What makes a friendship last Am I Normal with Mona Chalabi
Transcriber:
I’ve moved about 20 times in my life.
And each time that I move to a new
neighborhood, a new city, a new country,
it seems to get harder and harder
to sustain the friendships I left behind.
But right now,
sustaining those friendships
seems especially important
and especially difficult.
So I’m wondering what is manageable?
How can I keep those friendships afloat
without getting overwhelmed?
[Am I Normal? with Mona Chalabi]
To find out, I turned
to my two most trusted sources:
data and my mum.
Now, since she hates being on camera,
this puppet is going to be
as good as it gets.
But before she weighs in,
I wanted to look at the studies
on how friendships fall apart
in the hopes that I might be able
to avoid some of those pitfalls.
According to one study,
friendships often dissolve
because of a lack of opportunity
to meet, hang out and connect.
Which may explain why,
after a year of isolation,
some of my friendships feel
like they’re hanging on by a thread.
The same researcher made headlines
with the finding that we lose half
of our friendships every seven years.
Now, before you start doomscrolling
through your contact list,
you should know that’s not quite
as severe as it sounds.
Over those seven years,
the size of our friendship group
actually stays pretty stable.
So if you have 20 or 30 good friends now,
seven years later,
you still probably have
20 or 30 good friends.
The catch, though, is that 52 percent
of those faces will be different.
Over seven years,
we will replace many of the people
in our network with new ones.
As someone who has had to work
more and more from home,
the opportunity to go out
and make new friends is pretty limited.
It’s a luxury I don’t often have.
And the research
on the formation of new friends
suggest that this takes time.
A lot of time.
A recent study found
that you have to spend between
40 and 60 hours with someone
before they can go from
an acquaintance to a casual friend.
They get upgraded
to a fully fledged friend
around 80 to 100 hours,
and get elevated to a best friend
after you spend at least 200 hours
of quality time together.
And the emphasis here is on quality time.
You might say “hi”
to a barista every morning
or be polite to a coworker,
but you wouldn’t necessarily invite
either one over for dinner.
I was feeling a little bit daunted
by all of these numbers
until I spoke to my mum,
who has a more optimistic
take on all of this.
“A friendship is essential in your life.
How does friendship start?
The first thing is to know that person.
If you don’t want to know these people,
if you don’t open a window
of communication,
you will never become friends of them.
You have to start.
If you want to be isolated,
you just shut your windows
and look at them,
and they don’t look at you.”
OK, so yes, if I really, really
want to make a new friendship,
I could go out and make the effort
to make a new friend by, say,
knocking on my neighbor’s door,
who plays really good music
a bit too loudly.
But what about my current
group of friends?
Are we all doomed just
because we don’t get the chance
to hang out like we used to?
“I think yes, with the friends,
the distance gets further and further
if you are not meeting them.
But it also shows you the ones
that don’t disappear
because of the time or the distance.
They will be there for you
if you need them.
So the special friends.
And this difficult time
shows you who cares
and who is a good person
or a good friend.”
I think she’s right.
I don’t think there’s a magical formula
or a mythical number of hours to chase.
This just takes time and effort.
So if you’ll excuse me,
I have a good friend that I need to call.