. Mostly.

P: [Laugh]

M: I mean, no marriage is perfect. Let’s be really honest and vulnerable here. He leaves his socks everywhere. It’s a thing. It drives me batty. But we’re happy, so happy, so, so happy.

P: [Laugh]

M: Anyway. But my friends are such a big part of my life. And..

P: I was going to take you to task over this Marie because those of you who do know us, we’ve been friends for a while now. I would say you’re a very driving force in terms of keeping our social connections going. In our social group. You are the one that actually gets in there and organises regular catchup’s and says, no, no, no, let’s do this, let’s keep this going on. I was going to pose a question to you. It could be part of your personality because you are the organisation princess, that we know and love. But is that, was it a conscious decision for you? Or is it a conscious decision for you to to, make sure and plan those catch ups and commit because I find you are very committed to those catch ups.

M: I can. Umm, that’s a really good question, and now you’ve thrown me.

P: Ah ha! He he.

M: I think part of its personality. Let’s be really honest.

P: Yep!

M: I like control.

[Laughter]

P: I get that. But there is, you’re the person that really does, like, push.  Like ‘No, no, we’re not letting this go, guys. We’re going to catch up this week, and it’s going to be this week and it’s going to be tomorrow.’

M: ‘And you will enjoy it and it will be fun and everyone will laugh!’

P: And that’s your personality coming out.

[Laughter]

P: Whereas I think for some of us and I’m guilty of this, definitely some of my long term friends will be nodding in agreement that it’s too easy to let those catch ups to go.

M: Yeah.

P: It’s too easy to just go ‘Oh no, let’s just do it next week. I’m feeling tired.’ And that’s actually it’s important not to do that all the time.

M: Yeah, look, I think it depends on the person you’re going to get me in trouble here. I find it easier, proximity helps to drive a lot of what I choose to do with my friends. So if it’s just going down to the local pub, so much easier than driving across the bridge.

P: Oh, yes, absolutely.

M: To go see someone.

P: Yeah, yeah, definitely.

M: And if it’s an activity I like.

P: Volleyball.

M: Food.

P: Food, volleyball. Got it. [Laugh]

M: Yeah, pretty much so look as long as those two things align, then I’ll push for things happening. But it’s, it’s weird that you say that because I feel like I’ve been really quite introverted and isolated during Covid.

P: Which, this surprises me about you because that’s not the impression that I’ve had to you for the last eight years or so.

M: Yep, yep. I don’t know.

P: Maybe, maybe the pandemic has changed you.

M: No I’ve always, I’ve always fought against too much social time, a love my social time, and I love people and I love hanging out with people, and I get a lot from those interactions, and I think it’s critical. And as a journalist and then a communications expert, I completely understand the benefit and value of face to face communication in particular. And I understand how that’s challenging people right now during Covid, however, it’s exhausting to me.

P: Yeah, alright.

M: So I need my time to re-centre, and I think that’s where the writing and reading comes in, and researching.

P: That’s the introvert/ extrovert balance there isn’t it?

M: Yeah, and I’m constantly fighting that pull.

P: I think it’s a fine line. I think I do the same thing. I really value my solo time. And for me, I’ve had more people living in my house lately and it’s interesting how that changes your solo time. And every now and then you’re like ‘Oh, can everyone just leave.’ I just need an hour. [Laugh]

M: Yep, So that’s been my reality. And I feel like I’m always fighting that every day, like I just want everyone to go away.

P: Yeah.

M: So that’s why I say I’m an introvert. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to hang out with people and love people.

P: But friendships are vitally important to making sure that we keep those social connections and instances alive. So let’s talk a bit more about the research behind that.

M: You’ve done a whole lot. So, I looked very much into why this is important and looked at the loneliness epidemic and another one, sleeplessness breeds loneliness.

P: Sleeplessness breeds loneliness. Okay, let’s go into that one.

M: Again, I don’t actually, we won’t spend too much time on this one. I don’t know whether lonely people don’t get as much sleep, and therefore, when they’re not sleeping there feeling more lonely, I don’t know the cause and effect there, right? They’re not going out, and I don’t know how that works, but absolutely there’s so much that’s tied to insomnia and sleeplessness when it comes to depression and just not feeling good. So, sleeplessness or insomnia or poor sleep could be a cause or an effect.

P: I think it makes you less likely to reach out to people because being in proximity to people and having to take part in a conversation becomes a bit more exhausting if you’ve had sleeplessness.

M: Mmm Hhm. Yep, Absolutely. Now you had some great studies here?

P: Yeah. I have.

M: I want to hear about your University of Virginia one. Can we go to that one?

P: [Laugh] Yeah okay. So the perception of friendship and how it makes us perceive things, friendships make us perceive our life better. One of the great benefits of friendships is that we get to sound things off people and that can change our perception of how well off or how beneficial we are or how healthy we are and all those sorts of things.

The University of Virginia did a wonderful study with backpacks and a hill. So, they took 34 students. Put them all at the bottom of a hill and for some of the students, they couple them up with friends, and for some of them they were left alone and the question was how steep is the hill? And they had a high degree of the people with couples, friendships perceived the hill to be a lot less steep because they were standing there with a backpack on their shoulders and they had their buddy.

M: Oh, I love it.

P: Mmm. So it changes the way that you look at the world when you’ve got someone standing next to you or by you or with you.

M: So it’s just a perception thing.

P: Completely.

M: I have a great little story that I want to share, which has nothing to do with anything  but I want to share it.

P: [Laugh] That’s what you do on this podcast.

M: But you made me think of [it]. Just about.. ‘Oh, I’m just going to share it anyway. So, a teacher blew up balloons, hundreds of balloons and put them into the corridor with each of the students names on it. And all the students came out of their classrooms at the end of the day and she said, ‘Okay, kids, you’ve got a minute to find your balloon.’ And there were hundreds of kids and hundreds of balloons.

P: That sounds like so much fun! [Laugh]

M: They went into the balloons and they were looking and after a minute she said ‘Ok everyone stop, who’s found their balloon?’ and no one had ofcourse because there were too many and no one could find their balloon. She said to them, ‘If you had stopped for a second and not thought about you and your balloon, but thought about everyone else in the room and found one balloon with a person’s name that you know and handed them their balloon. Everyone would have had their balloon within a minute.

P: Mmm. That’s beautiful. That’s wonderful.

M: Absolutely. And so the moral is, happiness is the same. If you’re constantly looking just at yourself, you’ll never find happiness.

P: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. It doesn’t come through.

M: But if you do it with your friends, if you find your friends and you worry about their happiness. Happiness will come back to you.

P: That’s because happiness isn’t a destination, it’s a benefit.

M: But it’s also social and it’s about, it’s about looking after others and being kind to others and we’ve talked about volunteering before as an example as well, spending your time being kind to others comes back to you tenfold.

P: Tenfold, definitely. I’ve got a story that supports that actually.

M: This is actual research not just story.

P: Well, no, this one’s a book and it was written by Jeffrey Zaslow and it’s the story of The Girls from Ames. I think I said that right. It’s a story of women in a 40 year old friendship and this author talks about a group of 11 childhood friends who shared crises and support and lives, and they’ve been in this relationship for 40 years to the point where they all moved to different parts of the country and they were separated by a great geographical boundaries and at some point, as these ladies aged, there were different things that came up and one woman was diagnosed with breast cancer and when she spoke to her doctor, her doctor said, ‘Surround yourself with the people who love you’ and, of course she immediately thought of her, … her family. But then the first people that she reached out to was this circle of friends, this circle of 11 people and she talked differently with them than she did with her doctor and even with her family.

And one of the things was when she was going through the chemotherapy treatment, she said, ‘Oh, my throat is always really dry.’ So one friend sent her a smoothie maker and recipes for smoothies and it was that kind of thoughtfulness that came through, and it’s because she felt much more comfortable talking about the intricacies and the details of her, her symptoms and how she was feeling because she knew she could trust these women with everything, and it’s that honesty and openness. You know, it comes down to, you know I’ll be really blank and frank here. Being able to talk about lovers and so forth with friends and going this was happening the other night, and I didn’t know what was going on. We’ve all had those conversations. You can’t talk to your husband about that.

M: Yeah.

P: Vault conversations. I remembered you talked about that once. No this doesn’t leave the…

M: There are some vault conversations, yeah.

P: But it is. It’s that freedom to be able to talk completely and honestly and openly, and that’s where friendships are really special and in this way, it’s supported by some of the other research that I’ve seen with Rebecca G. Adams, a Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro and she cites .. that ‘friendship has more psychological impact than family.’

M: It’s your chosen family.

P: It’s.. See the research supports that perhaps our friendships are really more important than our family relationships at certain points in our life.

M: Well, obviously not as a baby, but..

P: No but maybe as we get older, it’s possibly more important that we surround ourselves with close friendships.

M: Yeah.

P: And I can say this. Honestly, I believe that I have a really close friendship with my sister, and that’s gotten even more closer as we’ve gone on together. We were never that close as kids, but now I could trust her with anything. And yet I probably wouldn’t ring her up and talk about my lover’s and things like that. [Laugh]

M: I don’t think she’d want to hear it Pete.

P: Well she might [laugh]. You never know.

M: I think that it starts in teen years when you’re trying to break away from your parents. I think that’s when, when the shift happens, definitely you’re learning to be independent and friendships at that age can have a huge impact on who you end up being as an adult.

P: Absolutely and that, they are very formative, some of the research I came across was really supportive about how we seek friendships in our teen years and what that does for our development.

M: Mmm Hmm. Definitely, always looking for the cool kids.

P: [Laugh] The rebels. I think that says something about us.

M: [Laugh] So I know both of us have moved a lot and have had a variety of different friendships, and I’ve definitely been blessed with the different cultures that have had to..

P: Get to know?

M: Get to know.

P: And understand? [Laugh]

M: Yeah, definitely and I think, I think it’s just such a blessing when you move overseas and can make friends with people who are not like you.

P: Yeah, Ahh yes.

M: And you find things that bond you together and learn so much more about yourself. You know, I think it’s really valuable to.. And then I went and married an American.

P: He he

M: So I think that’s just such a good growth opportunity as well. But making friends is not easy.

P: It kinda.. for some people it’s really difficult, definitely. I wasn’t I wasn’t able to make friends very easily at all until I moved away from home.

M: Same, actually. And I went to a preschool that fed into a primary school, that fed into the high school friends, and then my college and then most of my friends, all went to the two universities in my town, right?

P: Right, He he.

M: So it wasn’t ‘til I went overseas that I had to.. And I’d made different friends along the way, but more because they’d come into my life and joined my friendship circles, not because I’d gone looking for them. It was until I moved overseas that I was like, well, this is awkward.

P: Yeah.

M: Hi, I’m Marie..

P: How do I do this? [Laugh]

M: And I like long walks on the beach, oh no that’s dating, shit.

P: [Laugh]

M: You did the same thing you moved to London.

P: Yeah, that was one of my big moments for me. I was actually on my way to the continent, I was going to Paris that was my goal. I wanted to work in Paris, but I landed in London. And my beautiful, lovely, wonderful friend Adam was living in London at the time and he was already established in a house and long story short, my trip to Paris never happened because I got to London. I got into the house and they were like ‘dude there’s a room here, you could possibly stay here’ and all of a sudden I had work. I was like, Oh, looks like I’m staying in London then. And those guys were my chosen family overseas and we had a Skippy house. We had one Scottish girl on one English girl, but we were predominantly Australians and it was kooky, crazy blend of people but it worked and it gave me a support network so that I felt like I had that instant crew and friendship around me. In a city like London, really important.

M: I think it’s interesting that as we’ve gotten more money, we tend to move to single living. Living by ourselves like that’s an achievement to have a place of your own and the implications of that are that we can be really lonely.

P: [Laughter]

M: It’s actually really bad, so I don’t know whether we’ve put value on the wrong thing. We’ve spoken before about success and the..

P: Markers that we achieve or aspire to.

M: You know, having a house by yourself shows that you’ve really made it. I just think maybe communal living is actually the way to go. I think that sometimes, I think ‘My God I’m a 47 year old man and I’m still in a share house. But at the end of it, it works and I enjoy it, and it is nice sometimes to come home on your own as I said, and my housemate’s are going to be killing me here. [Laugh] But it is also really lovely sometimes to come home and go ‘Hi, and sit down and all of a sudden there’s a bottle of wine open and there’s pizza in the oven and you chill out and all of a sudden it’s 2 o’clock in the morning and you go ‘oh we’ve just talked the night away.

M: Which is lovely. Alright, well, that’s all we have time for today, unfortunately.

P: Awe.. sad.

M: So thank you for joining us today. If you want to hear more, please remember to subscribe and like this podcast and remember, you can find us at marieskelton.com, a site about how to find balance, happiness and resilience in your life, including some really practical tips and resource is to get you started on your happiness journey.

P: Yay.

M: Until next time.

P: Choose happiness!

[Happy exit music]

Related content: Read Moving On article How To Make Friends As An Adult, listen to our Podcast: The Benefits of Volunteering (E22)