Marisa G. Franco - Platonic : How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make--and Keep--Friends

In 2015, I grieved brutally. A burst of promising romance ended in disaster. I thought about it when I rocked on the elliptical machine every morning, when I teared up walking between classes, and basically whenever my mind had nothing else to cling to as a distraction. Coming out of the grief required a series of revelations. First, I had to understand why I had taken this loss so hard, why it had caused me so much suffering. I had to articulate the ways I held romantic relationships in such high regard so that they controlled my happiness: as if there was no love in my life at all without this kind of love.

Why did I place so much importance on romantic love when up until that point, it had not been particularly fulfilling? I had been breathing in some deeply held cultural convictions. Finding romantic love is my purpose. The moment that I find romantic love is the moment at which life will truly begin. Failing to find romantic love means being fundamentally flawed in the way of being human. And without romantic love, there is no love at all.

To recover from my grief, I gathered a few of my very best friends to start a wellness group. Every week, we met up and one of us chose a self-care activity we could engage in together and hosted us all with snacks included. There was yoga, cooking, reading, meditating. But most curative of all, there was community. Being around people who loved me and whom I loved healed me. Although I had, until then, devalued the significance of friendship in favor of romance, after the wellness group, I could no longer diminish the colossal importance of friends.

In 2017, I suitcased my life and moved out of my six-year home in Washington DC, over to Atlanta, Georgia. I didnt know many people in Atlanta, but some of my very best friends in DC made it their goal to ensure I wouldnt be lonely when I reached Atlanta. Packed away in my suitcase was a jar full of fortune cookielike scrolls on which my friends had listed their favorite memory of us together. I also had a two-by-three framed collage with pictures of me and my friends beaming, parading, and embracing. The year before had been one of the golden ages of my life, and this was undoubtedly because I had amassed people who knew and loved me.

I threw a combined going-away/birthday party in May 2017, when I knew I was leaving DC. We had all gone to a funky art show concert together and then returned to crowd into my small apartment for cake and champagne. I made a toast to the seven or so of us left in a circle in the living room. The champagne was setting in, giving me its permission to give a toast of the vulnerable kind: I want you all to know that I was in a rough place this time last year. And each and every one of you in this rooms friendship has been part of the force that has lifted me out of it.

That birthday, along with my wellness group, was part of my metamorphosis. I started turning toward, recognizing, and actively valuing friends. In the years before, when I figured only romantic relationships were meaningful, whenever my hopeful romantic trysts were combusting, I despaired. My sadness was nourished by gaps in my thinking. I was zooming in only to what was wrong in my life (romance) and disregarding all that was right (friendship). This sort of tunnel vision left me using these failed romances as evidence that made me question whether I could form meaningful relationships at all, whether I was worthy of love. I was unlearning this process of absorbing myself so much in one type of love that I discounted all the love that was around me, that had always been around me. I had so much love. And just because it came from friends, why should it matter less?

Platonic love lies at the lowest rung of the hierarchy our culture places on love. But Ive learned its a devastating loss to us all if we dispose of it there. I wrote this book because Id like for our culture to level this hierarchy. But because we dont always value friendship, we lack knowledge on how to cultivate it. If were going to realize friendships full potential in our lives, we need to know how to make and keep friends.