Friendships Don’t Just Happen! The Guide to Creating a Meaningful Circle of Girlfriends

By Shasta Nelson.

Shasta Nelson has made a study of how friendships work once everyone's out of school together and founded girlfriendcircles.com to work on this sort of thing. She makes some very good points about the levels of friendships that exist out there, on a continuum from "left side" casual to "right side" closeness. The levels are:

Contact Friends: “We are friendly when we see them in our shared context, but we have limited consistency and limited intimacy.” Casual friends. What I call “circumstantial friends.” “They are Contact Friends in that our relationship is based upon seeing each other in those shared meetings. If one of us stopped attending, we haven’t yet created any other structures--or ways of being together--so it’s likely that we wouldn’t continue connecting.” Would never call without a specific question about what you have in common. Good for connections and hangout friends in certain locations. Limited intimacy, limited consistency.  

Common Friends: increasing consistency/intimacy with them, knowing them better largely in the area we have in common. Spend more time with them, probably daily/weekly. Goes from hanging out in the specific location to having drinks after class. Increase in either consistency or intimacy.

Confirmed Friends: we share a history with these friends that maintains our intimacy, but our connection is not consistent. Friends we used to live close to but now only talk to occasionally. We can pick up where we left off. In touch occasionally but they are not involved in our daily lives and in creation of regular new memories together. Deeper than the left side, but no longer have regular contact like on the right. Formerly Committed friends that you want to stay connected to. Probably 1-2x/year. High intimacy, low consistency. Reading this made me realize that this is usually what happens with the friends of mine that move away but still bother to stay in contact occasionally (as opposed to those who don't). Good way to phrase it. 

Community Friends: spend consistent time together, have crossed original relationship boundaries with a gym buddy/work colleague, etc. Feels normal to invite them to a random concert. Where the tribe collects. Friends move in here when we regularly spend time with them beyond the area we have in common. Increased intimacy and consistency.

Committed Friends: we intimately and consistently share our lives with each other, BFF circle, tried and true girlfriends. Would drop everything if they needed it. Have patterns of spending time together, have shared extensively about your life. Highest intimacy, high consistency.

The author also categorizes the five stages of friendtimacy:

1. Curiosity: you're interested in the person. 
2. Exploration requires that we spend time together, sometimes that is automatic but sometimes we have to initiate and pursue it. If we don’t show up for time together, it will never become a friendship. This stage requires initiation. Repeatedly. Fear can crop up at this stage--fear that the potential friend might not be receptive. Fear can mingle with doubt. Can hold some silent gaps when busyness lets too much time pass before we reach out again. “It can be met with disappointment when we e-mail but don’t get a response and we’re left wondering if we should follow up or not.” Uncharted territory.”
3. Familiarity (we wish this was level 1) It takes 6-8 times meeting with someone before you reach this stage.
4. Vulnerability: sharing histories, increase trust through storytelling.
5. Friendtimacy.

Here's the section that got me interested in this book: it talked about initiating consistently, because every friendship needs momentum.

“I think it’s her turn to initiate. Did she mean it when she said, “We should do this again sometime?” Why didn’t she respond to my e-mail? She said she’d get back to me after her trip and never did... Maybe she doesn’t like me. Maybe she has all the friends she needs. Maybe she just doesn’t have time. Maybe...Maybe...Maybe...
And here is where most potential friendships die.
Nothing bad happened--no betrayal, angry breakup, or massive shifting apart. It just simply never got off the ground. We can’t land in Friendship City if we never take off.
Momentum. The lack of it can kill a relationship quickly.
A romantic relationship would never get off the ground if two people went out for a date, then ended the evening saying, “That was fun...we should do it again next month.”
When it comes to love, we clear our calendar for every possibility. Yet with friendship, it somehow seems normal to only see each other every couple of weeks or months. We schedule her several weeks out, even if for him we’d make time two days later. (The irony is that friends have a higher likelihood of actually being in our life longer than most of the men we date.) Oddly enough, if a guy were interested enough to see us next week again, we’d be flattered. But we’re scared to give that same gift to a platonic friend, lest we appear desperate.

In friendship, there isn’t a clear conductor of this symphony, a leader in the dance. We’re just two women who probably could both use more support in our lives, but if we both sit back and hope the other reaches out, then I’m afraid that we’ll end up with a country of disconnected, depressed, lonely women.”

“So we’re going to initiate. Yes, we are. Again. And again.
Because we’re the ones reading this book, the responsibility falls on us.”

“Two women can meet each other, mutually adore each other, feel like they were twins lost at birth, and yet never become friends without repetitive initiation. It’s true.”

"Here are the five most common reasons women tell me that they don’t initiate more.

1. A lack of time
2. Uncertainty as to whether the feeling was mutual
3. No instant attraction
4. Hope that the other would initiate
5. Just too tired

We can quickly see why friend-making at school or work feels so much easier. Those consistent settings eliminate most of our excuses. We have to make time to work; we’re there whether we’re tired or not; and we keep getting to know our peers whether we felt instant chemistry or not, whether it is mutual or not, and sometimes even despite no one taking the initiative.

There are two major categories that I think they all fall under: insecurity and priority.”

“Those are statements we tend to make when we don’t want to risk rejection or disappointment.”

Our voice of insecurity can probably talk us out of just about any potential friendship! Either there is something we’re already judging about them, or we tell ourselves, “I bet she has all the friends she needs since she grew up around here,” or “She’s too busy--if it’s going to take her three weeks to schedule me in, then that’s not what I’m looking for.” We have a part of us masquerading as the voice of reason that insists we reject others before they have a chance to reject us. (As though her being busy or having other friends is really a personal rejection of us anyhow!)"

The author also talks about attachment theory and how that affects friendships. Securely attached people don't take this sort of thing personally, but it freaks less fortunate people out. “Even those whose lives appear full, busy, and brimming with all the friends they need can be worth pursuing.”... The author mentions a cool person she met and e-mailing several times that weren’t returned, and said she eventually just got one back saying they need to get together sometime. The author was tempted to almost not invite her to something, but she did and the lady went for it. The author mentions she is doing the same to someone else she hasn’t gotten back to yet and she needs to either say it’s never going to happen or pick a date already.

“If you initiated last time and you had a great time out--do it again! If you wrote her and haven’t heard back--write her again!”

“My default position may be to take someone’s perceived negligence as personal but that’s giving too much energy to a situation that undoubtedly isn’t about me.”

“An easy way to do that is to follow up the phrase “Let’s get together sometime,” with a tangible offer of times that would work on your end.” (Mention free times or “was thinking of going to a movie this weekend if you want to join me and get drinks afterwards.” “Always, always follow up “sometime” with several options, the more exact in dates and times the better. It takes less energy for the recipient to check their calendar for specific times than it does to put it on them to offer up options. Another simple strategy is to never leave one date without setting the next.”

Suggestions she makes are to do:

1. standing appointments
2. Piggybacking: figure out what you need to get done, what your friend needs to get done, and do it together, like shopping.
3. Bonding: ask questions that matter
4. get together in groups
5. pick priorities of people if you have to

She also mentions Dr. Paul Dobransky’s Friendship Formula: friendship is consistent, mutual, shared positive emotions and you can turn that into a formula of  C + M + S + PE = Friendship. Consistency is only the first non-negotiable--otherwise you both need to view it as a friendship, share, and have positive emotions. 

“To bring about any change in our lives, we actually have to develop that dissonance--that space between two disparate places that isn’t yet aligned. We have to recognize that we need to move from one way of being into a new way. Holding that desire for a different way is crucial to helping our brain look for solutions that will help get us there.
Unfortunately, for many of us, we simply stop dreaming or hoping because it hurts to want something if we’re not sure we’ll get it. So we’ve spent more energy trying to convince ourselves we don’t really want that different job, don’t really need to lose that weight, or don’t really need more friends. We end up looking for evidence to justify where we currently are, as opposed to holding the hope out in front of us and looking for evidence to fuel us toward a new normal It’s tempting to spend energy trying to lower the dream rather than standing in the gap. But stand we must.
The old adage is true: “If you can imagine it, you’re halfway there.”

“The very question “What is my next step?” immediately activates the part of the brain that we need in order to move toward that desired outcome. “Actual change (movement toward success),” he says, “really can only occur when we perform a small action that advances us towards our goals.” He continues, “Brain activation signifying change in the frontal lobe shows us that actual change is much more likely to occur with small actions than with extensive thought.”

So applying this to friendship....you need to break things down to manageable parts. 

I found this to be really resonating with me, because I met someone I would like to be friends with, but that person is super busy and has a lot going on and frankly, seems like a long shot since we don't have any reasons to run into each other in regular life. And the last time I had that situation go on with someone, we ended up drifting off. I usually have friendships take off when we have situations or people in common and the folks I am talking about here don't have that. So I have been pretty much accepting the idea that "eh, it's not going to work out, would have been nice but what can you do, that's life." 

After reading this book, I sent another e-mail. Nothing happened with that, which doesn't surprise me. So I dunno. I find it very easy to slip into my usual thinking of "eh....just let it go, I don't want to come off as a psycho stalker nag," and thinking stuff like "I shouldn't have," and "I didn't exactly try to nail down a date, but I know she's supposed to be super busy this month so I figured I'd ask if she had any time, maybe that works better, I dunno...." Argh. Sometimes you want your brain to just turn off on this shit, but it shall not. And this is what it does when I am at the point of "oh well" already and it's not like I am even having anxiety about it. Sheesh, brain. 

Whether or not this actually can or will work out, technically speaking, who knows, albeit I certainly suspect that I know. But I think the author makes a lot of good points, and I think this is stuff others should know about for their own situations, which is why I quoted so dang much here. Four and a half stars.