- Good friends are good for your health.

Join us as we explore the art and science of building positive and meaningful friendships.

Coming up next on "Inspire."

(upbeat music) "Inspire" is sponsored by the estate of Ray and Anne Goldsmith.

- [Narrator] And the Raymond C and Marguerite Gibson Foundation and... - [Betty Lou] Friends of KTWU, we appreciate your financial support, thank you.

(peaceful music) (upbeat music) Hello and welcome to "Inspire."

I'm excited to be here with my co-host, Danielle Norwood, and Leslie Flouranges, and you.

Positive friendships are a cornerstone of emotional wellbeing.

They provide a support system, a source of joy, and they contribute to a sense of belonging.

- Research shows that having strong social connections can have a profound impact on our mental health and resilience.

- Here with us today to discuss the power of positive friendships is Dr. Marisa Franco, psychologist, professor, and the author of the New York Times' bestselling book, "Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make And Keep Friends."

Welcome to "Inspire" Dr. Franco.

- Hello.

Thank you so much for having me today.

- Tell us about how having positive friendships really affects our lives.

Tell us about what they do to help basically give us good vibes and keep us going.

- Good vibes.

That's a good way of describing it.

So having a diverse social network, that means interacting with different types of people and not just your spouse, for example, is linked to how long we live, even more so than our diet and how much we exercise.

So it's quite important for our overall health.

Part of the reason is that when we feel connected, we release a hormone called oxytocin, which is also known as the Fountain of Youth Hormone.

So what keeps us connected is also what keeps us young, but friendship also does something really special for our identity.

Each time we interact with a different friend, we experience a different part of ourselves.

And so to truly feel whole in who we are, we need to interact with a diverse community wherein we can then show the different parts of ourselves.

- You know, I noticed just going to visit my mom when she was in assisted living, how important and how difficult it is to make friends when one gets older and when you've really sort of changed your locale.

So even for us, if we were to move to another city at this age, or like I came from New York to Kansas City 20 years ago, I found it difficult to make friends at first.

What can we do to kind of speed that up and help us to be happier when we move to a new location?

- Great question so there's this sociologist, Rebecca Adams, and she argues that what makes friendship happen more or less organically is when we have repeated unplanned interaction and shared vulnerability.

So that means I see you every day, we didn't plan it, or I see you consistently we didn't plan it like school, like work.

And we are being vulnerable with each other.

So the more that you can put yourself in environments that allow for those ingredients, let's say that's, you know, now pickleball is a big thing, a language class, you know, any of those interests that are repeated over time because sometimes people wanna make friends and they go to like one happy hour, but I would say that a better technique is to join something that repeats because you capitalize on something called the mere exposure effect, which is our unconscious tendency to like people who are familiar.

So likely if you stick it out for one to two months, you're gonna feel a lot differently than you do the first time.

You're gonna like people more, they're gonna like you more.

And also when you first meet people, then you're gonna be really uncomfortable, right?

Because we don't have that me exposure.

We don't have that familiarity yet.

And I think a lot of people's issues is they meet up with someone once they're like, we didn't click, we didn't have that spark, and then they don't try to put themselves out there again.

- So conversely, if you've had a friend for say 30, 40 years and you realize they're kind of a toxic person, how do you unfriend somebody?

- Yeah, that's a good question.

Especially if it's a longstanding friendship.

If they are invested in the friendship and you are not, I would have a conversation.

Reason being that friendship grief is already so complicated because people don't think of friendship as an important relationship.

So people tend to experience something called disenfranchised grief, which means their grief is complicated 'cause they don't validate the weight of it and other people don't validate the weight of it.

And I think if you kind of ghost or silently pull away, you'll already compound that disenfranchised grief.

So I would just say to toxic friend, I probably wouldn't call them toxic.

I would say, you know, I've just kind of realized that we've become incompatible in these really important ways to me and I, you know, think that maybe this connection isn't a fit for me anymore, but I also wanna share all the ways that you were valuable to me during this time we had together.

And when you do that, you also share the ways that they were valuable.

You create what's called a commemorative friendship, which means even though you're not friends anymore, you can still look back on the positives of the relationship.

- If you've had a friendship that hurt you previously, you might be a little gun shy in terms of trying to get into a newer friendship.

What do you say to those people who are a little hesitant to try to make a new friend?

Because they say that there's no friend, like an old friend, so we'll just, you know, stick with the old friends and not try to venture into something new.

How do you encourage somebody to say, hey, why don't I try to explore meeting somebody new and getting into a newer friendship with somebody who could be a wonderful match?

- Absolutely so I think when we've had relationship struggles in the past, it leads us to make some assumptions when we're going into new relationships that can either increase or decrease our likelihood of connecting well in the future.

So maybe if you're someone who's gone through a difficult friendship, you think people are out to take advantage of you, right?

And when you interact with new people, you wanna ask yourself, what are the assumptions that I'm making?

I'm assuming that this person is out to take advantage of me.

And then you ask yourself, what's the evidence of that?

What have they done to actually show me they might take advantage of me?

What have they done to show me that they're not a trustworthy person right?

And if you don't actually have any reason that suggests that they fit into that criteria, then you're able to remind yourself, okay, let me offer this person a chance to connect with me.

Let me try to be more, more open.

Because I recognize that as an assumption that I'm making rather than the truth about how this person might treat me.

- You know, one of the things that I think about is, you know, fear of rejection, right?

Like, you see someone that you'd like to be friends with and maybe you have, you know, gone to that yoga class for a month or two or something and you try to strike up a relationship or you know, a conversation with someone and just doesn't go anywhere.

And then you feel like, oh God, I was such an idiot for trying to do that.

You know, I do that self speak, oh, I was such an idiot to do, you know.

(all laughing) So I do yeah.

You know, you're your own self, you're your own worst enemy sometimes.

So, you know, what do you do when you kind of feel that way that you've tried, you know, you've put yourself out there but didn't work?

- Yeah well, first I wanna address that the research finds are actually a lot less likely to get rejected than we think.

So there's a study on something called the liking gap that finds that when strangers interact, they underestimate how liked they are by one another.

Other research out of London that finds that people predict that when they talk to a stranger, about 40% of the time that person will be open to talking to them.

It actually ends up being about 90.

As social creatures, as people that are adverse to threat.

We tend to the one instance where we were really rejected can really loom large, where other instances where people are open to talking to us, we tend to kind of forget.

And so I share that research just to say that, you know, even if you've had experiences before where people haven't been open, then as you're going into new interactions, people are much more likely to accept you than you might might predict or expect.

The other thing that I would suggest for people that are afraid of rejection, I like to think about people as like, almost like stoplights, like green light, red light, yellow light, right?

In terms of connection.

And when I meet someone who's a red light, I have to remind myself, just 'cause this person's a red light doesn't mean everyone's a red light, right?

Like there's other green lights, I just have to find them.

I almost think of connection as like, if you're playing a game of Jenga, you know how you kind of swish your hands against it to see like which one, which block moves.

There's someone that's gonna move, there's a block that's definitely gonna move.

And we just have to keep that in mind when we go through these experiences where there's a block that didn't move or we put ourselves out there and it hurt and it didn't work out that we can't necessarily generalize that and there are people that are excited to connect with us.

- Okay, I've got a question coming up about maintaining a friendship, but we'll continue in just a minute on the power of positive friendships right after this break.

Please stay with us.

(upbeat music) - We are back.

We've been talking to Dr. Marisa Franco about how we can create meaningful friendships in our lives, and I have a true life story that I wanna ask you about.

I have actually had better friendships with guys than I have with women.

So talk to me about how I can better connect with some women than I can with just my guy friends.

And I don't know why it is that I've had better relationships with guys, but I mean, I love my women friends 'cause I have wonderful friends here at "Inspire" and it's been in my later life that I've been able to better open up with the women friends in my lives.

But how, how can I better connect with the women?

- Mm.

Yeah.

So the currency of women's friendships are things like vulnerability, for example.

So next time you interact with a woman friend, I would recommend something like tell them about something that you're struggling with.

- Okay?

- Another piece of currency for women's friendships is open displays of affection.

And so being able to tell a woman in your life, hey, I really value you.

This is why you're really special to me.

This is why you're really important to me.

This is what I really admire in you.

Sharing that affection is also going to bring you a lot closer.

Of course, this will work with men as well.

I think both behaviors.

But what we tend to see is that women are about twice as likely as men in a given week to be vulnerable with their friends and to share affection with their friends.

- Okay.

- I feel very lucky, and I know that we all do in some regard, but when you have the kind of friends that maybe you haven't seen 'em for a long time, but the next time you see 'em, it's like no time passed at all.

How do you maintain those type of friendships?

- Yeah, I mean, it's nice because the longer we've been friends, the more likely the friendship is to continue.

And so if you have a longer history of friendship, it's easier to sustain that friendship over time.

But similarly, things like vulnerability and affection are kind of what maintains friendship a lot.

Like we don't necessarily have to have a lot of time with friends, but we have to be strategic about the time that we have.

Now, what's particularly important in terms of friendship and maintaining friendships is how we show up in what I call diagnostic moments.

Diagnostic moments are the highs and the lows of the relationship because we're more likely to remember experiences that are more emotional.

We tend to remember our memories with a friend as to how they showed up when we were going through a high or a low.

You know, how do they show up when we got that promotion?

Or conversely when our mom got sick and we had to care take for them.

And so those diagnostic moments are the times to really be intentional about showing uP when your friend is sick, sending them some dinner, for example.

Or you know, when your friend got that promotion at work, tell them, I'm so excited for you.

Like, I'd love to take you out to dessert to celebrate you.

And so those are really the moments that we need to show up and they're gonna disproportionately impact the satisfaction in the friendship and our overall ability to maintain it.

- You are so well versed in this, it's like amazing.

- Thank you.

- I love it.

So let's roll the tape back and say, how did you decide to focus on this area of friendships?

Because I've never heard of anyone who was really focused on it.

And I, as many studies as you bring in and things like that, I'm so impressed.

Why did you decide to go down this path?

- Yeah, great question.

So I, in my young twenties went through breakups and I felt so bad about them, and so I decided to start this wellness group with my friends where we met up to practice wellness, we meditated, we cooked, we did yoga.

And I looked around and I was like, you know, I think I felt so bad about that breakup because I felt like romantic love was the only love that mattered and it was the only love that made me worthy.

And I looked around and I was like, well, why doesn't this love matter?

Like this has always been the safest form of love to me and why have I acted like it hasn't counted?

And I felt like my own experience reflected a larger cultural norm that was really in our disservice that was making us all a lot lonelier 'cause even when we have connection, we trivialize it, because it's platonic.

And so that really made me want to write my book "Platonic" because I wanted us to value friendship.

I wanted to us all to see the dignity of friendship as well.

- With that in mind, can we do a definition of sorts between the difference between acquaintances and friends?

Because I think that there is a big difference between the two.

Would you give us a working definition?

- Yeah.

So here's how I like to define it.

I had a friend's husband who was telling me about his bachelor party and how a bunch of his friends canceled last minute to his bachelor party.

And he was like, yeah, my friends really bailed on me.

And I thought to myself, those aren't friends, because those are good company, not good friends.

Good company to me is someone who's, you know, you enjoy their company basically.

And a lot of us confuse that with friends.

But friendship is a commitment to one another.

It's responsibility to one another.

It is deciding to show up in one another's difficult moments.

It's, you know, still showing up when things aren't easy, working through conflict, right?

Like that's what friendship looks like at its best.

And I think sometimes we assume that just because I like someone that I should make them my friend.

But I think we should all be asking ourselves the question of, you know, even though I like them, do they have the qualities that are going to make them a good friend to me?

Are they going to be consistent, reliable?

Are they gonna try to show up when I really need someone?

- What about starting with self-love?

You need to maybe search through yourself to make sure that you are worthy of their friendship.

- Oh my gosh, you took the words outta my mouth.

My next book is on finding worthiness because when I was writing "Platonic," I came across this theory that people look for people that verify their sense of self.

Which means if you feel badly about yourself, you prefer to interact with people that see you more negatively.

- Wow.

- That are more judgmental of you.

Because people that view you positively, you feel like it's only a matter of time till they're gonna figure out the real me.

So it fills you with anxiety.

You don't trust the love that they're giving to you.

So in some ways, our relationships are limited by our view of ourself.

We funnel everyone's interaction to us by saying, does this match my view of self?

Does this match my view of self?

And if it doesn't, we're going to discard relationships that would otherwise be healthy and beautiful for us because they threaten and clash with our sense of self.

So, absolutely.

You know, the self-work does intersect with our ability to connect with other people.

- So does that, that idea of associating with people who are negative make you feel negative about yourself, does that play into the whole imposter theory that a lot of women, you know, deal with on a regular basis?

- Yeah.

- Yes.

Absolutely.

That's, it's the discomfort and the angst of feeling like an imposter in your relationships that can get so uncomfortable that you'd rather people that just perceive you more negatively, forthright, 'cause you don't have to worry like the cat's gonna get outta the bag.

They're gonna see me so negatively.

And it's, I would say, taxing for us to interpret events that don't match our sense of self.

Because we're thinking, was this real?

Where were they coming from?

You know, do they mean it?

Right and that difficulty with reconciling the experience makes it kind of uncomfortable for us to engage in these interactions with people that view us more positively than we view ourselves.

And there's fascinating research on this finding that people have low self-esteem, for example, when positive events happen to them, they get sicker over time.

- Ooh.

- Or that when they're asked, do you wanna, you know, do you wanna hang out with this person who had a really positive view of you or negative that they choose the person who has the more negative view, or even that their self, their blood pressure is lower when people are criticizing them and then when people are giving them positive feedback or, you know, your self-esteem is related to how likely you are to reject compliments with people with lower self-esteem being more likely to reject those compliments.

Which is so ironic, right?

Because you think I need that love to feel good about myself.

But what tends to happen is that love actually threatens your sense of self.

It threatens your sense that the world is predictable and that your identity is predictable.

So it triggers a bit of an identity crisis.

- Wow.

Well alrighty then.

(all laughing) Thank you so much Dr. Franco for sharing your expertise with us and helping us understand how we can foster more meaningful and lasting friendships.

Folks, we'll be right back after a break.

Stay with us.

(upbeat music) (team cheers) (upbeat music) - [Betty Lou] Granny Basketball was created to be a milder version of the Game of Basketball and provides fun competitive exercise for women over the age of 50.

- The founder of Granny Basketball is a woman by the name of Barb Trammell.

And her father was a coach and coached teams back a hundred years ago.

And when she was helping him with his memoirs and she heard about the prissy rules, she thought, well, I could play this.

And you know, she's in her sixties.

So, but it really is a safer form of the game.

Our costumes also are of the period with our bloomers and the collars with our numbers on the back.

- [Betty Lou] Granny basketball is played true to traditional 1920s six on six basketball rules and maintains the history, uniforms, and culture of the games of that era while ensuring the safety of older players.

- Well in Granny Basketball, and back in the day, the rules were much more gentle.

But there's no running, no jumping, no touching.

You only get three fouls.

The the court is divided into three sections.

So there's two forwards, two centers and two guards for each team.

And you have to stay in your section.

So it helps with all the running.

I mean, there's not, you can't run, you can hurry.

So, but it makes it a lot of fun.

It's still a really a challenging game to play.

- [Betty Lou] A throwback to a bygone era, the Granny Basketball League plays six on six games utilizing 1920 style play and uniforms.

The Granny Basketball League welcomes players of various ages, experience, and ability.

- My name is Pat Connor, I'm 90 years old and I play on the Kansas Gray tornado team.

I was actually recovering from some physical ailments and I said, I am gonna get well and I'm gonna play basketball.

It's a team for ladies that are 50 years old and older and we can't run, we can't jump and we can't, only dribble twice and we play very safely.

So everybody of all ages can play.

I love granny basketball because it keeps me active and if I was sitting at home doing nothing then that would not be good.

And I think everybody that's playing just loves the fact that it keeps you active.

- [Betty Lou] The Granny Basketball League plays numerous scrimmages, games, and tournaments throughout the year and occasionally play the halftimes of collegiate basketball games.

- So we play league in the early year, like from January to May, and then we have our postseason, nationals will be in Kansas City on July 29th through the 31st.

And then there are other tournaments that we have in Kansas and in Iowa.

(dramatic music) - [Betty Lou] Be on the lookout for granny basketball coming to a court near you.

(peaceful music) And we're back with you as our friends and these friends and we are so lucky, what is your biggest takeaway?

- Just the importance of having people in your life to be supportive, good times, bad times.

I think that sometimes if you have been hurt, people tend to isolate, right?

And they don't want to be around anything or anybody, but it's so important to have a care squad as it is.

- Right?

- And for you to be a part of a care squad that can return that to other people, you know, to be able to show up in other people's lives and that when somebody is toxic in your life, you could be like, okay, your expiration is up, you got to go.

So, and I'm learning that too.

So, I mean, it's just, it's important to be a good friend and it's important to have good friends.

- Right?

- Yeah.

I mean, I thought it was interesting with her sort of helping us to determine what do we say when we wanna get rid of that toxic friend as opposed to just disappearing.

You know?

Like, I'm fine with that.

Just, you know, walk away.

- Peace.

- Peace.

Right.

But I think it is a good thing to let people know, hey, this isn't working for me anymore.

This was great when it was great.

These were the things that were great and now it's time to, you know, say goodbye.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- And I think, you know, that it for yourself, for your mental health, your wellbeing, you just, you know, get that feeling.

Okay, remember the country song, I know, 'cause she, you know, you find out who your friends are.

- Yes.

- I think it was Tracy Lawrence.

- Yes.

- Okay.

And it's like, you know, when she, the doctor was referring to, you know, the somebody that's gonna come out when you're stuck in the mud, when somebody, you need to change a tire, they're gonna bring you a meal.

- Right.

- That's a friend.

- That's a friend.

- You know, you can count on them no matter what.

- Right as opposed to someone who's just great for being good company.

- Right.

- Yeah.

- And I love the way she differentiated.

- Me too.

- 'Cause yeah 'cause in the poor guy with the bachelor party, people bailing on it.

Who bales on a bachelor party?

- Right.

- Exactly.

- But still, you know.

- Yeah.

- I think a lot of times we see people who are acquaintances as friends and it's like, you know what?

I have, especially, I think as a kid, we wanted everybody to be our friend.

- Yeah, sure.

- Yeah.

And so the more people we had, and it's like, no more people more drama.

- Yeah.

- So, you know, as you get older, it's like you just want a core group of people in your life to be your friends and you have a lot of acquaintances and that's cool to interact with folks but it's like, I just need a few good people to be in my life and surround me and you know, I want to be a part of a few people's lives, but, you know, beyond that, I'm good.

- Yeah.

- I'm good.

- I, you know, I don't always think that people recognize when a friendship is toxic, you know, looking in, you can see it.

But when you're in the, when you're in it, you don't always recognize it.

You might recognize it when you finally get out of it.

- Yes.

- You're like, you know, yes.

But I don't know, I don't always think that people get it, and so it's, it's difficult when you wanna tell someone, hey, you know, be careful.

- Exactly.

- This person really isn't, you know, looking out for you.

- Or when they're high maintenance and you, I mean, that's like a sign right there.

It's like, honey, you might wanna pull back 'cause this person is on your phone all the time.

(all laughing) Like when they calling 10, 15 times a day, it's like, my man don't call 10, 15 times a day, but your friend does.

It's like, maybe you need to like, you know, you know, draw back on the friendship because there's something, something off there, you know?

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- Thank you friends, and thank you.

(all laughing) That's all the time we have for today.

We hope you've been inspired by today's conversations.

As a reminder, you can watch this program again at watch.ktwu.org.

- And if you're so inspired to learn more about our guests, find out what's coming up in the future, get access to additional content, be sure to visit our website at www.ktwu.org/inspire.

- Inspiring women, inspiring friendships, inspiring you on KTWU, thank you for watching.

(upbeat music) - [Betty Lou] "Inspire" is sponsored by the estate of Ray and Anne Goldsmith.

- [Narrator] And the Raymond C and Marguerite Gibson Foundation and... - [Betty Lou] Friends of KTWU.

We appreciate your financial support.

Thank you.