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379 - Relationship Science for your Friendships (and Vice Versa)

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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!

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