How to Have Closer Friendships (and Why You Need Them)
Curated from: nytimes.com
Ideas, facts & insights covering these topics:
5 ideas
·36K reads
130
Explore the World's Best Ideas
Join today and uncover 100+ curated journeys from 50+ topics. Unlock access to our mobile app with extensive features.
The need for close friendships
We are social beings and we need to create intimacy with other people, for the well-being of our body, mind, and heart.
Close friendships regulate our emotional distress because in difficult times, being close to someone you feel attachment in a safe way is the most effective way to calm yourself.
1.53K
7.54K reads
Defining closeness
Close friendships need intimacy and reciprocation to exist.
- Intimacy means being able to be fully yourself and be seen and understood by others.
- Reciprocation means that both people feel they are seen and understood by the other person.
1.5K
6.35K reads
“We think about relationships as things that happen to us, but the truth is that we make them happen.”
DR. SUE JOHNSON
1.47K
8.92K reads
Make your friendships closer
- Create a foundation of security.
- Look your friends in the face and give them your full attention.
- Help people understand and accept you. Be honest and stop pretending to be somebody cooler than you are.
- Ask for help even when you don’t need it so you’ll feel more comfortable reaching out when you'll know ho they respond to this kind of request.
- Accept that closeness varies from person to person. We all need it in different doses.
1.84K
6.26K reads
Elements of secure relationships
- Consistency (Do these friends drift in and out of my life on a whim?)
- Availability (How available are they to spend time together?)
- Reliability (Can I count on them if I need something?)
- Responsiveness (Do they reply to my emails and texts? Do I hear from them on a consistent basis?)
- Predictability (Can I count on them to act in a certain way?)
2.25K
6.95K reads
IDEAS CURATED BY
Felix 's ideas are part of this journey:
Learn more about loveandrelationships with this collection
How to find common interests
How to be a good listener
How to overcome social anxiety
Related collections
Similar ideas
4 ideas
6 ideas
Read & Learn
20x Faster
without
deepstash
with
deepstash
with
deepstash
Personalized microlearning
—
100+ Learning Journeys
—
Access to 200,000+ ideas
—
Access to the mobile app
—
Unlimited idea saving
—
—
Unlimited history
—
—
Unlimited listening to ideas
—
—
Downloading & offline access
—
—
Supercharge your mind with one idea per day
Enter your email and spend 1 minute every day to learn something new.
I agree to receive email updates