Recently, I’ve been hearing about the loneliness epidemic and how important friendships are to our health. Psychological research suggests that stable, healthy, platonic friendships are crucial for our well-being and longevity. When I was reading Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Get Old for our PIH book club, this quote from Chapter 8 stuck with me:
There’s also a bunch of research that shows friendships are tied not only to happiness but also to health and longevity as we age. In one study, people over 50 took a survey three times over 8 years. Those who had high-quality friendships were 24 percent less likely to die during that span! Robert Waldinger, director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development and coauthor of The Good Life, has said the most unexpected finding of his study was how far-reaching the impact of friendship was for older people: “The people who were happiest, who stayed healthiest, and who lived the longest, were the people who had the warmest connections. In fact, good relationships were the strongest predictor of who was going to be happy and healthy as they grew old.”
“Loneliness kills,” Waldinger says. “It’s as powerful as smoking or alcoholism.” According to the study, those who lived longer and enjoyed sound health avoided smoking and alcohol in excess. Researchers also found that those with strong social support experienced less mental deterioration as they aged.
One of my fav pictures of us; friends through storms and sunshine!
In his TED talk, Waldinger says “Good relationships don’t just protect our bodies; they protect our brains. And those good relationships, they don’t have to be smooth all the time. Some of our octogenarian couples could bicker with each other day in and day out, but as long as they felt that they could really count on the other when the going got tough, those arguments didn’t take a toll on their memories.”
But don’t wait till your fifties to nurture these relationships. “Aging is a continuous process,” Waldinger says. “You can see how people can start to differ in their health trajectory in their 30s, so that by taking good care of yourself early in life you can set yourself on a better course for aging. The best advice I can give is ‘Take care of your body as though you were going to need it for 100 years,’ because you might.”
I believe these relationships are so important because they allow us moments to share and repair. As Dr. Bruce Perry says in What Happened to You?:
When you have friends, family, and other healthy people in your life, you have a natural healing environment. We heal best in community. Creating a network– a village, whatever you want to call it– gives you opportunities to revisit trauma in moderate, controllable doses. That pattern of stress activation will ultimately lead to a more regulated stress-reactivity…
I’m very concerned about poverty of relationships in modern society. In our work, we find that the best predictor of your current mental health is your current “relational health,” or connectedness… Simply put, modern life provides fewer opportunities for relational interactions. In a multifamily, multigenerational environment, the continuous social interactions provide a rich source of regulation, reward, and learning. And that’s how we used to live. In 1790, 63 percent of our nation’s households had five or more people; only 10 percent had two or fewer. Today those numbers have basically flipped. In 2006, only 8 percent of households had five or more people; 60 percent had two or fewer. In a recent survey of selected urban communities in the U.S., Europe, and Japan, up to 60 percent of all households were just one person.
Personally, my close friends have really become my support group: we share our stories, our pains, our triumphs, our imperfect selves. And every time we do, it gives others permission to show their cracks. In doing so, we share and repair in therapeutic doses, like I wrote about in this blog. It’s like journaling to process what’s going on in our lives, except it’s done verbally. We do a disservice to each other when we hold back. When we share in community, we tell each other it’s okay to hurt and grieve, it’s okay to be vulnerable, it’s okay to accept and allow yourself the time to share, to open up, to exercise compassion. Through sharing in community, we find our bravery and our strength. I just finished reading Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green, and he says it far better than I could: “survival is not primarily an act of individual will, of course. It’s an act of collective will.”
But, to be clear, this isn’t about how many friends we have on social media. This is about close friends with whom we can be this vulnerable (and not everyone in our circles has earned the right to hear those stories). According to Oxford evolutionary scientist Robin Dunbar, the number of stable relationships we can cognitively maintain at once is 150. That sounds like a lot, but those are social connections like the community we share our wellness with at Pilates in Holland. Dunbar asserts we have different layers of friends: one or two truly best friends with whom you share “strong social ties” (perhaps in addition to your closest loved ones), then maybe 15 people with whom you have “great affinity” and interact with frequently… and then all sorts of other people you’re friendly with but who aren’t friends.
They’re all important. These social connections slow cognitive decline and lead to us making healthier choices. But most of those people probably don’t count as “strong social ties.” So it isn’t about trying to collect as many friends as possible. The key is to have a few close friends AND lots of positive social connections. Just like a romantic relationship, friendships need to be nurtured, especially those strong ones that help to nurture us.
It’s about quality over quantity when it comes to those closest friendships. Be present, kind, compassionate, and open. Friendships evolve as we grow older, but we can still make time to connect over shared interests, grow, and celebrate together. I cherish my friendships that take me as I am, encourage me to share my vulnerabilities and get to the deep stuff, and celebrate with me as we travel life together.
