In 2018, a study highlighted the secret of long, happy lives. None of the researchers from Harvard University who contributed to this ambitious research project, which followed 774 men and their children for 80 years, had anticipated the following conclusion: it’s the quality of interpersonal relationships that makes people happy in adulthood.
Voilà! Now you know the secret to revolutionizing your lives. Good luck! If only it were so simple…
Friendships are crucial to our survival and our identity. There is ample evidence highlighting the impacts of healthy, deep relationships on personal health (physical, mental, and spiritual) as well as on democratic and societal health. Having nourishing, meaningful friendships may reduce the risk of cancer, heart disease, and inflammatory diseases, improve cognitive functioning and mental health, and increase the propensity for happiness.
But friendships are like dandelions: they have the same resilience as those yellow flowers that grow in the asphalt, and unfortunately, they also share the same status as being unloved, despite being essential to the ecosystem of our lives.
LONELINESS IS AN UNNATURAL DISASTER
Creating and maintaining quality friendships as an adult is universally difficult. We live our lives at a breakneck pace, and unfortunately, even guided by the best intentions, our priorities as adults often leave little time and space for maintaining fulfilling friendships. The people around us too often remain possible stories, like an endless pile of books to be read on our bedside table. Many people say that they are dissatisfied with the way that their friendships play out in their lives. We don’t even wonder why this is the case anymore.
“That’s just how it is when we get older: we have less time for our friends. It’s an unoriginal tragedy, an overwhelming inevitability that we suffer without defending ourselves,” I wrote in the introduction to an essay on this subject, Ports d’attache : osons révolutionner nos amitiés!
When we realize that we are soon reaching the end of the path of life, we start prioritizing, with a sense of urgency, experiences that make the walk brighter and more fulfilling. This phenomenon has been studied and even has a name: the socioemotional selectivity theory. At the top of the list of things that make us happy are moments shared with friends. So, we arrive at what is meaningful, out of breath after a race against the clock that has lasted for decades, after a life of putting off our friendships while we have never felt so collectively alone.
Effectively, we are going through what many experts are describing as a pandemic of loneliness. One in five people has no one to talk to and, since 1990, the number of Americans without a single friend has quadrupled.
Are fulfilling friendships, as we experience in childhood and adolescence, a one-hit wonder?
THE MOST WONDERFUL SEA SON OF OUR LIVES
Science focusing on friendship does not explore the subject in adults, taking for granted that the search for a romantic partner fully takes its place during this transition.
Popular culture also sticks to this model. For example, in the documentary bringing together the actors from the popular sitcom Friends 20 years later,1 one of the producers asserts that the show was so successful because it addresses this particular period in our lives where friendship takes up all the space. As if this moment were only fleeting, a parenthesis while waiting for “the real deal.” Indeed, the sitcom ends after 10 seasons and shows two of the protagonists moving away with their newborns, far from their friends, announcing that daily life would no longer be like it was before.2
Even one of the most popular rituals within friend groups actually marks the end of the season of friendship: bachelor and bachelorette parties.
It is therefore fair to say that the place of friendship is in the reserve team of our lives. It comes into play when other relationships run out of steam. This hierarchization of relationships is called mononormativity, which is the act of considering exclusive romantic relationships as being superior to others, thereby positioning them as the ultimate goal to be achieved.
Psychologist Bella DePaulo deconstructs this well-established sociocultural norm in Singled out: How singles are stereotyped, stigmatized, and ignored, and still live happily ever after,3 demonstrating that friendships are important spaces for intimacy, fulfillment, and support. Indeed, if we look at what defines a romantic relationship—emotional commitment, the intensity of expectations, and the sharing of plans—we realize that this could just as well describe a friendship.
Why, despite the very strong demand on the market, does friendship remain undervalued? What do we lose by making the couple the most central relationship in our lives? If we broadened our conceptions of intimacy and caring by presenting friendship as a valid and attractive option for living a life of love and fullness, the social benefits would be considerable. Friends could buy homes together, have children together, grow old together. They could share their daily lives and plans while not constantly looking elsewhere to see if love is greater and more meaningful.
The dandelion survives all challenges. We consider it a weed because it quickly invades our gardens, green spaces, and fields. What if we let it do its natural work? What if we pollinated friendship to let happiness spread across horizons? Friendship could become the season of our most beautiful blossoms.
The author of this article wrote the book entitled Ports d’attache : osons révolutionner nos amitiés! published in February 2024 and available in all bookstores. All information presented in this article is taken from this work.
Sources
1. Norman, R. and Winston, B. (directors). (2021). Friends: The Reunion [special program]. HBO Max.
2. Hamelin, M., Doyle Péan, L., Peyrouse, A., Mackay, M., Corbeil, R., Nepveu-Vil- leneuve, M., Jacob, C., Alarie, V., Souissi, T., Gravelle, J., Michaud, M., Landry, M., Nyrva Aladin, F., Provencher, M., and Younsi, O. (2023). 15 brefs essais sur l’amour. Éditions Somme Toute.
3. DePaulo, B. (2006). Singled out: How singles are stereotyped, stigmatized, and ignored, and still live happily ever after. St. Martin’s Press.
