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Instant New York Times bestseller Is understanding the science of attachment the key to building lasting friendships and finding “your people” in an ever-more-fragmented world? How do we make and keep friends in an era of distraction, burnout, and chaos, especially in a society that often prizes romantic love at the expense of other relationships? In Platonic, Dr. Marisa G. Franco unpacks the latest, often counterintuitive findings about the bonds between us—for example, why your friends aren’t texting you back (it’s not because they hate you!), and the myth of “friendships happening organically” (making friends, like cultivating any relationship, requires effort!). As Dr. Franco explains, to make and keep friends you must understand your attachment style—secure, anxious, or avoidant: it is the key to unlocking what’s working (and what’s failing) in your friendships. Making new friends, and deepening longstanding relationships, is possible at any age—in fact, it’s essential. The good news: there are specific, research-based ways to improve the number and quality of your connections using the insights of attachment theory and the latest scientific research on friendship. Platonic provides a clear and actionable blueprint for forging strong, lasting connections with others—and for becoming our happiest, most fulfilled selves in the process.
Instant New York Times bestseller Is understanding the science of attachment the key to building lasting friendships and finding “your people” in an ever-more-fragmented world? How do we make and keep friends in an era of distraction, burnout, and chaos, especially in a society that often prizes romantic love at the expense of other relationships? In Platonic, Dr. Marisa G. Franco unpacks the latest, often counterintuitive findings about the bonds between us—for example, why your friends aren’t texting you back (it’s not because they hate you!), and the myth of “friendships happening organically” (making friends, like cultivating any relationship, requires effort!). As Dr. Franco explains, to make and keep friends you must understand your attachment style—secure, anxious, or avoidant: it is the key to unlocking what’s working (and what’s failing) in your friendships. Making new friends, and deepening longstanding relationships, is possible at any age—in fact, it’s essential. The good news: there are specific, research-based ways to improve the number and quality of your connections using the insights of attachment theory and the latest scientific research on friendship. Platonic provides a clear and actionable blueprint for forging strong, lasting connections with others—and for becoming our happiest, most fulfilled selves in the process.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Excerpts-
From the coverChapter 1
How Friendship Transforms Our Lives
Connecting with Others Makes Us Ourselves
"Some of the widowed sit at home and watch television for the rest of their lives. They may be alive, but they're not really living," seventy-three-year-old Harriet remarks, referencing the members of the grief group she attended after her husband's death. Harriet could have easily faced this same fate if it wasn't for one thing: friendship.
Harriet didn't always value friendship. In fact, up until she married Federico at the age of fifty, it wasn't a priority. She was ambitious, working twelve-hour days and traveling enough to eventually meet her goal of visiting every country in the world. To ascend in her career, she moved across the US, chasing jobs-from the Northeast to the Midwest to the West and back to the Northeast again-disposing of friendships along the way.
But her ambitions never impeded her search for a spouse. "That was the training of my culture-to live your life to find a husband," she says. She had a string of boyfriends throughout her life, and when those relationships clipped, she would hunt for someone new. She remembered visiting her co-worker Denise's home and envying how she had it all: an impressive job, a husband, beautiful twins. Single at forty, she struggled to accept the reality that she might never have the husband and children she dreamed of. But, without the towering domestic obligations that arose from family life, she filled her hours with work.
Harriet admits friendship wasn't all that fulfilling in her younger years because of how she approached it. She was ashamed of her childhood, as she grew up on a farm, dirt poor. During the summers, she worked on neighbors' farms to pay for school. As she rose in her career, and her network increasingly churned with wealthy elites, she never felt like she belonged. Friendship was a place for her to live a double life, to perform the culture of affluence she never felt fully accustomed to: attending estate sales, dropping Benjamins on dinners, arguing over mundanities like the color of neighbors' lawns. She never let herself get too comfortable around friends, lest they figure out where she really came from, who she really was.
Then, two things happened that resuscitated her view on friendship. First, when she married Federico, a social butterfly, she acquiesced to hosting friends in their home for regular gatherings. "People wanted to be around us because of how happy we were," she says. From him, she learned that being around others could be a joy rather than a toll.
But it wasn't until Federico died that she truly understood the value of friends. To heal her grief, she attended counseling for the first time, where she learned how to be vulnerable. She transferred the skill of vulnerability to her friendships. When she did, she experienced old friendships in new ways, as her bonds ceased to be places of pretend. While some friendships buckled under the honesty of her grief, others deepened, and she realized that being vulnerable, asking for support, could be a portal to deep intimacy.
In her old age, Harriet values friends more than ever. One friendship, she realized, has been her longest love story. She met Shirleen in college, when she was studying abroad in Marseilles. Shirleen was the least judgmental person she ever met, one of the only people Harriet could open up to. Although they lost touch after college, fourteen years later, Shirleen tracked her down and called her. Shirleen lived in London but made the effort to visit Harriet in Washington DC five times over...
Reviews-
August 8, 2022 Franco, a psychology professor at the University of Maryland, debuts with a smart and savvy guide on forging friendships. “Friendship’s impact is as profound as it is underestimated,” she contends, exploring how one’s past affects one’s platonic relationships and imparting strategies for making friends. The author explains the psychology of attachment theory, which suggests that how loved ones have treated someone affects how that person relates to others (“We feel lovable because someone loved us well”). She illustrates the three attachment styles (secure, anxious, avoidant) with anecdotes “based on true stories” (their provenance remains unclear), such as when she explains anxious attachment style by telling of a woman who so feared being alone, she clung to her vituperative dance instructor. Scientific studies undergird Franco’s thoughtful advice on building better friendships, as when she encourages readers to “assume people like you” because research has found that people who expect others to like them will act kindly, causing others to actually like them. The guidance is thorough, and a chapter on how people from disadvantaged groups can approach friendships with privileged people—or when it might be best to dump them—sensitively addresses the impact of socioeconomic factors on friendships. This has wisdom to spare.
Starred review from July 15, 2022 A remarkable examination of the epidemic of loneliness and sound advice for alleviating it. In this articulate, informative book, Franco, a psychology professor at the University of Maryland, notes that the number of friends that most people have is lower than ever before (sometimes zero), and these circumstances lead to numerous deleterious effects on our mental and physical health. "Out of 106 factors that influence depression, having a confidante is the most powerful," she writes. "Loneliness is more fatal than a poor diet or lack of exercise, as corrosive as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. Friendship literally saves our lives." The author identifies work pressure as a central culprit, but also to blame is the widespread view that relationships should only focus on sex and romantic love. Many people have simply forgotten how to make and keep friends, and Franco provides a wealth of useful advice on the subject. Starting a friendship requires taking initiative, which can mean accepting vulnerability and the risk of rejection. "People think tiny acts, like saying hello, can't have colossal consequences for their life," she writes. "But they can. One hello can be the difference between being lonely and finding your best friend." Having common interests is always a good place to start. Making friends with people across racial, social, and political boundaries is also important, but there has to be a set of shared values. Cultivating and maintaining a friendship requires an investment of time and energy, and both sides have to know the boundaries. Franco covers a great deal of ground, although one area she does not explore in depth is social media. Are Facebook friends, for example, really friends? Is Instagram a help or a hindrance? That is a big subject deserving a book of its own, and maybe Franco will address it in a subsequent volume. Until then, this one offers many fascinating insights. A pleasing mix of research, advice, and humor, this book is a useful tonic to a key social ailment.
COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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