10: The Social Self

Friendship

According to Scholten (2022) friendship hinges on three dimensions including mutual care, intimacy, and shared interests. Mutual care implies not only caring about your friend but caring about what your friend cares about for your friend’s sake. Intimacy implies not only the ability to be vulnerable with each other such as sharing and keeping secrets, interests, and values, but also to influence each other with regards to values and interests. Having shared interests means wanting to be together and do things together where sharing is part of the fun and enhances the experiences beyond what it would be if done alone.

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): Friendship thrives through mutual care, shared stories, and a sense of belonging. (Photo by Helena Lopes from Pexels.)

Friendships are different from family relationships in that they have to be created. There are also different kinds of friendships such as close friendships, acquaintance friendships, work friendships, etc. All friendships have different levels of the three dimensions and obligations and rules depending on the type of friendship (Scholten, 2022).

The old adage birds of a feather flock together actually rings true in the research. Individuals of the same gender, age, ethnicity, and other categories are more likely to form friendships with each other. This concept is consistent across geographic locations and diverse contexts as well. However, sharing similar values, interests, and opinions is a strong determinant in predicting friendship as we are likely to be drawn toward those that will validate our own interests, values, and opinions and the way we see the world (Parkinson et al., 2018).

When we’re kids and even young adults, we’re placed in environments such as school and college where we spend huge amounts of time with a variety of peers that can make forming friendship fairly easy. Making new friends can feel difficult as we become adults. Our time becomes much more limited due to the demands of family, work, and life in general, making us more unwilling to devote the time and energy necessary to make and maintain new friendships. We may have unresolved emotional baggage from childhood that leaves us with fears of rejection and an unwillingness to be vulnerable enough to form strong friendships. Fear of being judged can cause shyness and anxiety. Social anxiety can also be a factor interfering with the individual’s ability to make friends.

Figure \(\PageIndex{3}\): True friendship blends vulnerability, joy, and shared interests over everyday conversations. (Photo by Edmond Dantès from Pexels.)

If someone is struggling to make friends, barring social anxiety, there can be many reasons that are interfering with their efforts. Being very shy or uncomfortable around others can make them uncomfortable as well, or feelings of insecurity that interfere with their belief that others will like them can interfere with their ability to connect with others. If they are an introvert, they may prefer to be alone to the degree that they avoid the company of others, or if they are an extreme extrovert, they may seek the company of so many other people that they fail to make deeper connections with anyone. They may lack social skills or live in a rural area, or move frequently, where there isn’t an opportunity to connect easily with others. Having a disability can make it difficult to make friends due to stigma. Certain personality characteristics such as being too needy, pushy, controlling, or talkative can be off-putting to other people. They may have difficulty making time for friendship due to the demands and responsibilities in their life making it hard to carve out time for friendships. They may have unrealistic expectations of what a friendship should look like and what to expect from a friend and what their friend should expect from them. Oftentimes the individual is unaware of these reasons and using unconditional positive regard, gentleness, and empathy in therapy can go a long way in helping them understand and work on the issues.

Love

Loving others is a basic human need and central to individuals’ overall subjective well-being (Galinha et al., 2013). Love, a universal phenomenon, that transcends cultural and geographic boundaries, is complex and plays an important role in human relationships. Romantic love has been described as a combination of three elements: intimacy, attachment, and affection. Attachment in particular is related to how well or poorly the infant bonds with the caregiver in early childhood, with those with more secure bonds having the ability to bond more easily and successfully with others as an adult (Fernandes et al., 2023). Loving and being loved by another has even been shown to boost immunity (D’Acquisto, 2019).

Several Greek terms have been used to define different types of love such as Eros, which is thought to be passionate, sexual, or romantic love and is associated with the survival and reproductive instinct. Agape is a form of universal love such as for strangers, nature, and God. Agape can be thought of as charity or altruism toward your fellow man. Storge is familial love or the love you have for your parents and siblings and other close family and is more likely to be unconditional, and Pragma is a kind of practical love founded on reason or duty and involves compatibility and shared goals.

Just being in a relationship is not a predictor of better functioning. In a study by Hudson et al. (2019), they found that investing in the relationship by spending time with the partner and having positive interactions to create a quality relationship reported greater feelings of well-being. Those that did not have quality relationships reported well-being at or worse than their single counterparts. What really matters is investing in the relationship. Having a quality relationship begins with having a clear sense of self (Becht et al., 2017). Responsiveness of each participant in the relationship that includes validation, caring, and understanding the other, as well as helping the other feel listened to and valued with sensitivity and warmth is also key to creating quality (Canevello & Crocker, 2010) and much more likely to lead to a loving and long-lasting relationship, whether it be with family, friends, or romantic partners.

Men in particular may be hesitant to engage in emotional vulnerability, or sharing feelings not associated with pleasure due to stigma and judgement of being less masculine if they share feelings rather than content related to achievement or everyday life (Khrystenko, 2022). Anyone, however, may struggle with being vulnerable in relationships which can hamper efforts to deepen and grow both friendship and love.