Monthly Archives: March 2011

It’s Research Wednesday! Where I share the latest, or most fascinating, in the science of friendship.

“Mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, meatloaf…they may be bad for your arteries, but according to an upcoming study in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, they’re good for your heart and emotions.” (“Chicken Soup for the Soul: Comfort Food Fights Loneliness,” Science Daily, 3/23/2011)

This is both awesome and dangerous news.

It’s no surprise that we turn to food when we feel lonely… or sad, or angry, or frustrated, or happy, or celebratory.  We reward ourselves with food and sulk with food. But now the research is here: Eating comfort foods (for me: french fries!!) is helpful. It staves off loneliness, and makes us feel more connected on the days when we’re feeling uber-BFFless.

The truth is, I don’t need any more excuses to eat fries. Seriously. If given a reason why I should inhale them, I will take them down one handful at a time. So as soon as I finish this blog post I am going to erase this memory from my brain.

Obliviate!

But until then, it’s worth noting that on the days when you’re feeling isolated, eating your favorite warm-and-fuzzy dish could erase your sense of aloneness. “We have found that comfort foods are foods which are consistently associated with those close to us,” said one of the study’s authors. “Thinking about or consuming these foods later then serves as a reminder of those close others.” (Um, just thinking about the food does the same trick? Where’s the fun in that?)

Back pre-search, when I had moments of loneliness, I usually drowned my sorrows in a TV marathon rather than a food binge. But it’s the same concept really—I indulged in the activity that reminded me of my pals. As the authors of this study said regarding TV. I “bonded with a favorite TV show” rather than a favorite person.

What surprises me is that I figured this kind of behavior—basically wallowing in negative feelings—would make a person feel worse. Shouldn’t doing stuff that reminds you of loved ones make you miss them more? Feel more alone?

Nope. “Comfort food can serve as a ready-made, easy resource for remedying a sense of loneliness. Keeping in mind this new research, it seems humans can find a number of ways to feel like we’re connected with others.”

So next time you’re missing your cross-country BFFs, a burger or chicken nuggets or, yes, fries might be the pick-me-up you need.

I’ve admitted my vice, now it’s your turn. Which comfort food would pull you up from the dumps?

One of the quickest ways to develop a potential BFFship? The next morning recap call.

There are few phone calls more fun and BFF-like than the day-after debriefing that follows an unexpected action-packed evening.

On Saturday night, Matt and I had some friends over to our apartment. The evening ran later than we had anticipated, and the next morning I smiled as my phone rang and the name of one of our guests popped up on my caller ID. I knew she was just calling to discuss the evening, to analyze different interactions, and to commiserate over our shared states of exhaustion. And I loved it.

This wasn’t a phone call to make plans or to ask any specific question. It was just a “how silly was last night? let’s go over what happened” chat. And I must admit, it felt like old times. These are the phone calls that kept me entertained most Sunday mornings when I lived in New York City. Like I mentioned last week, phone calls about nothing can oftentimes feel like the most meaningful. It’s that brief exchange–“I feel like poo, I’m ordering Thai food,” “Oh, good call, I’m not getting out of bed today”–that makes you think Wow, these are real friends.

In fact, about a year ago a reader left this very sentiment in the comments section of this blog: “There is nothing better to take things to the next level with a PBFF than a Sunday morning re-hash phone call about all the crazy things that happened the night before and/or calling to see if she’s alive.” In this case, said re-hash followed an alcohol-fueled evening, but the drinking part is optional, of course.

Inviting a handful of my new friends to meet and mingle really made me feel like this year has been a success. The thing about being on a friend search is that you end up meeting a lot of different people who don’t know each other. It’s not like high school, when you develop a group of pals. This year I’ve made a ton of independent friendships, and I was so thrilled to finally introduce some of the new ladies in my life. There was a lot of “X meet Y, she is from Boston and works at Chicago Public Schools. Y, meet X, she is a fellow Red Sox fan and a lawyer downtown. Discuss.” I’m not going to lie, it felt a bit like sorority rush. (So embarrassed that I just actually said that but I speak the truth.)

This BFF search has become such a regular part of my life that I don’t always see the progress. It’s like when you lose weight, the people who see you everyday don’t necessarily notice, but those you encounter only once a month are in awe. That’s just how I felt this weekend, when suddenly a number of my friends were in the same place and it hit me–it’s working! New friends, Sunday morning recap phone calls… Folks, we have lift-off.

What’s your surefire sign that a friendship is taking off? A phone call, a shared secret? We all ascribe meaning to different actions… share your this-is-it moments!

I love stories of missed connections, provided they turn out okay in the end. Like in Serendipity (you know that John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale movie right?) and Sleepless in Seattle. There was one such a story in yesterday’s New York Times, a really lovely tale of long-lost friends and  a 25-year overdue postcard. A real what-is-really-going-on-in-the-universe kind of coincidence. Though I’m not sure coincidence is even the right word.

(A special thanks to reader Leigh who passed the article along. I always love it when people send me interesting friendship articles or research via email or Twitter or Facebook!)

The story is worth reading, but here are the Cliffs Notes: A 34-year-old woman, Joanna, finds an old postcard in her mailbox, but quickly realizes it is not addressed to her but to a Caroline who shares her same last name and once lived in her apartment. Eventually she helps reunite the writer of the postcard and the intended recipient, who had lost touch in the 25 years since the postcard was sent. Now the once-BFFs are going to meet again and Joanna, the uniter, may travel across the country to meet them too.

The postcard, written from Rose to Caroline just after Caroline had gone through a breakup, read: “My dear friend, the thought of you inspired me to write. How are you getting along? The countryside is looking a lot like spring. The hillsides have a soft blanket of green grass, dotted with yellow and white flowers — beautiful. I guess I am just a simple girl at heart. What have you been doing for yourself? Have you met any interesting people? Life is a romantic adventure, remember, romance is everywhere! Love you.”

{Side note: How amazing is that postcard? I love me some email but to receive a note like that from a friend, in my mailbox no less, would be amazing. And unheard of. “I guess I am just a simple girl at heart.” I like this Rose lady.}

Twenty-five years later, Joanna returned home to this postcard at a time when she was also going through a breakup and contemplating moving from New York to California. As she told the New York Times: “I was inspired by these words and thought: ‘What is the meaning of all of this?’ Was it a coincidence? A sign to leave New York City? Who were Rose and Caroline? Why have the three of us been brought together like this?”

And now the old friends are reconnected thanks to a lost postcard that survived a quarter century, a New York City resident, and some people at The Times.

Sigh. It’s kinda dreamy, right?

Anyone else have similar stories of reconnections or fated friend meetings?

I mentioned a while back that Matt and I were applying for a Big Brothers Big Sisters couples match, which would connect us with a Little Brother. Well, five months later…we’ve been matched! Last night, we met our “Little.” And I am so excited.

Obviously the type of friendship I am looking for on this blog is quite different than the type of friendship Matt and I will forge with our Little. But it is a friendship no less. And such an important one.

Right now you are thinking that I’m just doing this program to finally have an age-appropriate companion with whom to see Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Harry Potter museum exhibits. You wouldn’t be all wrong. Being a kid-at-heart myself, this is a more appropriate volunteer opportunity than, say, working at The Humane Soceity. (Also a worthy organization, just not the right fit for someone mildly afraid of dogs.)

But a more important reason than even that (and how could there be anything more important than Harry Potter exhibits, really?) is that I’ve learned so much this year regarding the importance of friendship that I couldn’t resist being a friend to someone who really needs one.

Being a mentor, a Big Sister, is being a “special friend.” Or so says our match specialist. We aren’t there to parent or babysit. We are there to ensure a safe space to have fun and build a relationship of trust. (I know, I just used approximately 45 bits of stuffy corporate jargon. Who uses “safe space” unironically? My apologies.) The point is, I’m getting a new friend, and I’m going to be a new friend. And I have a feeling that had I not started this blog a year ago, I might not be a Big.

So yes, tonight I met my newest mini-pal. And I think it will be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

If you’re interested in learning more about Big Brothers Big Sisters, check out their website at BBBS.org. I don’t normally tout organizations on this blog, but I really believe in what BBBS does, helping kids “realize their potential and build their futures.”  You’ll be a BFF of a different sort!

After a year plus of friend-dating, I’ve found that when all else fails I can talk about books. Yell all you want about how TV and Facebook are ruining our attention spans and turning the human race into a bunch of morons, but I can attest that most of the women I have met this year—and I have met a lot—are readers.

Last night I went to a really lovely dinner with a new friend and, as usual, talk turned to book clubs and what we are each currently reading. My PBFF was looking for some non-fiction recommendations, so I pulled out my trusty Goodreads app, scrolled through my virtual bookshelves and passed along some titles that might be a good fit. (In case you too are looking for non-fiction recs, my must-read, go-to-the-bookstore-right-now-do-not-pass-go suggestion was Dave Eggers’s  Zeitoun—my favorite book I’ve read in a long while. Others were In Cold Blood, Devil in the White City, and, of course, anything by AJ Jacobs, but especially The Year of Living Biblically.)

The wonderful thing about books—you know, besides the whole literacy, open-your-mind-to-whole-new-worlds, expand-your-creativity-and-flex-your-brain-muscles bit—is that they make wonderful conversation filler. I’ve had good luck this year, but not every date was easy chatter and instant BFF chemistry. And when all else failed, book talk saved the day. A simple “What are you reading now?” and you’re off to the races.

For me, television is another great conversation option, but I haven’t found it to be as foolproof as books. It’s less easy to recommend TV shows, because adding a new series to a viewing schedule is a pretty big investment. Also, for someone who watches a lot of TV, I often watch different shows than my potential friends. The absence of The Bachelor and True Blood and Dexter and Mad Men and any type of Real Housewife from my repertoire often turns TV talk into a dead end. With books, if you haven’t read each other’s favorites you can make to-read lists, and if you have, well, suddenly dinner is a mini-book club.

Obviously, talking books isn’t for everyone. When my husband meets a guy for the first time, if they have nothing else to talk about the conversation often falls to sports. For some of my friends around the country—those who aren’t particularly big into reading—sometimes silence filler comes in the way of foodie talk (new restaurants, food blogs, famous chefs), tabloid chatter, or anything Chelsea Handler. (These are all topics I’m more than happy to join in on myself. And speaking of foodie matters, and TV, last night was the third week in a row that I thought Top Chef was the finale and it wasn’t. Why so much Bahamas, people??)

What am I missing? When you find yourself in one of those painful, awkward-silence-filled conversations, what is your go-to conversation topic? And please don’t say the weather. That’s just a killer…

There are days, every now and then, when I wonder if this search is just silly. Why do I need a local BFF when I have so many wonderful best friends all around the country? Do zip codes and state lines make all that much of a difference?

And the answer is: YES.

I was reminded of this today. I spent the afternoon with one of my best friends from college who’s in town for only a few days. A couple of hours after we parted—each to our own separate dinner plans—we got on the phone and spent 20 minutes rehashing what had happened in the time since we saw each other. Much of that meant listening to my friend dwell over her lunch options for the next day and me explaining in detail what I ate for dinner.

It reminded me of my days in New York, when I would talk to some of my friends every day, or close to it. And we would talk about nothing in particular.

Here’s the thing about long-distance friend phone calls: They are exhausting. They involve so much catch-up and general life updates. For whatever reason, it doesn’t seem reasonable to discuss the minutia of everyday life when you have so much “big stuff”—job, relationship, family—to catch up on. There’s a lot of “so what else is new?” and it doesn’t seem relevant to explain that you had planned to get mussels for dinner, but then the restaurant where you wanted to eat was closed so you ended up with broiled tilapia instead. Plus, the whole “what are you doing tomorrow?” conversation is a wash with a long-distance friend, since there’s no way you can meet up.

I’ve mentioned before the Ann Patchett essay in which she says “That’s my idea of real intimacy: It’s not the person who calls to say, ‘I’m having an affair’; it’s the friend who calls to say, ‘Why do I have four jars of pickles in my refrigerator?’”

I quote this often because it’s spot on. The truth is, for whatever reason, once a friendship spans states, pickles seem too unimportant a reason to call. Shouldn’t you be calling to ask about her wedding plans, or what she’s been up to the past week, or how her job search is going? This unimportant pickle detail is the kind of call you make to someone with whom you have nothing to catch up on. Someone to whom the only thing left to say is “where do these jars come from?!?”

So that, my friends, that is why I continue to search for my local BFF. Because that one 20-minute phone call was so satisfying, and while my long-distance friends are irreplaceable, they are no longer the folks to call about pickle abundance.

This weekend I heard two different stories of friendship jealousy. But unlike what I’ve mulled over in the past—what to do when you’re jealous of a friend—in both of these cases I was hearing from the subject of the frenvy. Both women have close friends who are jealous of them, and both friendships are at serious risk because of it.

In the first case, the girl in question—let’s call her Kristy—is married and currently house hunting. Kristy says she knows her friend—we’ll call her Claudia—is jealous because whenever anything good happens to her, Claudia gets the crazy eyes and starts shooting Kristy with death glares. Claudia is bitter that Kristy is looking for a home, that she’s found a husband and gets along with her in-laws. Unfortunately, Claudia’s father died recently, so she resents the fact that Kristy has a healthy and happy family. (As someone who has lost a father, I understand being jealous when you see you friends having moments with their dads. But there’s a difference between wishing you had a father and wishing someone else didn’t.) It would be one thing if Claudia was jealous of Kristy but kept it to herself, but no. She is openly bitter, and sometimes rude, about Kristy’s good fortune.

The second scenario is similar to the first. We’ll call these ladies Mary Anne and Stacey. Mary Anne is engaged and so is Stacey. But everyone hates Stacey’s fiancée, while Mary Anne’s is adored. Stacey’s parents don’t get along with her inlaws, while Mary Anne’s parents and her in-laws have a great, healthy relationship. As with Kristy and Claudia, Mary Anne knows Stacey is jealous because she is obvious about it. She makes snide jabs at Mary Anne’s happiness and mocks any of her good news.

What’s interesting are the different ways each lady has handled this relationship hiccup. Since Kristy and Claudia are in the same group of friends, Kristy has resigned herself to the knowledge that Claudia will always be in her life. They have too many mutual BFFs to cut each other out. So Kristy grins and bears it.

On the other hand, Mary Anne has said goodbye and good riddance. Why be friends with someone who isn’t happy for your success? Sure, we’ve all had moments of frenvy, but if you never root on your BFF? Then she’s not your BFF.

There’s nothing worse than when a friend makes you feel guilty for your happiness. If your best friend won’t celebrate with you, who will? It’s been a while since I have found myself in this situation, but I of course remember the fights I’d have with friends as a kid. Oh, how often my mom would say “she’s acting that way because she’s jealous.” I learned, eventually, that those weren’t real friends, but I can’t imagine dealing with this as an adult.

So I ask you, have you ever been in Kristy or Mary Anne’s shoes? How did you handle it?