379 - Relationship Science for your Friendships (and Vice Versa)
Why should we care about relationship science?
Relationship science can teach us a lot about why we have trouble forming and maintaining friendships, and we can use that information to strengthen and deepen our romantic relationships as well. A lot of us struggle making and keeping friends as an adult, and for those of us who are non-monogamous, there sometimes comes some extra difficulty when making friends, like:
People assuming you want to date them.
Struggles with different levels of “outness.”
Having a relationship structure in common is not always enough “glue” to hold a friendship together.
Additionally, the pandemic has made maintaining friendships difficult as a lot of us have lost contact with friends and acquaintances.
Although the idea of having romantic/sexual relationships on the same level as platonic friendships is more in line with Relationship Anarchy, we at Multiamory feel like it’s a good practice for everyone not to de-prioritize friends for the sake of a romantic relationship, even if you don’t identify as RA. The information in this episode is not only meant to support your friendships, but also your partnerships, AND that weird in-between relationship with that person where you’re not quite sure what label to put on it.
How to care for our friendships
We’re using the Sound Relationship House model from the Gottman Institute to discuss caring and nurturing our friendships. Although the Gottman Institute has been conducting research about relationships for upwards of 40 years, they mostly focus on cisgender, heterosexual, monogamous relationships, so their findings aren’t always applicable to different communities. However, in this case, their Sound Relationship House model lays out what they have found to be fundamental for a good, healthy, thriving relationship, and can definitely be applied to our friendships. In this model, the first three levels correspond to the quality of the friendship.
Love maps
This is the first level of the Sound Relationship House model. In layman’s terms, it means the amount of room in your brain that is dedicated to knowing your partner’s inner world (i.e. stresses, closest friends, what they hope for, what’s on their mind about their workday tomorrow, their personal histories, their unique strengths and challenges, etc.). In practice, it looks like regular catch-ups and check-ins (daily, weekly, monthly, whatever works for you), and asking open-ended questions and displaying curiosity about the answers.
Fondness and admiration
The second level is talking about building a culture of admiration and appreciation. It means learning to be more receptive to noticing the good things that your partner does and the positive aspects of them that you feel fondness toward, rather than constantly scanning for their mistakes. This is something that we often find naturally easier to do for our friends than for our partners; it is often easier to give them the benefit of the doubt, easier to forgive, and easier to see their good intentions.
In practice this looks like:
Giving specific compliments and encouragement.
Expressing appreciation and acknowledgement.
Turn towards instead of away/bids for connection
Plainly, this level is talking about the small interactions where we reach out to a partner to ask for a moment of connection. They happen dozens of times a day, and can be big or small. A partner can extend a bid for connection, and we can respond to it by accepting it, or rejecting it in either a kind way or an unkind way, or by ignoring it, or by being completely unaware that our partner was making a bid in the first place. Often, the quality of relationship is directly affected by how skillful each person is at recognizing and responding to bids for connection.
In practice, this may look like:
When a friend sends a song, a YouTube video, a meme, an article, etc., actually taking the time to read, listen, or view, and respond.
Responding to requests to meet up or catch up, and even if the scheduling doesn’t work out, making the effort to follow up and follow through.
Communicating clearly with someone about what you’re needing or wanting.
This doesn’t necessarily mean you are obligated to say yes to every single invite or conversation. Research for couples suggests healthiest relationships are where people respond to each other’s bids about 80% of the time.
If you’re intimidated by the idea of trying to make brand new friends, you’re not alone. It can be easier to step up your investment with existing friendships rather than trying to start from scratch, so start with that! Also, don’t rely on chance. Find the easiest ways to be proactive that work for you, your schedule, and your energy levels. That could look like going to a monthly book club, or it could be organizing the weekly processing group.
How do you take care of your friendships? Let us know!
Transcript
This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory podcast, we're talking about relationship science for your friendships, or is it friendship science for your relationships? We talk a lot on this show about the importance of prioritizing your friendships in addition to your romantic relationships. Today, we're covering some of the research and some techniques for fostering healthier friendships. These ideas can be used to improve your romantic relationships by building a more solid foundation of communication and admiration for each other. It works both ways.
Dedeker: Y'all got friends?
Jase: Oh, sure.
Emily: Yes. I got some great friends.
Dedeker: I guess.
Emily: Sometimes I'm shocked at how great my friends are, and I meet you two as well.
Jase: Aww.
Dedeker: Yes, I think going through the pandemic, and then going through that breakup at the beginning of the year really, really highlighted the value of just really good close friendships and close relationships in general. I don't know how I would have gotten through all that stuff without them. Here's why I want to talk about this today. I think that a lot of us really struggle to make and keep friends as an adult.
I do feel that once you're out of school, whether that's high school, or once you're out of university, and if you're not going to let's say a workplace where you're around people all the time, or where it's people that you want to be friends with at all, there's just not a lot of opportunities presented to us to make friends in the way that we've been used to making friends up to that point. When you're seven years old, and you just walk up to someone in the playground, you're like, "Let's be friends, and they're like, "Great, cool," and then your friends for the next 10 years.
We don't do that so much anymore. I really wanted to talk about just different ways to think about our friendships and caring for our friendships because, unfortunately, I think that the way that we're, for lack of a better term, trained when we're children is that friendship is a little bit of this very accidental and passive process, right?
Jase: Yes.
Dedeker: Your friends just happened to you. You didn't necessarily go seek them out the way that we bring this intentionality to finding a romantic partner.
Jase: Yes, there's this idea of, I'm looking for a romantic partner, I'm going to ask them out, or I'm going to hope that they ask me out. There's a structure, a formality to it.
Emily: Can you go on a blind friend date? I think that's a really interesting idea.
Dedeker: I guess people do that with parties, right?
Emily: Yes.
Dedeker: Where it's like "Oh, I'm going to invite this friend from over here, and this friend from over here."
Emily: That's true.
Dedeker: "I think they'll really get along well with each other," but we don't call it a blind date with a friend necessarily.
Emily: Not really.
Jase: Yes. I have come across some of that where it's just, I actually just did this a couple of months ago for some friends of Dedeker and mine, and another friend of mine, where I was having a conversation with one of them. I was like, "You know what? You share this interest with this other friend. I should put you in touch." Then they went out and had a dinner together and had a great time.
Emily: How lovely.
Jase: It does happen sometimes. It's almost like maybe less of a blind date and more of the village matchmaker, but for friendships.
Emily: Yes, I like that.
Jase: That'd be nice if we had more of those for friendships. That'd be cool actually.
Emily: Totally, yes.
Dedeker: Yes, actually, that'd be pretty cool. A friend maker.
Emily: Yes, a friend maker.
Dedeker: Maker, friend maker, make me a friend.
Jase: Yes, perfect.
Dedeker: Find me a pal. Get me a bud.
Jase: No, that's good. Friend maker, friend maker, find me a pal. I like it.
Emily: Love it, that's good.
Dedeker: Okay, we'll start workshopping that version of the musical. Anyway, I do think that a lot of us can relate to the struggle of making and keeping friends, especially as you become an adult, as you take on more perhaps work obligations, family obligations, caregiving obligations, things like that. I do also think that sometimes if you are queer or if you're non-monogamous, there can be some particular struggles in making friends. I know I certainly struggle with sometimes making friends. I sometimes get intimidated, especially considering, I'm like, "I have this whole podcast, and I've written a book, and my entire career right now is based off of talking about non-monogamy."
Sometimes when I'm out in the world, connecting with people that maybe I'd want to be friends with, I don't know because sometimes it feels like there's a good chance if they learned that about me, they could be just so disgusted, and so scared, and so turned off that they wouldn't even want to be friends. At least that's what I run into.
Jase: Yes, either could be that, it also could be if someone finds out you're non-monogamous, or that you're bisexual, or pansexual. There's this assumption of, "Oh, I got to keep my distance because maybe they want to date me, and that's not what I'm interested in." There could also be that struggle of maybe you're not out about it, and this is a friend who also works at the same place as you, and you have you, on your side, have to have this guard up a little bit of, "I can't fully let them in, I can't fully talk to them about this, or at least not yet, not until I have some more trust there."
Then also, for a lot of us, especially when we're newer to polyamory, and we're finding polyamory groups and things like that, that maybe that's also serving the function of our only social group. If the only thing I really have in common with these people is that we all do non-monogamy, it doesn't give us a lot to go off of necessarily, especially if the community is not one where we get to talk about other interests so I can't even find out if, oh, you also like Call of Duty games or Magic: The Gathering, or you also like historical reenacting, or whatever it is, that that could be hard because just being non-monogamous is not enough, or might not be enough of a shared interest to actually foster a real ongoing friendship.
Dedeker: Maybe this is a bit of serendipity. I just got a text. I think it's a wrong number, but this text says, "Hi, Michael, my friends and I are going fishing in my yacht next weekend. Are you with us?" I'm going to say yes.
Emily: Wow, that sounds like a blast. Not the fishing part for me, but going on a yacht sounds like a plan.
Jase: Sure.
Dedeker: Be like, "Yes, I am Michael. Where are we meeting? I'll bring a six-pack.
Emily: That's amazing.
Dedeker: New friends, easy.
Jase: Amazing.
Dedeker: Wow. Hopefully, they're not on the other side of the country. I guess I could look at the area code.
Emily: Yes, that's true.
Jase: Right.
Emily: Also, I think something that a lot of us struggled with recently is just the pandemic, and how, if you're not in close proximity with the person, or if maybe you are, and you just simply haven't been able to see them because of the pandemic, because of lockdowns, because of personal risk factors, things along those lines, I think a lot of people out there are losing contact with friends and acquaintances just simply because shit has been tough. It's been challenging to get together and not everybody wants to do that. I'm going up to visit you all this weekend and seeing some family members that I haven't seen in five years in Seattle.
Dedeker: Oh my goodness.
Emily: That's because of, I was in China, and then the pandemic happened, and all of this stuff. It's challenging sometimes to just be able to see people and really connect with them in the same way that perhaps you once did. Some people do think that there is an opportunity here to trim back on your social obligations, or reprioritize, or refocus on things that matter more to you, or maybe friendships that you want to foster a closer connection with. Maybe that's not a bad thing, although, for others, it can really instill a sense of loneliness and isolation because of what the pandemic has forced us to do in a lot of ways.
Dedeker: This is also important to talk about because I do think there is a really important area of overlap between what we bring to our friendships and what we bring to our romantic relationships. I'm always really interested in that interplay. For instance, if you're in a romantic or sexual relationship with someone where it doesn't feel like the friendship between the two of you is very strong, and maybe you're okay with that, maybe that's something that you don't necessarily need in a romantic or sexual connection, that's totally fine, or you may not be okay with that.
That could be the source of some of the strife in the relationship or some dissatisfaction in the relationship, is if you feel like this person is not even really being a good friend to me. We covered this a little bit in Episode 374 when we were talking about relationship escalations. That if you're choosing to get romantically or sexually involved with someone where there's already an established friendship, and I think it's interesting to think about these things of how do we still foster, I guess those good qualities of our connection that are already there even as we choose to escalate. I think that it's also important to think about supporting our friendships, in particular, for non-monogamous folks, if you're someone who is navigating a friendship with a metamour, if that's something that both of you want, that's, for a lot of people, a very new social structure and a new relationship. Sometimes people feel a little bit confused about, "I want to be friends, I don't know how. I'm not sure." Again, this is another area to think about skills and ways to support these particular friendships.
Then lastly, I'm always interested in, especially for those folks who are relationship anarchists, or who ascribe to relationship anarchist ideals, how do we actually put those ideas into practice instead of just espousing our ideals, and often criticizing other people for not living up to these ideals? How do we actually operationalize that so that we are caring for all of our relationships, not just prioritizing caring for the romantic and sexual ones? That was all the things I was thinking about as I was creating this particular episode.
Jase: On the subject of relationship anarchy, let's talk just briefly about what we mean when we talk about this distinction between friends and partners. We generally tend to take more of a relationship anarchy stance on this, which basically means that our friendships and romantic partnerships, rather than treating those as two inherently different things, we're looking more at, what are the individual traits or parts of that relationship that we have? About, are we physical with each other? How much time do we spend together? Do we share finances?
How much do we plan our future together? How intimate are we in the way we talk to each other? Lots of different things like that. Looking at it less of, if you're a friend, then you have all of these and you don't have these. If you're a partner, you have these other ones, and you don't have these other ones. We tend to encourage people to not have so tight of a grip on this idea of, oh, if you have this label, you have to be this way. If you have this label, you have to be another way. Then, even if you don't identify with relationship anarchy, it's still really important, and a lot of people in conventional relationship advice will say this, too.
That it's important to not just abandon all of your friendships, or deprioritize all those relationships just for the sake of your new, hot, sexy, romantic relationship. That your friendships are also really important and should be sustained, and cared for, and prioritized. Essentially, with this episode, in terms of that distinction, it's less about, oh, this applies to this kind of relationship and this applies to the other. The whole point of this is looking at how we can bring things from those different types of relationships, and look at which ones can help us build any kind of relationship.
If you want more information and more discussion about relationship anarchy and different ways of looking at different types of relationships, we have Episode 336, on queerplatonic relationships. Episode 150, way back, where we cover the relationship anarchy manifesto. Then more recently, Episode 339, where we covered the relationship anarchy smorgasbord, which is a way of looking at which pieces might be involved in each of your relationships, regardless of what kind of label you might put on them.
Emily: Now we're going to get into a bit of a research section of this episode about the care and keeping of your friendships. First, we're going to talk about obstacles because there are a lot out there. I think as you said, as you age, it can be challenging to get into situations where you even have the opportunity to make new friends unless you're very intentional about it, but there are certain obstacles that may even get in the way of doing that. Now, this is from a 2020 research paper, which was published in Personality and Individual Differences.
This research paper is called What Prevents People From Making Friends: A Taxonomy of Reasons.
Dedeker: Yes, I really like that title, almost like it's a question and answer, where someone asks you, "What prevents people from making friends?" and you're just like, "Oh."
Emily: So many things.
Dedeker: A taxonomy of reasons.
Emily: Indeed.
Jase: I was thinking more of let me count the ways.
Emily: Yes, I love it. This is grouped into six broad categories, which include introversion, fear of rejection, pragmatic reasons like a health problem, for example, low trust, lack of time, and being too picky. All of those things may make building and creating new friendships difficult in general. That's really interesting. That makes a lot of sense. That low trust, I find that to be an interesting one.
Dedeker: Yes.
Emily: Perhaps it's just hard to trust people, especially upon meeting them.
Dedeker: Oh, yes. Some of the examples they gave were people who identify as, "I'm a cautious person," or, "I'm a suspicious person," or, "I have a lack of trust due to bad past experiences," or, "I feel that other people approach me with an ulterior motive other than friendship." I think that's huge and really common for a lot of people.
Emily: This is a quote from University of Maryland psychologist, Marisa Franco. They say, "Sociologists have identified the ingredients that need to be in place for us to make friends organically, and there are continuous unplanned interaction and shared vulnerability. As we become adults, we have less and less environments where those ingredients are at play." Kind of what we talked about before, I think that's very, very true. It's something that I've thought about when you watch movies or look at kids on a playground, or whatever, their whole lives are involved with their friends.
Those are some of our earliest, and most dear, and intense relationships that we have. Especially if we're not forging romantic relationships at that point, that's everything that we've got. I feel like, as a young person, it makes those relationships feel really intense and extremely important. It feels also as though our gauge for importance of things changes over the course of our lives especially if we start prioritizing romantic relationships more.
Dedeker: Yes. I feel like the part that gets me is this continuous, unplanned interaction.
Jase: Exactly. That's the part I keep thinking about here.
Dedeker: I've got all those obstacles already. I got the introversion, I got the fear of rejection, I got the low trust, I got the lack of time. I've got the being too picky.
Emily: Oh, my.
Dedeker: I can check off every single one of those boxes, but the continuous unplanned interaction where I think, especially when you become an adult, and as you take on more obligations, you start to live by a schedule, right?
Emily: Yes.
Dedeker: Unfortunately, for so many of us, our only option for connecting with our friends is, "Let's pick a date six weeks from now where we'll get coffee and probably catch up." I would suppose that that's better than nothing, right?
Emily: It doesn't feel organic.
Dedeker: Yes, but it's not quite the same like when you have a work environment where you're working with people that you like, and you see them all the time. It's continuous interaction, but it's also unplanned. We're not having to constantly arrange when we actually see each other. That's the big hang-up, where I'm just like, "These other obstacles, I can do myself work, but this one seems a little bit harder to surmount."
Jase: My understanding of this, and I'm curious if you two have the same understanding, is that it's less about the time that we're interacting is unplanned, and more that the interaction itself is not planned. It's not like we're here to have a meeting about such and such, but more, maybe we did schedule this six weeks ahead of time, but now that we're here together, it's unplanned. We're just hanging out doing whatever. I think that's maybe the more important ingredient. Don't despair too much. At least that's my read of this.
Emily: Yes. I think when you're in your 20s or in college too, you may just go and hang out with a friend for a while, and play video games, or just chill with them. Again, as obligations become larger and larger, if you have a family, or if you have ailing parents or something, it can just be really difficult to do that and have that kind of unstructured, unplanned time with another human.
Jase: Yes. I think that when we're planning those get-togethers, that's maybe something to keep in mind.
Emily: Yes.
Jase: I know that I've had some friends who, if we're planning to hang out, it's like we need to have a clearer idea of what are we doing. Like, what are we doing together? I don't want to just sit around and not know what to say because I'm sure some of that anxiety, or fear, or whatever can come up. I've done that myself too, where it's like, "Okay, let's plan an activity. I don't want to just have this unplanned time," right?
Emily: Yes.
Jase: Let's be doing a thing, especially if it's a group of people and not just one other person. Maybe there's some room to see if you could say, "Okay, maybe we're doing an activity, but it's not something that's going to take all of our attention." We have some unstructuredness going along with it. Maybe that might help influence what board games we propose, or what activities we're going to do together with people so that we also have some of that unstructured, unplanned interaction. Another piece of research we want to talk about is Dunbar's number.
We've talked about this on the show in the past, and if you've ever heard that thing of, supposedly the maximum number of stable relationships that people are able to cognitively maintain is 150, if you've ever heard that before, that's Dunbar's number. Now, as this research has gone on though, it's been refined to not just say there's this one number of people we can know, but it's more broken down into, you could think of it like concentric circles, where, in our innermost circle is our self, and maybe a particular very, very close relationship like a partner, or maybe a child, or something that's a little more of an intimate relationship.
Dedeker: They put that number in that most innermost circle at 1.5.
Emily: One in ourself and half of a human?
Jase: It's yourself and-- Yes, right.
Emily: Got it.
Dedeker: I will say I appreciate the 1.5 because at least it's not trying to imply oh, only one person, just your romantic partner can get that close to you.
Jase: I see, yes.
Dedeker: I'm like, "Okay, I'm going to hang on to that .5 as my non-monogamy visibility?
Emily: There you go.
Jase: Right, sure. Sure, that's good. If you imagine that, and then outside of that is your close friends, which they put around five, and those are the people who are those shoulder to cry on type friendships. The one that'll drop anything for you, and you'll drop anything for them, the world is falling apart, those are your really, really close friends. What's important is that each of these circles includes the circle inside of it. Those really intimate 1.5 relationships is included in this 5 of your really close connections. Then outside of that, including those 5, is then your 15, which are your core social group.
Your main social companions, they provide most of your fun time hanging out. They're maybe the people you would trust to take care of your child if you needed them to or something like that. Then outside of that, it's 50, which is, you're friends enough that you'd invite them over for a weekend barbecue, or maybe your Oscar party, or whatever it is. Then 150, which is that Dunbar number we've heard of before, is like these are the people that you might expect to see or invite to weddings, or funerals, or those kinds of bigger events.
Maybe they're friends, and you'd hang out if you have the opportunity, but you're not as actively spending constant time with them. Then they've got groups that go even outside of this too, like your 500 acquaintances, and then 1,500 people whose names you probably know. Then around 5,000 faces we might recognize, so it goes and goes and goes, but I guess the point here is that it's not that 150 is just that's it for any kind of relationship, but more, we have different amounts of capacity for different intimacies of relationships, and that ideally, we'd have these.
Dedeker: You may be wondering, thinking about Dunbar's number, "Do I need 150 friends?"
Jase: Oh, boy.
Dedeker: "Do I need 50 Friends?"
Emily: I can't even imagine.
Dedeker: "Do I need 1.5 friends? How many friends do I actually need in life?" It is funny, I didn't include this particular study. but just in passing, I was reading I think it was an article in The Atlantic that interviewed some sociologists, who were saying that basically, to answer this question, we get the most bang for our buck, as in like the most benefits, when we go from zero friends to one friend. That's the biggest influence on long-term health outcomes, mental health, resiliency, all those sorts of things is really just going from zero people that are that close to me to one person that is that close to me, which makes sense.
I suppose that at least one of the benefits of living in this very strongly mono-normative culture is that it's at least encouraging a lot of people to do that. That supports a lot of the research findings around, for instance, I don't know, a lot of the research that's around, married people live longer and things like that is that it could potentially be pointing to this of, we need at least one friend, right?
Jase: Right, and that that's the only way a lot of us have permission to have a close friend is to marry them, just to be clear.
Dedeker: Yes, is to be ma--
Emily: I feel like that's kind of a patriarchal ideal that the only friend that a guy is going to have is his wife essentially, and not to really foster close friendships with anyone else.
Dedeker: Oh.
Jase: Oh yes, that's a big problem.
Dedeker: Yes, we should do a whole episode just on that issue, where a lot of straight men are socialized into that idea of, essentially, you can have your 500 acquaintances, and then your 1 close friend, and that's usually your female partner.
Emily: Yes.
Dedeker: We're not going to talk about that right now. We're talking about how many friends do I actually need. Some research suggests at least one for the best impact.
However, it's probably going to go beyond just one, that in order to live the most fulfilled life, we're going to need more close friendships. Again, pulling from this interview with a sociologist, Marisa Franco, they talk about how, again, a lot of this is subjective. There's not a lot of studies that have specifically tackled the question of how many friends people should be aiming for, but somewhere between three and six close friends seems to be the sweet spot.
Emily: Do you think y'all have three or six close friends?
Jase: I have two right now.
Dedeker: It's going to depend on how we're defining close friends, but I do think yes.
Emily: Yes, I do too. For sure. I think more than that, whoa. I don't know, maybe le--
Jase: Yes. I haven't always though, at different points in my life.
Emily: Really?
Jase: I do feel like I have that right now, and I think some kind of fluctuate, coming in and out of that very close circle, or more just, oh, we'll probably hang out sometimes. Yes, it has changed, but I have found that it's, there is something nice about having close friends in that range, where you feel like it's not so many that I can't manage it, but it's also enough that I feel like I have that support, and also a little bit of variety in my close friends.
Dedeker: Again, we have to give the caveats that often this is an area where it's difficult to study because this is so subjective. What I count as a close friendship may be different from what you count as a close friendship, and the benefits of that may also land on us both very differently. Often, in this research, people give broad ranges or scales because it's really hard still to really zero in on what's the difference between 3 close friends versus 4 close friends versus 10 close friends at this particular point in time.
Jase: Right.
Dedeker: We're going to take a quick break. In the second half of the episode, we're going to be talking about actual things that you can be doing to foster your friendships and to care for your existing friendships, as well as some things to think about if you're interested in making new friendships. First, we're going to talk about the ways that you can support this show. The best way you can support the show, first and foremost, is just by listening to our sponsors. It does really help us to be able to continue making the show, or you can learn more about our Patreon communities as well.
Jase: We've got some great research now under our belts, but how do we do it? How do we use it? How do we operationalize this, to use fancy words? How do we actually care for our friendships as we're starting to try to figure out how to build them?
Dedeker: Yes. It's interesting if you just google this about how to make friends, or how to keep friends, there's a lot of different approaches, a lot of different schools of thought. I think all of them probably pretty valid. I think that the stuff that we've covered already of maybe examining the obstacles that exist within yourself and exist within your life that are preventing you from making friends, or connecting more deeply with your friends, that's a great place to start, but I want to talk about what I've been thinking about and using for a while now, which is actually based on the Sound Relationship House model.
That is from The Gottman Institute, who we do like to reference a lot on this show. What I've been thinking about and using that I found really helpful and thinking about caring for my friendships has been based on the Sound Relationship House model that was created by The Gottman Institute. Now, I think about this a lot because I'm talking to my clients about this a lot. I did The Gottman Institute couples therapy training, and so, when I'm working with new couples, I'm talking about this stuff all the time. Basically, from their research, they found that the quality of the friendship in a relationship dictates how well their romantic relationship is going to go.
Imagine that. They created this model/theory, they go back and forth between whether they call it a model or a theory, called the Sound Relationship House. They usually put it in a cute little diagram. It looks like a little house, and you imagine all these different floors of the house. It's akin to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, where we have this foundation at the bottom, and then we work up toward the top. Basically, we're looking at the first three levels of that model. There are seven levels total, but we're just looking at the first three levels close to the foundation because that's what they found corresponds just to what goes into good healthy friendships.
Those three levels are love maps, fondness and admiration, and turning towards instead of a way. Also known as bids for connection. We're going to dive into all three of those more in-depth in just a moment. I just found that those would become such a useful framework for me for thinking about not just my romantic relationships, but also my friendships. It's really helped highlight to me how fostering friendships isn't just this passive process. When I'm not sure what to do to support a friend, or if there's someone in my friend group where, oh, I want to have a deeper friendship with them, and I don't know where to start, I found that this is a great framework to start thinking about these things.
Again, this is not the only framework that you can use, this is not the only tool that you can use, but for me, this has been really, really helpful. Remember that with all of this, all of these tactics can be scaled to whatever level is appropriate to the relationship that's in front of you today. Also, a lot of these will support your romantic relationships as well. With that, let's dive into these first three levels of a Sound Relationship House.
Emily: The first is love maps, which just makes me think of Love Shack.
Dedeker: Love maps.
Jase: Oh, and that's like building a love shack.
Emily: Oh, there you go. Love it.
Jase: your foundation, right?
Emily: Oh my gosh, perfect. I'm sure The Gottman has thought of that. I don't know. I think love maps, essentially, are also cognitive room. In layman's terms, it essentially is literally the amount of room in your brain that is dedicated to knowing your partner's inner world. What is an inner world man? It essentially is talking about their stresses, what's going on with their closest friends. What they may be hoping for, what's on their mind about their work day tomorrow? Also, their personal histories if we want to get a little bit more granular.
Their unique strengths and challenges, so many different things, there's a lot going on. They're allowed to unpack. Not only knowing these things but also updating the map by asking the other person open-ended questions. Not only asking the questions but caring and remembering the answer. Ooh, that's very specific.
Jase: That's an important piece.
Dedeker: Yes.
Emily: Yes. This reminds me of something. Last week I was having a really tough time, and I was thinking, I was puttering around the house being pissed that my partner wasn't asking me how I was doing. I was like, "Wait a minute. He doesn't necessarily know my inner thoughts right at this particular time," so I feel as though I need to update and lay out exactly what's going on in my inner world. I think that that tended to color our interactions, after the fact, in a different way because he was aware of my inner world, and my love map, I guess, or what was going on specifically within me.
Just putting that out there, that sometimes if you want your partner to know what's going on, you have to be the one to step first, and ask, and talk because they're not necessarily going to know what's going on in your head.
Dedeker: Right. I also just wanted to point out that, again, I think we're thinking about this a little bit in the romantic context, where I've definitely been there before, where, "Oh, I'm having a bad day, and this person isn't curious about me or remembering what was going on with my day," and things like that. We want that in our friendships as well. It's also good to be curious in this same way. I think that if you do sit and think about your close friendships, chances are good that you actually probably have a fairly robust map in your brain of this information about them, or maybe you might find that this needs to be updated.
Emily: Definitely.
Jase: Emily, I think you bring up a great point with your story too, that I want to be willing to share with my partner or my friend, and let them know what's going on with me, but also, on the other side, being aware of, I should check back in. I can't always just assume that their state is constant and that I always know it, right?
Emily: Definitely.
Jase: That updating piece, which is why actually, to be honest, I don't love that they use the term love maps for it because yes, maps change over time, but generally not as much as I think a love map is supposed to change.
Emily: Interesting.
Jase: They mention knowing what they're thinking about for their workday tomorrow, for example, or what projects they've got going on. That's not something that changes at the pace of a map changing. That's like--
Emily: We're getting real literal here. Jase.
Jase: Yes.
Dedeker: Yes. Do you think it's like a love feed that's constantly updating?
Jase: Yes, but then feed implies to me nonsense that goes by, and you forget it as soon as you read it, right? I don't know.
Emily: That's true.
Jase: Somewhere in between those. We'll have to work on this.
Dedeker: Like the love, like watching the ocean, like the love
Emily: The ebb and tide, the flow.
Jase: Love ocean.
Emily: Yes.
Dedeker: The love weather report.
Jase: Okay, we're getting somewhere now.
Dedeker: Love forecast.
Jase: The love forecast.
Emily: Love forecast. Ooh, I like that. It's a forecast for your love.
Emily: I think both of us touched on some stuff, like, what does this look like in practice in terms of keeping up with one another's love maps, whether it's your partner, or a close friend, or something along those lines? We talk so much on this show about regular checkups and check-ins, and we're going to say it again because that's super important in terms of this.
That can mean maybe something that's less structured than our radar, but it could also mean radar, especially you can have radars with your friends, with your significant other, with your roommates, anything along those lines.
Just having a time and a place to ask, "What's going on with you? How is your inner world? Are there any big changes that I need to be made aware of?" Stuff like that, just so that you can update each other and really have a better understanding of what's going on with that other person.
Jase: Yes. I've found that just recently, actually, within the last couple weeks, I had a couple different friend dates. Hanging out with a friend. One was remote, one was in person, and in both of them, we're playing video games together. There's that obligatory, "Eh, so what's new in your life?" kind of question. In both of them, then a little bit later on, we circled back to it again. That sort of, "You mentioned this thing, what's that been like? Has that been hard, or, oh, are you excited about that project?" Whatever is appropriate for what we were talking about.
It's like there was some time made, not just that perfunctory, "What's going on?" No, I do actually want to be invested a little bit. I want to learn a little bit about and actually dedicate some brain space to what I remember you told me before and what you're telling me now. Then remembering to ask about it in the future in those friendships, I think is really important. I do notice that difference when we're having more of those types of conversations or when we're not.
Emily: Yes, I think, definitely, when we talk about discussing what's going on with each other, it's important to have open-ended questions. Not just yes or no questions, and then displaying curiosity as well. A lot of people out there, I think may feel hurt if you're not asking really, "What's going on in your day? What's going on in your work, your hobbies, your history, things like that?" Now, I will say if somebody is going through a particular challenging time, it may be more difficult for them to ask those questions. That's something to be aware of.
However, if you're having a good back and forth with a friend, make sure that if you would want your friend to know those things about you, that you're also asking them what's really going on in your inner world.
Dedeker: Yes. I've heard a lot of stories usually about meta relationships, like metamour friendships or relationships, where someone felt hurt because their meta didn't display any curiosity whatsoever about them. Like, didn't ask about their work, or ask about their hobbies, or ask any follow-up questions. Sometimes there's reasons for that, but sometimes people just don't even realize that that's a thing that actually really affects people or lands on people. I do think that if you're someone who wants to foster a meta relationship and your meta also wants that, that this is an important thing to think about, of making sure that you are bringing that curiosity, asking those open-ended questions.
Jase: We're going to move on to our next level of our house. We poured our foundation of love maps, and now we're putting in the peers or building the basement, I don't know quite how this metaphor works, but the next level up is fondness and admiration.
Emily: Nice.
Jase: What this means is basically building a culture of appreciating each other and admiring each other. This is developing the mental habit of scanning, not for your partner's mistakes, or your friends' mistakes, but instead learning to be more receptive to noticing the good things that they do or the positive aspects of them that you feel fondness toward.
Interestingly, this is one that I think for a lot of us, we tend to have an easier time doing with our friends than we do for our partners, at least partners that we've had for a while. When we're in the NRE phase, it's impossible to see any faults a lot of the time, but once you've been in a relationship for a while, especially if you live together, it can be really easy to focus on just the mistakes. The habits they have that annoy you, those sorts of things, or maybe the way that you think they're reflecting badly on you in with your friends or whatever. It's, there's a lot, culturally, encouraging us to look for those negatives. With friends, there tends to be less of that. Again, it really depends on the friendship and the relationship, but in either case, this is important to be aware of because it's a habit.
It's almost like a muscle or a skill. If you just get used to only looking for negatives or things to complain about to someone else, for example, you're not building a very strong foundation for that house of friendship, or relationship, whatever it is.
Dedeker: The love shack, the friend shack.
Jase: The love shack, yes.
Emily: The love shack.
Dedeker: The love-friend shack.
Jase: Love-friend shack, yes. It's about building that habit of how you do that. How do you do it though? How do we do this? I guess the other part of this is it's not just observing and looking for those things, but also developing a culture of this in your relationship, whether that's a friendship or whatever, is expressing it, is telling them these things. That's the part where I think some of us can feel uncomfortable doing that with friends. I don't know how you two feel about this, but it's like it's easier for me to just randomly tell a romantic partner, "Oh, I think you're so cute," or, "Wow, you're so cool, and I like talking to you about things."
It's, that just feels weirder with friends, I guess. I think this probably depends on how you're socialized, but we might have to find different ways to express it.
Dedeker: They do think gender socialization comes into play with some of this because I think that"girlfriends, gal friends, gal pals"--
Emily: Oh my God, you are a queen.
Dedeker: Yes. "Oh my God, yes. You look so hot. Oh my God." It's a little bit more socially acceptable to say those kind of things maybe more so than if you don't have that particular socialization.
Jase: It's funny, one of my coworkers who I've only met once in person, but we're on video calls fairly often, and probably not coincidentally, one of the ones that I feel most like, "Yes, I'd like to just hang out with this guy," does occasionally, randomly, if a client doesn't show up to a call, and we've got some extra free time, will ask, "Okay, what's going on in your life?" or, "Hey, I just want to let you know you've been doing a great job lately. I really appreciated your help on this," or just those little random bits of appreciation, and also, I guess, love map checking in.
Dedeker: Aww.
Emily: That's weird.
Jase: Even if it's just for a minute, and it's not like I wouldn't say we have this really close friendship or anything, but he's one of the people I'm most likely to think, "Yes, he could be a friend."
Dedeker: Aww, I like that.
Jase: That's cool. I guess just to point out that there's other ways you can do it. It doesn't have to be so gushy necessarily. It can just be, "Hey, you've been doing a great job," or "Wow, you know what? I really had a lot of fun playing this game, and I wasn't sure that I would. I really appreciated playing that with you. Thanks for showing me how to do it," or just something, or if you are playing a game, maybe, I guess depending on how competitive the game is, but even if it is competitive, saying something like, "Wow, dang, that was really good.
You're really good at that," or, "It was great. You've gotten a lot better at this," or something like that. It's just congratulations on successes they have too, even if maybe you feel a little bit of jealousy about their promotion or something like that, or that they got a new job, that sort of, "Heck, yes, of course, you're awesome. It makes sense that that would work out," or maybe it's they're talking to you about a relationship they have, it's like, "I think you're great. I'm sure your partner will too," or just those little things that you can toss away as just casual and fun, but do have an impact on developing this culture of fondness and appreciation.
Just to give a couple practical examples that you could even try out for yourself. It could even just be something after you hang out with a friend, or a metamour, or whoever, of just some kind of a follow-up afterward, like, "Thanks so much for taking time to meet up last minute. I know you're juggling a lot right now but having coffee together just put me in a better mood," or like I said, "Hey, you know what? I had a lot of fun hanging out. Thanks so much, we should do it again."
Even just those little things are meaningful, or, especially if you're talking to a metamour and you want to have a more positive relationship there, it could be something like, "Hey, I really appreciate you taking care of Dedeker while she's been sick," whatever it is, whoever our shared partner is--
Dedeker: You can thank everybody for taking care of me while I'm sick regardless of whether I'm dating them or not.
Jase: Yes, that too.
Emily: Yes, aww.
Jase: Right, but just expressing that little bit of appreciation and developing this culture of, I'm focusing not on the parts where I feel jealous of you or want to be competitive with you or something, but just this should be something honest and real, but, "Hey, you know what? I really appreciate you taking time to help them out while they've been sick. That helps a lot." Just something like that can do actually quite a bit to foster more of this culture because it goes both ways. When you do that, it also makes it so that other person feels more safe to be able to appreciate you as well.
Dedeker: We've had the love map/love forecast, and we've talked about fondness and admiration. Now the third level of this is turning towards instead of away. This is also known as bids for connection. Now, we talked about bids in Episode 168, our communication hacks booster pack episode. If you want more of a deep dive into bids, you can go there. Basically, what this refers to is, we have these little interactions that happen often dozens of times a day, and especially if you happen to live with someone, whether that's a partner, a roommate, a friend, we have these little interactions.
Usually, there's some sort of request for a moment of attention, or connection, or support from the other person. When I'm explaining this to the couples that I'm working with, I'll give them the example of sometimes the bid can be as big as obvious as your partner coming home from work and saying, "I had a crap day at work today. I would love for us to sit down, and knock back a glass of wine, and I can vent and talk it out." That's a really big obvious bid for, "I need your attention, and your connection, and your support," or it could be as small as your partner comes in and sits on the couch, and just heaves a big sigh, and that's it.
It's not big and it's not obvious, it's a lot more subtle, or it can be as low stakes and as silly as just like, "Oh wow, I saw this wild YouTube video today. Check it out." It's like these little, little bits of connection, and attention, and things like that. Of course, we can respond to those in very different ways. We can accept it, as in, turn toward it, or we can totally miss it and ignore it.
Not even realize that this person wanted something from us, or not even realize that there's stakes to responding or not responding to this, or we can reject it. We can turn against that bid by, usually the way this looks in romantic relationships, sometimes we can attack or push away our partner for even making the bid in the first place.
Basically, what The Gottman Institute Research found is that the quality of a relationship is directly affected by how skillful each person is at recognizing and responding to bids for connection. This is super, super important. I know, for me, once I found out about bids, it completely changed the way that I looked at interactions not only with my partners but also with my friends as well because I think that it's so easy to get wrapped up in your own shit.
Jase: Absolutely, yes.
Dedeker: Basically, like your own mood, or your own to-do list, or what you're focusing on in that particular moment, and you don't even realize that times when your partner or your friend is reaching out to you and you're ignoring it, that that actually does have an impact. It's not an impact that maybe happens in one interaction or two interactions, often this is built over time that when people learn, "Oh, you have a tendency to reject my bids," or, "Oh, you have a tendency to accept my bids," it also changes how much they want to turn towards or away from you as well.
Jase: Mm-hmm.
Dedeker: The way that this looks in real life is, for instance, when a friend sends to you a YouTube video, a meme, an article, a song, it means actually maybe taking the time to read, or to listen, or to view it, or to respond to it even if you can't right in that moment, it could still be like, "Oh wow, this looks really cool. I'm going to listen to this later, or I'm going to watch this later."
Emily: You two are really good at this, by the way. Well done.
Dedeker: Oh, have we gotten better? I feel like, internally at Multiamory, we have started to use this language with each other, where one of us will be like, "I want to show you this YouTube video," and then no one responds, and you'll be like, "Take my bid. Oh, gosh, you're not taking my bid."
Jase: Yes, "Watch it now."
Dedeker: No, I meant all of us, not just you, Emily. I feel like you've adopted that.
Emily: I think generally, yes, we do a good job at taking each other's bids for sure.
Dedeker: Yes. It's not just about responding to the stuff that your friends send you, but it could also be responding to requests to meet up or to have a catch-up. An important part of this is even if the scheduling isn't going to work out, it may mean making the effort to still follow up and follow through. Like, recognizing this was a bid for connection when this person reached out to me to ask to get a beer or to get coffee. It's important for me to still respond to that even if it's like, "Oh, gosh, we're not going to be free for the next six weeks," but still following through on that to make sure that that bid is actually met.
It also means communicating clearly with someone about what you're needing or wanting. I think that's like the example that you gave, Emily, of, "Oh, my partner is not picking up on this particular bid, but maybe I just need to communicate it in a more clear way." Again, we don't want to stray into the territory of assuming that our friends or partners can just read minds. Again, this doesn't necessarily mean that you're obligated to say yes to every single invite or every single conversation. It doesn't mean you have to say yes to every single silly YouTube video that somebody sends you.
The research found that the healthiest relationships were ones where people responded to each other's bids about 80% of the time, and again that was focusing on romantic relationships. I would be willing to bet that for friendships and close friendships, percentage is probably pretty high as well.
Jase: Yes, and something I would point out with this too is that being aware of it can really help a lot because, one, I find it helps me if I do feel a little bit slighted by someone's lack of response, that even just having a label for it of, "They missed my bid, they didn't realize." Maybe I'll try to make it more clear in the future, or maybe even we just talk about it at some point. Then, on the other side, I find this comes up for me a lot, if someone offers to do something for me or give me something, it could be as little as, "Oh, hey, do you want to a mint?" when they're getting one out for themself.
A super tiny example, or, "Oh, hey, I could grab one of these for you too if you want," that sometimes that's not just them going out of their way to do something for you because they think you need it, but it could be a bid for a connection. I would argue actually most of the time it is. It's not like, 'Oh no, no, no, don't put yourself out." Sometimes saying, "Oh wow, thank you so much," is the more effective way to add to that connection because it's about the bid and not so much about the actual thing. I've just found that that's helped me to be more aware of those little things, and realize that they actually have some significance.
That someone doing something nice for you is sometimes building that relationship, and not you somehow cashing in points and taking away from that relationship to accept them.
Emily: We have some final thoughts, especially if you are interested in finding friends out there, or questioning, "How do I even go about doing that?" or, "Should I be looking for more friends? Should I be looking for more intimate relationships?" Marisa Franco, a psychologist and author of the forthcoming book, Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make-and Keep-Friends, recommends starting with a fairly obvious, but powerful question, which is, "Do I feel lonely?" Are you even interested in finding other friends? Are you feeling like, "Hey, I would like to spend some more quality time with people and I'm not really getting that right now."?
Also, are there parts of your identity that feel restricted? Which is a really interesting question, especially in the context of non-monogamy, because we talk so much about how being around different people and being close with different people can bring out and really foster more unique sides and facets of ourselves that we may not have with only one person. I think that's a really good point. If you're only ever around your romantic partner, or one romantic partner, or one friend, or whatever, you may only get one side of yourself that gets to express in a certain way.
If you have the opportunity to go beyond that and meet other people and have different types of interactions, then you can really get all of those different facets of you moving, and jiving, and stuff like that.
Dedeker: Yes, I think those are two great questions to start with to just evaluate, is this something I need to be worried about at all right now, or thinking about it all? If you're intimidated by the idea of making brand new friends, you're totally not alone. A lot of people feel that way. Also, a lot of people are in situations where it's hard to go out and make brand new friends. I think going through all of our various individual pandemic situations definitely made that a lot harder for a lot of people.
It can be easier to just choose to step up your investment with existing friendships, rather than trying to start from scratch, or maybe just thinking about what existing friendships you have and thinking about, "How can I incorporate these things into these friendships? How can I start thinking about love maps, or thinking about expressing appreciation and acknowledgment, or thinking about responding to this person's bids for connections more frequently?" That can also really pay some dividends.
If that feels true for you, that the idea of trying to connect to new people right now is a little too scary, but I like the idea of connecting deeper with the people that are already in my life, definitely lean into that.
Jase: Then if you ask yourself these questions, and you realize that you do want to make more friends, don't just leave it up to chance. Randomly making a friend or randomly meeting a partner is great, but it's less effective than being proactive about it. The trick is to find a way to be proactive that works for you, for your schedule, for your energy levels. This could look something like going to a monthly book club, or organizing a weekly processing group for relationships, or setting up some kind of a regular game night, or attending someone else's game night, or going to meetups that are on a certain subject that you're interested in.
Like photography or art, or whatever it is. Just doing something so that you are exposing yourself to more opportunities for meeting friends.
Dedeker: I cannot, for the life of me, find this particular article. I tried and tried and tried as I was writing this episode. I read it a few months ago. It was on a place you would not expect like Business Insider or something like that. It was an article about making new friends, and I really resonated with the formula. The formula stuck in my mind. My apologies that I can't find the source. If somebody hears this and they totally know where it's from, definitely hit me up and let me know. Their formula for making new friends was four stages. One was to connect to a community.
That can be anything, particular hobby, a class, a meetup group, a processing group, things like that. In addition to connecting to the community, participating in that community consistently. That means showing up on a somewhat consistent basis, not just once tier and once there. Then the third step was offering value when you do participate. By offering value, they meant that's everything from, "I'll bring the snacks," to just speaking up, actually participating, getting in the conversation, contributing to the discussion, sharing your thoughts.
They also pointed out that, ironically, and I think this ties into what you were observing, Jase, that even asking for help from someone, or asking for a favor from someone can offer the value of making others feel like they're valuable to you, right?
Jase: Yes.
Dedeker: That they can help you, or that they can step up for you in some ways. That could be another way of even offering value when you participate. The last step was then connect with the individuals that you resonate with. You find the people in the community that you're getting along with, or that seem like they could be good friends, or maybe you have enough of a shared interest. Then you can find ways to connect with those individuals outside of that community space perhaps. A good formula for this is you talk to someone, and you're like, "Okay, I love that conversation we had last Friday about backyard composting.
How about let's go grab a beer, and then I would really love to swap some tips about urban farming, or whatever it is that you're into." Again, a little bit of that, Hey, yes, let's actually meet. Here's a topic of discussion for us, and then we can use that as an opportunity to also continue to get to know each other better." Sometimes this makes people feel weird because they're like, "This is like asking someone out on a date." On one hand, it kind of is in the sense that you're being intentional in bringing people into your life. We normally only associate that intentionality with dating and not with making friends.
Of course, you have to be careful sometimes coming on this way, people interpret it as like, "Oh, you're trying to ask me out on a date," or stuff like that, so read the situation, read the room. Do things to communicate clearly to make sure that your intentions are not misperceived. I found that this is a great formula. Again, just a place to start if you're thinking about wanting to get new friends. I know what I'm going to do is I'm definitely going to have this new yacht fisherman friend pretty soon here.
Jase: Right.
Emily: Now, let us know that goes so that we can also enter the yacht.
Jase: Yes.
Dedeker: Unfortunately, I looked at the area code, and it's a North Alabama area code, which is not close to where I am.
Emily: Oh okay, then, never mind.
Dedeker: That might be a little bit tough, but the friendship that could have been.
Emily: Yes, we'll never know. It's all right.
Jase: Yes, you know what? It's a great example too, of having some kind of event going on and inviting someone to it, which can take some of that pressure off of a just, "Hey, do you and I want to go get a drink and talk about this."
Emily: Right.
Jase: It's, "Oh, hey, you know what? I'm going to this food festival in my neighborhood, If you want to come check it out, I'm inviting some friends, and I'll see who shows up. There's things you can do to take the pressure off of it if you're concerned about that. All right.