In a recent article in the Financial Times newspaper [1], data insights reporter Federica Cocco warns of a growing epidemic of loneliness for people in the world. Citing ongoing research from the American Time Use Survey, Cocco highlights that people in the US are appear to be decreasing their experience of friends and family who they can count on for support.

In particular older people are more affected than other age groups. Over half the people over 65 years of age spend more than 8 hours of their awake time alone. Cocco also highlights that young women are a growing group at risk of experiencing loneliness, as the percentage has doubled of women spending reporting protracted periods alone (2011-2021: 7-14%). 

Loneliness has been associated with objective social isolation, depression, introversion, or poor social skills. It is a threat to physical and mental health.  Income, education, sex, and ethnicity are not protective against loneliness. Rather than trivialised, ignored or blamed in those who experience this condition, we need to consider how we can protect ourselves and others.[2]

We see the expansion of loneliness in our clinical practice as well. In Hong Kong, and especially after the COVID pandemic, many people have reported the loss of of friends and increased experience of social isolation as part of their current life experiences. We are social beings. We thrive on being emotionally connected to others and function well when we are involved in rewarding relationships. {3, 4]

Although many of us still have friends that we can spend time with, we may also being lack of intimacy in the friendships that we have [3]. It is important to have support, people who you can share your worries and concerns with, and provide us with key support that we need and protect us against social isolation and loneliness.

Developing new valuable friends is a skill that we have to learn as children, but often we need to relearn and revisit friendship making skills repeatedly over our lifespan. – We need to go into friendship making mode when we experience an intimacy gap among our friendships, we have lost many friends, we change our life circumstances (living location, having children, marital breakdown, leaving employment).

Not only are friendships vital, they fulfill and number of key roles in our lives from championing for our health, connecting us others and helping to challenge your mindset [4].

If you acknowledge that your friendships are not as you would like them to be, in terms of numbers of friends and also depth of friendships we have some recommendations that can help you reboot the Intimacy in your friendships  – frientimacy (Nelson, 2016)

Friendships are the result of combining a number of action/ingredients: consistency of effort, personal positivity, your ability and willingness to be vulnerable, understanding and respecting other people’s preferences, having patience, and reflecting mindfully on what is working/not working in order to determine a future for each friendship. 

Consistency

Consistency is a priority in creating a new friendship. The act of building new, and better friendships, is the accumulation of a million little things rather than a few big events. If you want to build a new acquaintance into a friendship you need to create consistency into the relationship – hence why we become friends with people that we see that they same class or activity each week.[3]  

So, if you are looking to meet and make new friends you will be best placed to attend a regular event instead of a one-off workshop. For example, if you want to make new friends you might consider joining a choir group, sports club, bridge or mah-jong club, or regular support group.

You also play a role in creating consistency in your friendships. If you are invited to lunch and decline, ensure that you protect the consistency of the relationship by offering an alternative catch up opportunity immediately. People drift apart because of lack of sustained effort.

Admittedly relationships still require give and take. If you are constantly offering meet ups, and the other party is not reciprocating, consistency will become difficult to achieve. This highlights the value of the other ingredients needed to create meaningful friendships.

Positivity.

We have all had one friend who has been stuck in a negativity rut and one time or another. Depending on the history, and future aspirations of that friendship, you may need to resist a desire to pull away from such a person. That is because it is very difficult to be around negative people.

“Healthy people aren’t looking for needy, whining, drama-filled, complaining, negative people with whom to spend time” Nelson, 2016, Frientimacy [4]

Conversely, people are drawn to fun or positive people who help lift the mood at a gathering, or help others feel good.

This doesn’t mean that you need to be over-the-top. People who appear happy all the time appear inauthentic. There is a long range of acceptable emotionality between happy people and negative.

In your relationships with people, you might like to consider how positive and negative you are towards your friends. The Gottmans, the leading marital therapists in the US, state that friendship is the key component of romantic partnerships, and within those that they classify as masters of relationship they share positive action (comments or gestures) to their partner 20 times more than negative comments.

These positive components are not necessarily major investments of time or money, for example nodding when you are listening to a friend’s story is a ‘positive’. Certainly, thanking them for a gift, or their time, or sharing a compliment will spread a feeling of positivity. You could aim for the magic proportion of 5:1 positive to negative action as a starting point. This is be basic ratio that the Gottman’s advise to build positive sentiment in a relationship. [5]

What is a negative element? Obvious verbal criticism, unkind mocking or being caught gossiping will hurt your friends. But it is often small actions that can bring negative element into a friendship such scrolling through your phone when your friend is talking to you, ignoring their texts, rolling your eyes when they tell you a story [again], repeatedly being unavailable to meet up.  

It’s not enough to spend time, and be positive, you also have to be vulnerable. For some people this is difficult.

Vulnerability

When we share vulnerability we are expressing that we are not perfect, we are real humans with feelings, dreams, aspirations and disappointments.  Some individuals find it extremely difficult to share vulnerability, challenges or hurts with another person, possibly because of past trauma or broken trust. By avoiding vulnerability, they keep people at arm’s length. This messages to the receiver that I will spend time with you, but not intimate details of my life. If you want deep friendships rather than acquaintances, you need to let people in.

When we share our vulnerability with another person, we are giving them the opportunity to demonstrate empathy and support for us. Empathy and support within a friendship are the glue that hold it together. After all everyone will have encounter challenges in their life – when changing jobs, experiencing a break up, dealing with difficult co-workers. Friendships are extremely valuable during periods of personal challenge.

I warn you against too much vulnerability too soon. Sharing too much, too soon, and too often can be overwhelming to your audience. Vulnerability as an ingredient needs to be timed and measured carefully. Share vulnerable content only after you have meet with a person 4-5 times and watch their reaction. If they demonstrate empathy, your sharing has helped to deepen the relationship. If they don’t show caring, then it might be that you have overshared or that they are not able/willing to have vulnerability as part of your friendship.

Additionally, you may want to spend the early days of your new friendships to look for red flags about the person, and within the friendship. Individuals who want to take advantage of you, or seem to want to, or do not respect boundaries around your time, relationships, and safety, are not good for you. Go back and find someone new to enjoy a friendship journey with.

Understanding, and appreciating, differences

We are all have different values and priorities. Understanding the world of your friend as well as their communication preferences will help you to build better relationships. Intimacy can be built when people feel understood.  Don’t just focus on being interesting, be interested.

In order to better understand your friends’ build and understanding of their world you can engage in activities that expand your understanding of their world. The Gottmans use love maps to help build back understanding, appreciation and trust into relationships. We have expanded some of their questions to create a friendship love map starter list of questions.

See our picture of  a few questions you might like to know the answers to. Having conversations with your friends about what matters to them indicates that you are interested in their lives. Give it a try.

A set of questionnaires that we use  in couples therapy that are also applicable to building good friendships include understanding your friend’s love language and their apology language (see https://5lovelanguages.com). When we respect our friends’ love languages we better connect with them. Understanding that your friend values acts of service means that you will build a stronger relationship helping them with a house move, rather than buying them a box of chocolates to celebrate the mo

Building better friendships requires expanding our ability to mend fractures in the relationship that can possibly lead to breaks.Friends have disagreements. Apologising to your friend in their preferred apology language, also helps mend the relationship when disconnections. We have a tendency to communicate in our own preferred language rather than the preferred language of our recipient. If your friends’ preferred apology style is different from yours, your apology may feel insincere or incomplete. To learn more about your, and your friends’ apology preferences visit  https://5lovelanguages.com.

Most people have more than one preferred apology language so you might consider combining the language around your friends preferences – for example if your friend prefers restitution and repenting you might apologise by saying to them, “I promise I won’t do that again, and ask can you tell me how I can make things right with you.”

Patience

In studying how long does it take for college students to make and secure friendships Hall (2018) [6] suggests the following. The chance of classifying a person as a casual friend rather than simply acquaintance occurs for most students after they have spent over 43 hours together. Casual friends transition to “friends:’ after at least 57 hours together within a 3-week period. Best friends, or good friends take longer. Over a 3-month period an investment of over 200 hours is required.

What can we learn from Hall’s analysis. Basically, it supports the prediction that value of time spent together is a predictor of friendship and friendship closeness. Taking this investment approach to friendships can help us decide if we have really put in enough effort to secure a friendship. Are your expectations realistic? When we desire new deep relationships it can be uncomfortable to understand that friendships take time.

Reflect what is working, and what isn’t before you audit.

New friendships, and building deeper friendships, take time, consistency, vulnerability, understanding, and positivity. Even then you may feel that the relationship is not working for you.  It is quite possible that you become impatient with potential friendship candidates converting to becoming friends.

Ambiguous loss is the term used to describe the grief you have for someone who is still alive, including a relationship which seems to be fading or not delivering as it uses to. It is healthy to audit your relationships to consider if reinvestment could save them, or a mismatch in timing or values is now so considerate that perhaps you would be best to invest your time in another friendship instead – ie audit.

Before you cast a new, or even and old friendship, aside – reflect on the following considerations.

Reflections:

• People have a bias to overestimate what they give to a relationship, and underestimate the efforts of others. Could you be operating under such a bias way of evaluating your friendship?
• Do you know what you want from this friendship, and have you made this clear(er) to your potential friend?
• Am I over-giving and not receiving enough back from this friendship? If so, is this you offering too much or them not offering enough? Could this be changed?
• What traits do I admire about this person? Do I want to still have access to those traits or offerings. Consider exploring what type of friend they are according to the Rath “Types of friends” graphic. Do you have other people in your life who provide this trait/skill?
• Is your friend going through a tough period in their life when they can not be a great friend to you? Can you consider to have a more “one-sided” relationship for a specific period, but make it clear that, this is not a permanent status.
• Am I willing to break out of my comfort zone and usual way of operating in order to make this friendship better? If you are not, are you willing to accept the consequences of “doing what you have always done?”

If you acknowledge that your friendships are not as you would like them to be, in terms of numbers of friends and also depth of friendships the recommendations we have included here could help you make new connections, rebuild old connections, and reinvigorate your friendship base. You don’t need to be alone if you don’t want to be –invest in your connected future.  

References.

[1] Federica Cocco Are we ready for the approaching loneliness epidemic? FT.com 25 November 2022. https://www.ft.com/content/c3aef690-b5a5-4f0d-9da5-2bf4c560c4f4

[2] Gerst-Emerson, K;, and Jayawardhana, J (2015) Loneliness as a public health issue: The impact of loneliness on health care utilization among older adults. American Journal of Public Health, May . 

[3] Nelson, S (2016) Frientimacy: How to deepen friendships for lifelong health and happiness. Seal press.

[4] Rath, (2006) T. Vistal Friends- the people who can’t afford to live without. Gallup Press.

[5] Gottman J and Silver, N (2013) What Makes Love Last?: How to Build Trust and Avoid Betrayal. Simon and Schuster

[6] Hall, JA. (2018) How many hours does it take to make a friend? Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. Volume 36(4) page 12788-1296.