Carlin Flora - Friendfluence: The Surprising Ways Friends Make Us Who We Are

Each friend represents a world in us, a world not possibly born until they arrive.

Anas Nin

When I was fifteen, my family moved from North Carolina to Michigan. The relocation was difficult for one reason above all: I had to leave behind my friends. For the first few months at my new school I was a puddle of tears as I attempted to connect to other kids but didnt feel I could truly be myself. I read and reread letters from my old friends and felt painfully excluded from their latest escapades. Then one day, I saw them up in the bleachers during a pep rally: They were a boisterous group of alternative girls (this was the 90s) who were nonetheless not too alternative, I soon learnedthey were adventurous and artsy but still cared about getting good grades. From the first time I sat at their lunch table, my isolation began to subside. I started to feel excited about life again.

I was sentimental to begin with, which is probably why leaving my North Carolina friends was so painful. But my experience is far from unique: Friendship is a crucial facet of life, and not just for melodramatic teenage girls.

During the eight years I worked at Psychology Today magazine as a writer and editor, I noticed a steady increase in scientific findings about friendship. Study after study pointed to its surprising benefits. Who knew that friendship could be so good not only for ones mood but for ones health? Solid friendships can help you shed pounds, sleep better, stop smoking, and even survive a major illness. They can also improve memory and problem-solving abilities, break down prejudices and ethnic rivalries, motivate people to achieve career dreams, and even repair a broken heart. It sounds too good to be true. Yet very few of the many social science and self-help books that crossed my desk covered friendship. Walk through the relationships section of any bookstore, and you will be overwhelmed with titles about finding and keeping a romantic partner or parenting a child. An alien perusing this body of literature might assume that lovers and families are the only relationships we humans have.

Of course we also have friends. We might think all of our traits and life decisions can be traced back to our genes or the influence of our parents or partners, but it has become increasingly clear that our peers are stealth sculptors of everything from our basic linguistic habits to our highest aspirations. And while friendships are a staple in most of our lives, very few of us are fully aware of the effect friends have on our personal growth and happiness.

The converse holds true, tooa person without friends will become unhappy or worse: Loneliness sends the body and mind into a downward spiral. A lack of friends can be deadly.

Evolutionary psychologists theorize that friendship has roots in our early dependence on others for survival. Having a pal help you hunt, for instance, made it more likely that you and your familyand your hunting buddy and his familywould have food cooking over the fire. While most of us no longer rely on friends for house building or meal gathering, we still have a strong need for them. Anthropologists have found compelling evidence of friendship throughout history and across cultures. Universally, were built to care deeply about select people outside of our kin group. Its hard to construct a personal life history that doesnt include important parts for ones friends.

Now happens to be a prime time for increasing our awareness of how friends affect us. Friends are not just more important than you might think; they actually are becoming more important, sociologically speaking. In his 2000 book Urban Tribes: A Generation Redefines Friendship, journalist Ethan Watters posed the question: Are friends the new family? Watters entertainingly depicted city-dwelling buddies who relied on one another throughout their twenties and even thirties, as they delayed marriage and found their vocational callingsa phenomenon of his class and age group. While big, stable tribes might not characterize most Americans social circles, people of all ages (and from all areas of the country) are relying on friends to fulfill duties traditionally carried out by blood relatives or spouses.

The median age of first marriage is still rising: In 2010 it was 28.7 for men and 26.7 for women, up from 27.5 and 25.9 in 2006. Americans arent merely delaying marriage; many are divorced or widowed or are opting out completely. One hundred million Americans (thats almost half of all adults) are not married, and a 2006 Pew Research study found that 55 percent of singles are not looking