Why Building Friendships Matter

What’s worse than having no friends? Being lonely.

I think many people can agree that being by yourself, doing things alone or simply not having anyone to spend time with is not necessarily an issue. But the problem arises when you start to feel that emptiness in your life, the fear of missing out. Loneliness is something we all experience at some point in our lives, those who have not yet felt this are considered the ‘lucky ones’.

Young Friendships

What makes loneliness worse is navigating friendships from your mid-twenties. Gone are the days when we were forced to partner with a stranger in a classroom, sleepovers arranged by our parents and spending hours with flatmates from university. The basis of friendships that seemed so effortless in our younger years become more difficult as we get older.

In a TED Talk, Shannon Odell explains how during our adolescence, we have a highly reactive rewards system called the Ventral Striatum, which motivates you to spend time with friends due to the high value of joy produced. As we grow and evolve, the time we have with friends gets shorter as we commit to work, and we start to lose motivation to keep up with friends who have possibly moved away. We also develop our interests, and our values shift to what we think really matters, and the friends who were once stuck to our hip have now become people we hardly recognise. Perhaps another reason for this is due to our higher expectations. We want simplicity, and to connect quickly like in our teenage years, and once we realise that this isn’t the case, we become lonely and isolated.

Growing Up

In some ways this can be a blessing in disguise. We are no longer wasting our time with those who no longer spark joy and instead branching out. When we leave home, we are finally on our own, with our own responsibilities, and with a sense of possibility for anything and everything. We are finally granted the flexibility of meeting whoever we want to meet, and whoever we want to spend time with. It’s incredibly exciting knowing that there are people in the world that we have yet to meet, and who could change our lives for the better.

Unlike dating, friendships seem harder to find. Once we are no longer in school or university we find ourselves in this overwhelming pool of people with little idea on how to introduce ourselves. Unless you are an extrovert, the idea of walking up to a stranger asking if you’d like to be friends can feel quite intimidating.

Thankfully the developers of the world have created apps that help solve this dire problem! Bumble BFF for the casual coffee date friendships, We3 for those who thrive as a throuple and PawDates for the dog obsessed. Not only can these apps help solve the exhausting search for the people we fit in with, but aids in finding someone we feel truly compatible with, and who not only has similar hobbies and humour, but aligns with our morals.

The Side Effects

As social beings, we rely on bonds to survive, and we create them to feel a sense of belonging and security. These kinds of bonds are not only limited to romantic relationships, but platonic ones too. Multiple studies have been done to work out the benefits of friendships on our health.

For example, in a meta-analysis where over 300,000 participants were studied, it was found that people with stronger relationships had a 50% increased likelihood of survival than those with weaker bonds.

Additionally, those who had friends who were said to have a ‘healthy mood’ were twice as likely to help those recovering from mental illnesses like depression. Possibly this is due to how we manage to open up in friendships. We value the advice of those we feel closest to, and in return trust the counsel given.

Stress relief is yet another wonderful side effect that comes from socialising with people we feel close to. Experts found that people who broadened their social network and increased their social activity were more resilient facing situations that encompassed high levels of stress. This kind of support can provide us with a great sense of comfort during negative periods in our lives.

Although navigating friendships may feel like an uphill battle, I hope to remind you that being lonely is far worse a fight. Whether you are young, old, stressed, sad, angry or afraid, the support of a friend is an ingredient in our lives that holds the greatest importance.

As Aristotle words it: to perceive a friend, […] is necessarily in a manner to perceive oneself, and to know a friend is in a manner to know oneself. The idea that to find a friend and to have one is to have a reflection of yourself.

Now, is there anything better than having friends? There simply isn’t.