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CHAPTER 7

Friendship

THE NATURE OF FRIENDSHIP  FRIENDSHIP ACROSS THE LIFE CYCLE  DIFFERENCES IN FRIENDSHIP  FRIENDSHIP DIFFICULTIES FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION  CHAPTER SUMMARY

I get by with a little help from my friends. John Lennon

Take a moment and think about your two best friends. Why are they such close companions? Why do you think of them as friends? You probably like but don't love them. (Or, at least, you're not “in love” with them, or you'd probably think of them as more than just “friends.”) You've probably shared a lot of good times with them, and you feel comfortable around them; you know that they like you, too, and you feel that you can count on them to help you when you need it.

Indeed, the positive sentiments you feel toward your friends may actually be rather varied and complex. They annoy you sometimes, but you're fond of them, and because they're best friends, they know things about you that no one else may know. You like to do things with them, and you expect your relationship to continue indefinitely. In fact, if you look back at the features that define intimacy (way back on page 2), you may find that your connections to your best friends are quite intimate, indeed. You may have substantial knowledge of them, and you probably feel high levels of trust and commitment toward them; you may not experience as much caring, interdependence, responsiveness, and mutuality as you do with a romantic partner, but all three are present, nonetheless.

So, are friendships the same as but just less intimate than our romantic partnerships? Yes and no. Friendships are based on the same building blocks of intimacy as romances are, but the mix of components is usually different. Romances also have some ingredients that friendships typically lack, so their recipes do differ. But many of the elements of friendships and romances are quite similar, and this chapter will set the stage for our consideration of love (in chapter 8) by detailing what it means to like an intimate partner. Among other topics, I'll describe various features of friendship and question whether men and women can be “just friends.”

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THE NATURE OF FRIENDSHIP

Our friendships are indispensable sources of pleasure and support. One study of unmarried young adults found that over one-third of them (36 percent) considered a friendship to be their “closest, deepest, most involved, and most intimate” current relationship (Berscheid et al., 1989). A larger proportion (47 percent) identified a romantic relationship as their most important partnerships, but friendships were obviously significant connections to others. And they remain so, even after people marry. Another study that used an event-sampling procedure1 to track people's interactions found that they were generally having more fun when they were with friends than when they were alone or with family members, including their spouses. The best times occurred when both their spouses and their friends were present, but if it was one or the other, people derived more enjoyment and excitement from the presence of a friend than from the presence of a spouse (Larson & Bradney, 1988). Why? What's so great about friendship?

Attributes of Friendships

A variety of attributes come to mind when people think about a good friendship (Fuhrman et al., 2009; Hall, 2012). First, close friends feel affectionfor one another. They like, trust, and respect each other, and they value loyalty and authenticity, with both of them feeling free to be themselves without pretense. Second, a good friendship involves communion. The partners give and receive meaningful self-disclosures, emotional support, and practical assistance, and they observe a norm of equality, with both partners' preferences being valued. Finally, friends offer companionship. They share interests and activities, and consider each other to be sources of recreation and fun. At its best, friendship is clearly a close, rewarding relationship, which led Beverly Fehr (1996, p. 7) to define friendship as “a voluntary, personal relationship, typically providing intimacy and assistance, in which the two parties like one another and seek each other's company.”

Differences between Friendship and Love

How, then, is friendship different from romantic attraction? As we'll see in chapter 8, love involves more complex feelings than liking does. Both liking and loving involve positive and warm evaluations of one's partner, but romantic love includes fascination with one's partner, sexual desire, and a greater desire for exclusivity than friendship does (Balzarini et al., 2014). Love relationships also involve more stringent standards of conduct; we're supposed to be more loyal to, and even more willing to help, our lovers than our friends (Fuhrman et al., 2009). The social norms that regulate friendship are less confining than Page 215those that govern romantic relationships, and friendships are easier to dissolve (Fehr, 1996). In addition, friendships are less likely to involve overt expressions of positive emotion, and friends, as a general rule, spend less of their free time together than romantic partners do.

These differences are not just due to the fact that so many of our friendships involve partners of the same sex. Friendships with members of the other sex are also less passionate and less committed than romances usually are (Fuhrman et al., 2009). So, friendships ordinarily entail fewer obligations and are less emotionally intense and less exclusive than romantic relationships. And unlike romantic relationships, friendships typically do not involve sexual intimacy (although some do; we'll consider “friends with benefits” later).

So, they are less passionate than romances, but rich friendships still contain all the other components that characterize rewarding intimacy with both friends and lovers. Let's consider several of those next.

Respect

When people respect others, they admire them and hold them in high esteem. The specific traits that seem to make a relationship partner worthy of respect include commendable moral qualities, consideration for others, acceptance of others, honesty, and willingness to listen to others (Frei & Shaver, 2002). We generally like those whom we respect, and the more we respect a friend or lover, the more satisfying our relationship with that person tends to be (Hendrick et al., 2010).

Trust

We trust our partners when we are confident that they will behave benevolently toward us, selflessly taking our best interests into account (Rempel et al., 2001). Such confidence takes time to cultivate, but it is likely to develop when someone is alert to our wishes and reliably behaves unselfishly toward us (Simpson, 2007). Trust is invaluable in any close relationship because it makes interdependency more palatable; it allows people to be comfortable and relaxed in their friendships, and those who do not fully trust their partners tend to be guarded and cautious and less content (Rempel et al.). And the loss of trust has corrosive effects on any close relationship (Miller & Rempel, 2004); those who have been betrayed by a partner often find trust, and their satisfaction with their relationship, hard to recover (see chapter 10).

Capitalization

Good friends also tend to enhance, rather than diminish, our delight when we share good news or events with them. We don't always receive enthusiastic congratulations from others when we encounter good fortune; on occasion, we get bland best wishes, and sometimes others are simply uninterested. But good friends are usually pleased by our successes, and their excitement can increase our enjoyment of the event (Gable & Reis, 2010). So, in a pattern of interaction known as capitalization, we usually share good news with friends and receive enthusiastic, rewarding responses that increase our pleasure 
Page 216(Lambert et al., 2013b) and enhance our relationships: We feel closer to those who excitedly enhance our happiness than to those who respond to our good fortune with apathy or indifference (Reis et al., 2010), and relationships in which capitalization routinely occurs are more satisfying and longer lasting than those in which it is infrequent (Logan & Cobb, 2013).

Enthusiastic celebration of our good fortune is one way in which our intimate partners uplift us and provide us aid, or social support (Gable et al., 2012). We also rely on friends to help us through our difficulties, and there are four ways in which they can provide us help and encouragement (Barry et al., 2009). We rely on our partners for emotional support in the form of affection, acceptance, and reassurance; physical comfort in the form of hugs and cuddling; advice support in the form of information and guidance; and material support, or tangible assistance in the form of money or goods. A partner who tries to reassure you when you're nervous about an upcoming exam is providing emotional support whereas a friend who loans you her car is providing material support. Don't take these distinctions too seriously, however, because these types of aid can and do overlap; because her generous concern would be touching, a friend who offers a loan of her car as soon as she learns that yours is in the shop could be said to be providing emotional as well as material support.

Social support can be of enormous value, and higher amounts of all four types of support are associated with higher relationship satisfaction and greater personal well-being as time goes by (Barry et al., 2009). Indeed, warm, attentive support from one's partners matters more than money when it comes to being happy; your income is likely to have less effect on your happiness than your level of social support does (North et al., 2008). But there are several complexities involved in the manner in which social support operates in close relationships. Consider these points:

• Emotional support has real physiological effects. People who have affectionate partners have chronically lower blood pressures, cholesterol levels, and stress hormone levels than do those who receive lesser amounts of encouragement and caring from others (Seeman et al., 2002), and they recover faster from stress, too (Meuwly et al., 2012). In lab procedures, they even experience less pain when they submerge their arms in ice-cold water (Brown et al., 2003). And when people are under stress, just thinking about a supportive friend tends to reduce their heart rates and blood pressures (Smith et al., 2004).

• Effective social support also leads people to feel closer to those who provide it. Sensitive, responsive support from others increases our happiness, self-esteem, and optimism about the future (Feeney, 2004), and all of these have beneficial effects on our relationships. In marriages, happy spouses provide each other more support than distressed couples do (Verhofstadt et al., 2013), and higher levels of support when the partners are newly married are associated with a lower likelihood of divorce 10 years later (Sullivan et al., 2010).

• But some people are better providers of social support than others are. For instance, attachment styles matter. Secure people, who readily accept interdependent intimacy with others, tend to provide effective support that reassures and bolsters the recipient, and they do so for altruistic, compassionate reasons (Davila & Kashy, 2009). In contrast, insecure people are more self-serving, tending to provide help out of obligation or for the promise of reward. Moreover, their support tends to be less effective, either because (in the case of avoidant people) they provide less help than secure people do or because (in the case of anxious people) their help is intrusive and controlling Page 218(Collins et al., 2006). People are generally more satisfied with the support they receive when their partners have secure, rather than insecure, attachment styles (Kane et al., 2007).

In addition, people tend to provide better support when they are attentive and empathic and thus are able to tell what their partners need (Verhofstadt et al., 2010). People too rarely ask straightforwardly for help when they need it (Bohns & Flynn, 2010), so those who are better able to read a particular partner's feelings tend to provide that partner more skillful support.

• Furthermore, the best support fits our needs and preferences. Not all social support is wholly beneficial to its recipients. Even when supportive friends are well-intentioned and altruistic, their support may be of the wrong type or be too plentiful (Brock & Lawrence, 2009); their efforts to help may threaten our self-esteem or be intrusive, and unwelcome indebtedness can occur if we accept such help (McClure et al., 2014). So, social support sometimes comes with emotional costs, and for that reason, the best help is often invisible support that is subtly provided without fanfare and actually goes unnoticed by the recipient (Girme et al., 2013). When cohabiting couples kept diaries of the support they gave and received during a stressful period in which one of them was preparing for a bar examination, the support that was most effective in reducing the test taker's anxiety was aid the partner provided that the test taker did not notice (Bolger et al., 2000). Sometimes, the best way to help a friend is to do so unobtrusively in a manner that does not add to his or her woes.

When support is visible, it is more effective when it fits the recipient's current needs and goals (Brock & Lawrence, 2010). Another study with frantic law students preparing for a bar exam found that material support—for instance, a partner cooking dinner—was helpful, but emotional support simply made the examinees more anxious (Shrout et al., 2006). On the other hand, elderly people with impaired vision may be annoyed by material support (especially when it makes them feel more helpless) but heartened by emotional support (Reinhardt et al., 2006). Evidently, there's no sort of support that's suitable for all situations; the type of help and assistance a friend will appreciate will depend on his or her current needs, your capabilities, and the present state of your friendship (Girme et al., 2014). We need to be alert to personal preferences and the particular circumstances if we are to provide effective support.

• Regardless of what support is offered, one of the most important patterns in studies of social support is that it's not what people do for us but what we think they do for us that matters in the long run. The support we perceive is often only a rough match for the support we actually get (Lakey, 2013), and people become distressed when they believe that their partners are unsupportive whether or not their partners really are (Bar-Kalifa & Rafaeli, 2013). In fact, perceived support has more to do with our satisfaction with a partner than with the amount of aid he or she actually provides: When we're content with our friends and lovers, we perceive them to be Page 219supportive, but when we're dissatisfied, we perceive them to be neglectful and unhelpful (Lemay & Neal, 2014). Our judgments aren't totally unrealistic; the more support our partners provide us, the more supportive we usually perceive them to be (Priem et al., 2009). Still, we're more likely to notice and appreciate their aid and assistance when we trust them and we're content with them, so that satisfaction may enhance perceived support at the same time that perceived support is increasing satisfaction (Collins et al., 2006). In general, then, our judgments of the aid we receive from others “are likely to possess both a kernel of truth and a shell of motivated elaboration” (Reis et al., 2004, p. 214).

• Finally, our personal characteristics also affect our perceptions of social support (Lakey, 2013). People who doubt others' care and concern for them tend to take a biased, and undeservedly critical, view of others' efforts to aid them. In particular, people who have insecure attachment styles judge the social support they receive to be less considerate and less helpful than do those who hold more favorable, more confident views of themselves and their relationships (Collins & Feeney, 2010). Remarkably, even when their friends are being genuinely supportive, insecure people are likely to consider their partners' assistance and encouragement to be insufficient (Collins et al., 2010).

Overall, then, we rely on our friends and lovers for invaluable support, but the amount and quality of sustenance we (feel we) receive is affected by both our and our partners' characteristics. The social support we perceive is also greatly influenced by the quality of our relationships; in general, partners who make us happy seem more supportive than do those with whom we share less satisfying friendships. People with roots in Western cultures are also more likely to ask for help when they need it from partners whom they trust and who are known to be responsive (Collins et al., 2010). (People from Eastern cultures are generally more reluctant to ask for help, but they're just as pleased as Westerners to receive unsolicited support that is freely and thoughtfully provided [Mojaverian & Kim, 2013].) On the whole, however, whether it is visible or invisible, the best support is assistance that indicates that our partners attentively understand and care about—and thus are responsive—to our needs (Maisel & Gable, 2009).

Responsiveness

Each of the characteristics of a good friendship we've just encountered—respect, trust, capitalization, and social support—leave us feeling valued, understood, or cared for, so they are all tied to a last component of rewarding intimacy that is probably the most important of them all (Reis, 2014): responsiveness, or attentive and supportive recognition of our needs and interests. Most of the time, our friends are interested in who we are and what we have to say. They pay attention to us, and thereby communicate that they value their partnerships with us. They are also usually warm and supportive, and they seem to understand and appreciate us. And these are all reasons why they're friends. The judgment that someone is attentive, respectful, caring, and supportive with respect to our needs and aspirations, which is known as perceived partner responsiveness, is powerfully rewarding,2 and we are drawn to those who lead us to feel valued, protected, and understood. (See Table 7.1.)

TABLE 7.1 The Perceived Responsiveness Scale

Here are items with which Harry Reis measures the extent to which friends and lovers judge their partners to be responsive. To use the scale, identify a particular person and rate your agreement with all 12 items while you are thinking of him or her. As will be apparent, the higher the sum of your combined ratings, the more responsive you perceive your partner to be.

Compared to most experiences I've had meeting somebody new, I get the feeling that this person:

Perceived partner responsiveness promotes intimacy (Maisel et al., 2008), encouraging self-disclosure, trust, and interdependency, and it is unquestionably good for relationships. Two people feel closer and more content with each other when they tune in and start looking out for each other's needs (Canevello & Crocker, 2010). Moreover, when we generously attend to others, we tend to perceive that they are supportive and caring, too, and that also enhances our relationships (Debrot et al., 2012). And remarkably, being responsive to our partners is good for us as well as for them; students in freshmen dorms who strove to understand and support their roommates adjusted better to college life as time went by (and got along better with their roommates!) than did those who were less responsive (Canevello et al., 2013). There's enormous value in the understanding, respect, and regard that's offered by a responsive partner, and it's clear that friends can supply us with potent interpersonal rewards.

Responsiveness in Action

One of the most successful relationship self-help books of all time is 80 years old and still going strong. Dale Carnegie published How to Win Friends and Influence People in 1936, long before relationship scientists began studying the interactive effects of responsiveness. Carnegie firmly believed that the road to financial and interpersonal success lay in behaving toward others in a manner that made them feel important and appreciated. He suggested six straightforward ways to get others to like us, and the enduring popularity of his homespun advice helps demonstrate why responsiveness from a friend is so uplifting. Here are Carnegie's rules (1936, p. 110):

1. Become genuinely interested in other people.

2. Smile.

3. Remember that a man's name is to him the sweetest and most important sound in any language.

4. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.

5. Talk in terms of the other man's interest.

6. Make the other person feel important—and do it sincerely.

All of these actions help communicate the attention and support that constitute responsiveness, and modern research supports Carnegie's advice. To favorably impress the people you meet at a speed-dating event, for instance, offer them genuine smiles (Miles, 2009), and then focus on them, being warm, interested, and enthusiastic (Eastwick et al., 2010). It also helps to be Latin American. Latinos generally endorse a cultural norm of simpático that values friendly courtesy and congeniality, and sure enough, when they are left alone with a stranger in Texas, Mexican Americans talk more, look more, smile more, and enjoy the interaction more than American whites or blacks do. The people who meet them enjoy the interactions more, too (Holloway et al., 2009). Carnegie was on to something. People like to receive warm, attentive interest and support from others, and being responsive is a good way to make—and keep—friends.

Good friends can also be counted on to play by the rules. We don't often explicate our expectations about what it means to be a friend, but most of us nevertheless have rules for relationships that are shared cultural beliefs about what behaviors friends should (or should not) perform. These standards of conduct help relationships operate more smoothly. We learn the rules during childhood, and one of the things we learn is that when the rules are broken, disapproval and turmoil result. For instance, in a seminal study, British researchers generated a large set of possible friendship rules and asked adults in Britain, Italy, Hong Kong, and Japan which of the rules they would endorse (Argyle & Henderson, 1984). Several rules for conducting friendships appeared to be universal, and they're listed in Table 7.2. As you can see, they involve trust, capitalization, and support as well as other desirable aspects of intimacy.

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TABLE 7.2. The Rules of Friendship

Don't nag

Keep confidences

Show emotional support

Volunteer help in time of need

Trust and confide in your partner

Share news of success with your partner

Don't be jealous of each other's relationships

Stand up for your partner in his/her absence

Seek to repay debts and favors and compliments

Strive to make him/her happy when you're together

Source: Argyle & Henderson, 1984.

In general, then, we expect good friends to be (Hall, 2012):

• trustworthy and loyal, having our best interests at heart;

• confidants with whom we can share our secrets;

• enjoyable and fun companions;

• similar to us in attitudes and interests; and

• helpful, providing material support when we need it.

A Point to Ponder

How rich a friendship do you have with your romantic partner? How would your romance be different if you were even better friends?

(It's also nice when a friend is attractive and financially well-off, but those are lesser considerations.) Women, in particular, have high standards for their friends (Felmlee et al., 2012); they expect more loyalty, self-disclosure, enjoyment, and similarity than men do (Hall, 2012). But all of us expect more from our friends than from less intimate companions, and the more closely we adhere to these rules, the closer and more satisfying our relationships are (Kline & Stafford, 2004). Romances are richer, too, involving more love, commitment, and sexual gratification, when the lovers value their friendship (VanderDrift et al., 2013b). So, people profit when they follow the rules of friendship, and in most cases when friendships fail, somebody hasn't been following the rules (Argyle & Henderson, 1984).

We change as we grow and age, and our friendships do, too. For one thing, our attachment styles continue to be shaped by the experiences we encounter, and for most of us that's a good thing: We're likely to experience less anxiety about Page 223abandonment later in life than we do now (Chopik et al., 2013). And here's more good news: You're likely to be (even) more satisfied with your friendships in your elder years than you are now (Luong et al., 2011). Why is that? Let's survey friendships over the life span to find out.

Preschool children have rudimentary friendships in which they have favorite playmates. Thereafter, the enormous changes that children encounter as they grow and mature are mirrored in their friendships, which gradually grow richer and more complex (Howes, 2011). One important change involves children's cognitive development; as they age, children are increasingly able to appreciate others' perspectives and to understand their wishes and points of view. And accompanying this increasing cognitive sophistication are changes in the interpersonal needs that are preeminent as children age. According to Duane Buhrmester and Wyndol Furman (1986), these key needs are acceptance in the early elementary years, intimacy in preadolescence, and sexuality during the teen years. The new needs are added on top of the old ones at each stage, so that older children have more needs to satisfy than younger children do. And the successful resolution of each stage requires the development of specific competencies that affect the way a child handles later stages; if those skills aren't acquired, problems occur.

For instance, when children enter elementary school, the companionship of, and acceptance by, other children is important; those who are not sufficiently accepted by their peers feel excluded. Later, in preadolescence, children develop a need for intimacy that typically focuses on a friend who is similar to them in age and interests. This is when full-blown friendships characterized by extensive self-disclosure first emerge, and during this period, children develop the skills of perspective taking, empathy, and generosity that are the foundation for close adult relationships. Children who were not previously accepted by others may overcome their sense of isolation, but if they cannot, they experience true loneliness for the first time. Thereafter, sexuality erupts, and the typical adolescent develops an interest in the other sex. Most adolescents initially have difficulty satisfying their new emerging needs, but most manage to form sensitive, caring, and open sexual relationships later on.

Overall, then, theorists generally agree that our relationships change as we grow older. The rich, sophisticated ways in which adults conduct their friendships are years in the making. And to some degree, success in childhood relationships paves the way for better adult outcomes. For instance, infants who are securely attached to their caregivers tend to be well liked when they start school; as a result, they form richer, more secure childhood friendships that leave them secure and comfortable with intimacy when they fall in love as young adults (Oriña et al., 2011). On the other hand, children who are rejected by their peers tend to encounter a variety of difficulties—such as dropping out of school, criminal arrests, and psychological maladjustment—more often than those who are well-liked (Wong & Schonlau, 2013). Peer rejection doesn't Page 224necessarily cause such problems, but it might: Interventions that teach social skills enhance children's acceptance by their peers, and that reduces their risk of later maladjustment (Waas & Graczyk, 1998).

Adolescence

There are other ways in which friendships change during the teen years. First, teens spend less and less time with their families and more and more time with their peers. An event-sampling study in Chicago found that children in fifth grade spent 35 percent of their time with family members whereas high school seniors were with their families only 14 percent of the time (Larson et al., 1996).

A second change is that adolescents increasingly turn to their friends for the satisfaction of important attachment needs (Fraley & Davis, 1997). Attachment theorists identify four components of attachment (Hazan & Zeifman, 1994): (a) proximity seeking, which involves approaching, staying near, or making contact with an attachment figure; (b) separation protest, in which people resist being separated from a partner and are distressed by separation from him or her; (c) safe haven, turning to an attachment figure as a source of comfort and support in times of stress; and (d) secure base,using a partner as a foundation for exploration of novel environments and other daring exploits. All of these components of attachment can be found in the relationships young children have with their parents, but, as they grow older, they gradually shift their primary attachments from their parents to their peers in a component-by-component fashion.

For instance, around the ages of 11 to 14, young adolescents often shift the location of their safe haven from their parents to their peers; if something upsets them, they'll seek out their friends before they approach their parents. Indeed, about a third of older teens identify a peer (who is usually a romantic partner rather than a friend), not a parent, as their primary attachment figure (Rosenthal & Kobak, 2010). Peers gradually replace parents in people's lives.

Young Adulthood

During their late teens and twenties, people enter young adulthood, a period in which a central task—according to Erik Erikson (1950), a historically prominent theorist—is the development of “intimacy versus isolation.” It's at this age, Erikson believed, that we learn how to form enduring, committed intimate relationships.

You may be undertaking your quest for intimacy in a novel environment: a college some distance from home. Leaving home to go to school has probably influenced your friendships (Roberts & Dunbar, 2011), and you're not alone if you haven't seen much of your old high school friends lately. A year-long survey of a freshman class at the University of Denver found that the friendships the students had at home tended to erode and to be replaced by new relationships on campus as the year went by (Shaver et al., 1985). This didn't happen immediately, and the students' satisfaction with their social networks was lowest in the fall after they arrived at college. But by the end of that first year, most people were again content with their social networks. They had made new friends, but it had taken some time.

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What's a Best Friend?

People usually have a lot of friendly acquaintances, a number of casual friends, a few close friends, and just one or two best friends with whom they share especially rich relationships. What's so special about a best friend? What distinguishes a best friend from all of the other people who are important to us?

The simple answer is that it's all a matter of degree (Fehr, 1996). Best friendships are more intimate than common friendships are, and all of the components of intimacy are involved. Consider knowledge: Best friends are usually our closest confidants. They often know secrets about us that are known to no one else, including our spouses! Consider trust: We typically expect a very high level of support from our best friends, so that a best friend is “someone who is there for you, no matter what” (Yager, 1997, p. 18). Consider interdependence: When our best friends are nearby and available to us, we try to see more of them than our other friends; we interact with them more often and in a wider range of situations than we do with lesser buddies. And finally, consider commitment: We ordinarily expect that a best friend will be a friend forever. Because such a person “is the friend, before all others,” best friendships routinely withstand “the tests of time and conflict, major changes such as moving, or status changes, such as marrying or having a child” (Yager, 1997, p. 18).

In general, then, best friendships are not distinctly different relationships of some unique type (Fehr, 1996). Instead, they are simply more intimate than other friendships—involving richer, more rewarding, and more personal connections to others—and that's why they are so prized.

What happens after college? In one impressive study, 113 young adults kept diaries of their social interactions on two separate occasions, once when they were still in college and again 6 years after they had graduated (Reis et al., 1993). Overall, the participants saw less of their friends each week once they were out of school; in particular, the amount of time spent with same-sex friends and groups of three or more people declined. The total amount of time spent with friends or lovers of the other sex increased, but the number of those partners decreased, especially for men. Still, just as developmental theory suggests, the average intimacy levels of the participants' interactions increased during their twenties. After college, then, people tend to interact with fewer friends, but they have deeper, more interdependent relationships with the friends they have.

Midlife

What happens when people settle down with a romantic partner? It's very clear: When people gain romantic partners, they spend less time with their families and friends. A pattern of dyadic withdrawal occurs; as people see more and more of a lover, they see less and less of their friends (Fehr, 1999). One study found that people spent an average of 2 hours each day with good friends when they were casually dating someone, but they saw their friends for Page 226less than 30 minutes per day once they became engaged (Milardo et al., 1983). Romantic couples do tend to have more contact with friends they have in common, but this doesn't offset declines in the total number of friends they have and the amount of time they spend with them (Wrzus et al., 2013).

The erosion of people's friendships doesn't stop once they get married. Friendships with members of the other sex are especially affected; people tend to see much less of friends who could be construed by a spouse to be potential romantic rivals (Werking, 1997). Still, even though they see less of their friends, spouses often have larger social networks than they did when they were single because they see a lot more of their in-laws (Milardo et al., 1983). (Make no mistake about this, and beware if you don't like your lover's family: You will see a lot more of them if you marry!)

Thus, people's social lives don't wither away completely when they commit themselves to a spouse and kids, but the focus of their socializing does shift from their personal friends to family and friends they share with their spouses. In fact, it appears to be hard on a marriage when a husband and wife have no friends in common. As you can see in Figure 7.1, couples have more marital problems when none of their personal friendships involve their spouses (Amato et al., 2007). Having some friends of one's own does no harm, but having only exclusive friendships seems to be risky.

FIGURE 7.1. Friendship networks and marital adjustment.
Spouses encounter more frustrations and difficulties when they have no friends in common.

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Old Age

Ultimately, elderly people have smaller social networks and fewer friends than younger people do (Wrzus et al., 2013). They're not unsociable, they're just more selective: They have just as many close friends as they did when they were younger, but they spend less time with casual friends and other peripheral social partners (Fung et al., 2001).

A socioemotional selectivity theory argues that this change occurs because seniors have different interpersonal goals than younger people do (Löckenhoff & Carstensen, 2004). With a long life stretching out before them, young adults are presumed to pursue future-oriented goals aimed at acquiring information that will be useful later in life. (That's presumably what you're doing now if you're in college.) With such ends in mind, young people seek relatively large social networks that include diverse social partners (and, often, hundreds of Facebook “friends”!). However, when people age and their futures seem more and more finite, they become oriented more toward the present than toward the future, and they emphasize emotional fulfillment to a greater extent (Fung & Carstensen, 2004). The idea is that as their time perspective shrinks, seniors aim for quality not quantity; they focus on a select group of satisfying friendships that are relatively free of conflict (Fingerman & Charles, 2010), work harder to maintain and enrich them (Lang et al., 2013), and let more casual partnerships lapse. Indeed, the theory predicts that anyone who considers his or her future to be limited will also choose to spend more time with a small number of close friends instead of a wider variety of more casual buddies—and that's exactly what happens in younger adults whose time orientation is changed by contracting the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS (Carstensen et al., 1999). In general, socioemotional selectivity theory seems to be a reasonable explanation for age-related changes in sociability.

Finally, let's note that—reflecting the vital role of intimacy in our lives—elderly people who have good friends live longer, healthier lives than do those who are less connected to others (Sabin, 1993). Friendships are invaluable for as long as we live.

Friendships don't just differ across the life cycle; they also differ from person to person and from partner to partner. In this section of the chapter, we'll consider how the nature of friendships is intertwined with gender and other individual differences.

Consider these descriptions of two same-sex friendships:

Wilma and Betty are very close friends. They rely on each other for support and counsel, and if they experience any problems in their romantic relationships, they immediately call each other, asking for, and getting, all the advice and consolation they need. Wilma and Betty feel that they know everything about each other.

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Of course, there are fewer differences in guys' and girls' friendships than are shown here. Nevertheless, women's friendships do tend to be more intimate than men's. That's important, as we'll see on page 240.

Fred and Barney are very close friends. Often, they stay up half the night playing cards or tinkering with Fred's beloved 1966 Chevy, which is constantly breaking down. They go everywhere together—to the bars, to ball games, and to work out. Barney and Fred feel they are the best of friends.

Do these two descriptions sound familiar? They might. A good deal of research shows that women's friendships are usually characterized by emotional sharing and self-disclosure, whereas men's friendships revolve around shared activities, companionship, and fun (Fehr, 1996; Marshall, 2010). It's an oversimplification, but a pithy phrase coined years ago by Wright (1982) is still serviceable today: Women's friendships are “face-to-face,” whereas men's are “side-by-side.”3

This difference emerges from several specific patterns in same-sex friendships (Fehr, 1996):

• women spend more time talking to friends on the phone;

• men and women talk about different topics: Women are more likely to talk about relationships and personal issues, whereas men are more likely to talk about impersonal interests such as sports;

• women self-disclose more than men do;

• women provide their friends more emotional support than men do; and

• women express more feelings of affection in their friendships than men do.

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Can Pets Be Our Friends?

We've all heard that “a dog is a man's best friend.” Really? Can a pet be a friend?

People certainly behave as if that's the case: The presence of a beloved pet can help someone manage stressful situations even better than a human friend can. Pets generally improve the autonomic and cardiovascular health of their owners (Julius et al., 2013), and in a study that compared pets to people (Allen et al., 2002), participants were asked to work a mental math problem for 5 minutes—rapidly counting backward by threes from 7,654—when they were (a) alone, (b) with their spouses, or (c) with their pets but no one else. The presence of a pet was soothing; the difficult task caused only slight arousal when people were with their pets, but their heart rates and blood pressures went up substantially when they were alone, and their cardiovascular readings soared when their spouses were present. A human audience, even a loving partner, made the potentially embarrassing task more stressful, but a companion animal made it less taxing.

These results are intriguing, but they could be due to idiosyncrasies in the people who choose to have pets. So, in another test of this effect (Allen et al., 2001), businessmen who lived alone were randomly assigned either to adopt pets from an animal shelter or to continue to live alone. When they were then put under stress, the new pet owners displayed increases in blood pressure that were only half as large as those that occurred among those without pets. Moreover, the fewer friends the men had, the greater the benefits of owning a pet.

Now, let's not overstate this “friend” business. Animals can soothe us even when they are strangers to us; people who were excluded by others in a lab procedure found the experience less painful when the experimenter's dog was in the room than when it was not (Aydin et al., 2012). And pet ownership isn't beneficial for some people: There appear to be differences from person to person in attachment to pets that mirror the anxiety and avoidance seen in human relationships (Zilcha-Mano et al., 2011). And of course, a pet cannot supply the same respect, responsiveness, or trust that human friends can.

Still, people often imagine that their pets have human traits and qualities (Epley et al., 2008), and they can feel that their relationships with their pets are just as close as their partnerships with other humans (Kurdek, 2008b). When they're distressed, pet owners are even more likely to turn to their pets for solace than they are to seek out their (human) friends (Kurdek, 2009). And if they had to choose one or the other, one of every seven pet owners would discard their spouses rather than lose their pets (Italie, 2011)! So, given the pleasure and genuine support that pets provide, sure, as long as we use the term loosely, pets can be our friends.

Add all this up, and women's same-sex friendships tend to be closer and more intimate than men's are. The net result is that women typically have partners outside their romantic relationships to whom they can turn for sensitive, sympathetic understanding and support, but men often do not. For instance, ponder this provocative question (Rubin, 1986, p. 170): “Who would you turn to if you came home one night and your wife [or husband or lover] announced she [or he] was leaving you?” When research participants actually considered 
Page 230this question, nearly every woman readily named a same-sex friend, but only a few men did (Rubin, 1986). (In fact, most men could not come up with anyone to whom they could turn for solace if their lovers left them.)

Why are men's same-sex friendships less intimate than women's? Are men less capable of forming close friendships with each other, or are they just less willing? Usually, they are less willing; men seem to be fully capable of forming intimate friendships with other men when the circumstances support such closeness—but they generally choose not to do so because such intimacy is less socially acceptable among men than among women (Reis, 1998). And why is that? Cultural norms and gender roles appear to be the main culprits (Bank & Hansford, 2000). A traditional upbringing encourages men to be instrumental, but not expressive,4 and (as we found in chapter 5), a person's expressivity predicts how self-disclosing he or she will be. Androgynous men tend to have closer friendships than traditional, sex-typed men do, but more men are sex-typed than androgynous. Also, in keeping with typical gender roles, we put pressure on men to display more emotional constraint than we put on women. Cultural norms lead men to be more reluctant than women to express their worries and emotions to others, and gender differences in the intimacy of friendship disappear in societies (such as the Middle East) where expressive male friendships are encouraged (Reis, 1998).

Thus, the lower intimacy of men's friendships usually isn't due to an inability to share meaningful, close attachments to other men. Instead, it's a choice that is supported by cultural pressures. Many men would probably have closer same-sex friendships if Western cultures did not discourage psychological intimacy with other men.

Can Men and Women Be Close Friends?

Of course. They often are. Most people have had a close friendship with a member of the other sex, and such relationships are commonplace among college students. However, once they leave college, most people no longer maintain intimate cross-sex friendships (Marshall, 2010). Why? What's going on?

The first thing to note is that men and women become friends for the same reasons they grow close to their samesex friends; the same responsiveness, trust, and social support are involved (Fuhrman et al., 2009). And because they are dealing with women instead of other men, men are often more open and expressive with their female friends than with their male companions (Fehr, 1996). Indeed, men who have higher levels of exp ressivity and women who have higher levels of instrumentality are more likely than their peers to have close friendships with the other sex (Lenton & Webber, 2006). As always, perceived similarity attracts.

However, cross-sex friendships face a hurdle that same-sex partnerships do not ordinarily encounter: determining Page 231whether the relationship is a friendship or a romance. Friendships are typically nonexclusive, nonsexual, equal partnerships, and people may find themselves in unfamiliar territory as they try to negotiate an intimate friendship with someone of the other sex. A big question is whether the partners—who, after all, are very close—will have sex. Men are more likely than women to think that sex would be a fine idea (Lehmiller et al., 2011), and they typically think their female friends are more interested in having sex than they really are (Koenig et al., 2007). In turn, women usually underestimate how much their male friends would like to sleep with them, so some misunderstanding often occurs: “Most women do not reciprocate their male friend's sexual yearnings, despite the fact that men sometimes delude themselves that their female friends do” (Buss, 2003, p. 262). As a result, “sexual tension” is often mentioned as the thing people dislike most about their cross-sex friendships (Marshall, 2010).

Most cross-sex friendships never become sexual (Halatsis & Christakis, 2009). But when they do, they take a variety of forms (Mongeau et al., 2013). Some partners are genuinely close friends who trust and respect each other and who share a variety of activities in addition to the sex—and who are thus true “friends with benefits,” or FWBs (Lehmiller et al., 2014)—whereas others get together solely to have sex and so are really just engaging in a series of casual “booty-calls” (Jonason et al., 2011). Moreover, the partners may be on their way from being just friends to conducting a romance or, conversely, transitioning out of a romance that has failed. Either trajectory can be complex, but there are differences between FWB relationships and romances, so the partners may know where they stand. More commitment is involved in romances (VanderDrift et al., 2012); FWB partners are less likely to be monogamous, having sex with a wider variety of other people, and although more of the time they spend together is devoted to sex, they tend to be less satisfied than romantic lovers are with both the sex they have and their relationship (Lehmiller et al., 2014).

Notably, most FWBs continue their friendship when the sex ends, especially if they were genuine friends and weren't just in it for the sex (Owen et al., 2013). But even when they're not sexual, cross-sex friendships can be tricky to maintain if the partners marry others. Spouses are often threatened by a partner's close connection to a potential rival, and sometimes with good reason: When people are attracted to a current cross-sex friend, they tend to be less satisfied with their romantic relationships (Bleske-Rechek et al., 2012). As a result, married people are less likely than singles to have close cross-sex friendships, and that's a major reason that such relationships become less common after people finish their schooling.

Another personal characteristic that influences our social networks is sexual orientation. In a convenience sample5 of 1,415 people from across the United States, most heterosexual men and women did not have a close friend who Page 232was gay, lesbian, or bisexual, but most gays, lesbians, and bisexuals (or GLBs) did have friends who were straight (Galupo, 2009). Only about one in every six heterosexuals (knew that they) had GLB buddies, but about 80 percent of GLBs had close heterosexual friends. So, the friendship networks of straight people tend to be less diverse with regard to sexual orientation than those of GLBs. If heterosexuals are actually steering clear of GLBs, they may be making a mistake: The friendships of GLBs with heterosexuals are just as close and rewarding, on average, as their friendships with other GLBs (Ueno et al., 2009), and the more contact heteros have with GLBs, the more they like them (Merino, 2013).

Finally, some of us think of ourselves mostly as independent, autonomous agents, and the qualities that are foremost in our self-concepts are the traits that distinguish us from others. In contrast, others of us define ourselves to a greater extent in terms of our relationships to others; our self-concepts emphasize the roles we fill and the qualities we display in our intimate partnerships. An intriguing individual difference, an interdependent self-construal, describes the extent to which we think of ourselves as interdependent, rather than independent, beings. For those of us with a highly interdependent self-construal, relationships are central features in our self-concepts, and we “tend to think and behave so as to develop, enhance, and maintain harmonious and close relationships” with others (Cross & Morris, 2003, p. 513). An interdependent self-construal makes someone a desirable friend (Morry et al., 2013); compared to those who are more independent, interdependent people better understand others' opinions and values, and they strive to behave in ways that benefit others as well as themselves. Motivations supporting both independence and interdependence tend to be present in everyone, but Western cultures such as that of the United States tend to celebrate and emphasize independence and autonomy. So, highly interdependent self-construals are more common in other parts of the world (Cross et al., 2011).

Now, in this last section of the chapter, let's examine some of the states and traits that interfere with rewarding friendships. We'll focus on two problems, shyness and loneliness, that are common but painful. As we'll see, shy or lonely people usually want to develop close friendships, but they routinely behave in ways that make it difficult to do so.

These days, we may need every friend we've got. More than one out of every eight adult Americans lives alone—a proportion that's doubled since 1960 (Wilson & Lamidi, 2013)—and intimate friendships are less common in the United States than they used to be, too (McPherson et al., 2006). The number of people who say they have no close confidant of any sort has soared from only 10 percent in 1985 to 25 percent. One of every four adult Americans has no one to whom to turn for intimate counsel and support. Another 19 percent say they have only one confidant (who is often a spouse or a sibling), and, overall, Page 233the average number of intimate partners people have, including both close friends and lovers, has plummeted from three (in 1985) to two. Many of us have hundreds of “friends” on Facebook, but only rarely are they companions who offer the rich rewards of real intimacy. And once they leave school, only slightly more than half of all Americans (57 percent) have a close confidant to whom they are not related. Many Americans have none. And shyness and loneliness make things even worse.

Have you ever felt anxious and inhibited around other people, worrying about what they thought of you and feeling awkward in your conversations with them? Most of us have. Over 80 percent of us have experienced shyness, the syndrome that combines social reticence and inhibited behavior with nervous discomfort in social settings (Miller, 2009). Take a look at Table 7.3; when people are shy, they fret about social disapproval and unhappily anticipate unfavorable judgments from others. They feel self-conscious, uncomfortable, and inept (Arroyo & Harwood, 2011). As a result, they interact with others in an impoverished manner. If they don't avoid an interaction altogether, they behave in an inhibited, guarded fashion; they look at others less, smile less, speak less often, and converse less responsively (Ickes, 2009). Compared to people who are not shy, they manage everyday conversation poorly.

TABLE 7.3. The Shyness Scale

How shy are you? Rate how well each of the following statements describes you, using this scale:

0 = Extremely uncharacteristic of me

1 = Slightly characteristic of me

2 = Moderately characteristic of me

3 = Very characteristic of me

4 = Extremely characteristic of me

___1.   I am socially somewhat awkward.

___2.   I don't find it hard to talk to strangers.

___3.   I feel tense when I'm with people I don't know well.

___4.   When conversing, I worry about saying something dumb.

___5.   I feel nervous when speaking to someone in authority.

___6.   I am often uncomfortable at parties and other social functions.

___7.   I feel inhibited in social situations.

___8.   I have trouble looking someone right in the eye.

___9.   I am more shy with members of the opposite sex.

Source: Adapted from Cheek & Buss, 1981.

The first thing you have to do to calculate your score is to reverse your answer to number 2. If you gave yourself a 0 on that item, change it to a 4; a 1 becomes a 3, a 3 becomes a 1, and a 4 should be changed to 0. (2 does not change.) Then add your ratings. The average score for both men and women is about 14.5, with a standard deviation of close to 6 points. Thus, if your score is 8 or lower, you're less shy than most people, but if your score is 20 or higher, you're more shy.