How to Make Meaningful Connections and Overcome Loneliness with Marisa G. Franco
Do you wonder how vulnerable to get when you meet someone? Are you craving more real connections with other like-minded souls? You know your mental health depends on fostering friendships, and social isolation’s real, but you're busy, tired, . . . . (blah blah blah . . . there goes the head again.)
Get ready to discover the secrets to unlocking lasting, meaningful friendships in your adult life. How to reconnect with others and practice self-care.
Listen as New York Times best-selling author, TEDx Speaker, and friendship & belonging expert Marisa G. Franco shares practical advice on how you can navigate the complexities of making and maintaining friendships as an adult and the science behind loneliness and social connections. Discover the power of vulnerability and the joy of building meaningful, lifelong connections.
“We tend to think of vulnerability as burdening people, but the research clearly finds that when we're disclosing intimate things, people like us more.” - Marisa (12:56)
You’ll get to learn valuable tips and strategies on how to overcome your fear of rejection and the misleading beliefs that might be hindering your ability to forge lasting friendships. Tune in as Lauren and Marisa explore how you can initiate, nurture, and cherish meaningful relationships in a world that often values romantic partnerships over platonic connections.
“I know from the science of loneliness that loneliness is very toxic for us. It’s as toxic as smoking 15 cigarettes a day." - Marisa (18:10)
"If you want to be likable, you have to engage with people, show interest in them, initiate with them, tell them how much you like them, how much they mean to you.” - Marisa (22:03)
With insightful strategies and personal anecdotes, this episode offers a wealth of inspiration and guidance for anyone seeking to enrich their social circles and cultivate meaningful connections in their own lives.
“The Importance of Pursuing Hobbies in Communities: "I recommend pursuing a hobby in community with others. So if you like to paint or hike or even eat, you can join a supper club. Just doing that in a group, and then you have repeated unplanned interaction and shared activity, which means that you meet up repeatedly over time, and it's in your calendar. No one has to schedule it, and people are more unguarded. There's this sociologist Rebecca Adams, and that's what she argues is needed for friendship to just happen more organically." - Marisa (14:33)
In this episode:
(01:04) - The challenges of making friends as an adult.
(03:53) - Examining the expectations around romantic love and friendship
(05:40) - The Liking Gap: How assuming that people like you can help you make friends
(06:59) - People like you more than you think!
(09:34) - How your friendships shift in different seasons of life
(10:36) - Signs of social anxiety
(12:57) - Vulnerability as a strength, not a burden
(14:35) - Pursuing a hobby and community with others
(18:02) - The role of social igniters
(20:02) - Practical tools to overcome loneliness and combat isolation
(21:02) - Marisa’s message of hope
(21:39) - Overcoming covert avoidance
Resources & Links
52 Weeks of Hope
Marisa G. Franco
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[00:00:00] Lauren: Are you a burnt-out overachiever buried in responsibilities? Do you miss laughing with your friends, just laughing from the gut? Do you feel like life's passing you by? Welcome to 52 Weeks of Hope, the show where we take you off the hamster wheel by ditching your to-do list for the to don't list. This is where you get to learn how to make that lonely ache vanish.
Learn self-compassion techniques and to give yourself grace. I'm Lauren Abrams and I get to help you feel that magic again, since going through my own dark night of the soul. So you can learn from my experience and the mentors and experts I meet along the way. And today we're talking to friendship expert, TEDx speaker, author, and professor, Dr. Marissa G. Franco.
Making friends as an adult gets tricky. Sometimes it's easier, but definitely not healthier, to just isolate than to make the effort. Listen as you get to learn right now how to meet friends as an adult in this lonely, disconnected world. I'm so excited to welcome to 52 Weeks of Hope, Marissa!
Marissa: Hi! Thanks so much for having me.
Lauren: Yeah! All right. So making friends as an adult is just so interesting. We don't all play in the same sandbox anymore. That's for sure. And I've been talking a lot about vulnerability and getting out there after isolating. And after being on Zoom all day, you feel like maybe you have some connections, but really it's detrimental to health and being and not to actually physically see people.
And I heard your fabulous TEDx talk and your new book, Platonic. Congratulations. Um, it's doing so well. Making friendships as an adult is hard. Finding who you mesh with, it's difficult. You still have to find people and put yourself out there. I think that's a lot of different places for you to launch.
[00:01:45] Marisa: Yeah. I could talk maybe a little bit about how I got interested in this topic and then my tips on how to make friends. So I, when my young twenties were not so focused on friendship, I was really focused on romantic partnerships. And when those didn't work out, I felt really bad. So I started this wellness group with my friend where we met up, we cooked, we did yoga together, we meditated, and it was really healing. And what was really healing wasn't necessarily all the wellness, it was just being in community with people that I loved who loved me every week. And I realized that I had some beliefs about love that really made these breakups a lot harder than they had to be.
Which was romantic love is the only love that makes me worthy. Romantic love is the only love that matters. And I looked around at my friends and I was like, why doesn't this love matter? It feels so sacred and so profound to me. So I started doing some reading, who was talking about this topic, so that I could share something unique as a psychologist who could really get into the science of this topic of making friends.
And then I decided to write platonic as really a way for us to level this hierarchy that we place on love and to say friendship is also fulfilling and beautiful and profound. So, that's the story. That's its origin story.
[00:03:02] Lauren: And what really struck me is as parents, And I'm not there yet at all. It seems like parents put like pride and ego on their kids being married and their kids having kids.
And it's a badge almost is what struck me in just, when you, when I started listening to your TED talk, that's kind of that, how did that even evolve? And I don't want to go to that kind of, because I do want to talk about how to make friends and how to do that and get into the solution that seems messed up.
Because that seems like you would put that on your kids too. Oh, you've arrived when your kids are married and they have kids. Like you've done your job. Like what, how about them being good, balanced people and having the right values and having good friendships that, that last and are meaningful and fulfilling.
[00:03:51] Marisa: Absolutely. Yeah. I think, you know, a lot of us have internalized this idea that you've made it or you're a full adult when you have a romantic partnership in a way that we don't for friendship, right? We don't ask people. Have you made friends in the same way we asked them? Have you found a husband or who are you dating?
Even within our language, we see this implicit hierarchy. Like you'll say to someone, we're just friends or we became more than friends, right? In comparison between friends and romantic partners. But friendship is robust to everything. Oh yeah. You could be, people are beginning to choose friends as life partners and you could have a very intimate friendship for some even more intimate than their romantic relationship, particularly for women.
Men tend to have less intimate friendships and, and there's research that finds that single people with great community are actually happier than the average married person. I think we should let people choose what works best for them instead of assuming that everybody needs to go down the same path towards happiness.
[00:04:53] Lauren: Yeah. I know a group of four. Women in their eighties that now live together and they once became authors. She's written her a bunch of books and they're doing great. They're thriving.
[00:05:05] Marisa: That's so lovely.
[00:05:07] Lauren: Yeah. I want one who cooks really healthy and well in mind.
[00:05:13] Marisa: Yes. And there’s a few things. Okay. I love
[00:05:15] Lauren: Okay. I love hearing about when you go into a group thinking, I think it was the likeness gap.
When you think you're going to be liked, it's that whole, the self-fulfilling prophecy, but in a good way, when you think people are going to like you, that you're well received, am I putting that right?
[00:05:33] Marisa: You are, I think one of the biggest barriers to making friends is people think they'll be rejected and you just brought up the liking gap, which is this research that finds that when strangers interact and predict how liked they are by the other person, they underestimate how like they are and the more self-critical they are, the more pronounced this liking gap is. So one of the things I advise for making friends is to assume people like you, because when researchers told people you're going to go into a group and be like, people actually became more likable. They were friendlier, they were warmer, and it was a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Whereas we see that people that are most likely to reject you are the ones that fear rejection because when we're afraid of rejection, according to one study, we tend to. Be cold and withdrawn toward other people because we think they might be rejecting us, right? And so we get into the self-protection mode. And so we have this self-fulfilling prophecy too when we think you were going to reject us It triggers a series of behaviors that make rejection more likely.
[00:06:39] Lauren: Okay, is there something also about a beautiful mess? Yeah, can you explain that?
[00:06:44] Marisa: Yeah So across the board we find that the research shows that we have this negativity bias. We're in When we predict how we come off socially, our predictions are skewed toward the negative and are inaccurate. So we talked about that in regards to the liking gap, that people actually like us more than we think, but we also find that's true with vulnerability.
When we're vulnerable, we underestimate how positively people perceive us. And it's also true with affection. When we share affection toward people, we underestimate how much they like it, and overestimate how awkward it is. When we reach out to a friend to reconnect, We underestimate just how much they'll value it.
When we say no to someone, we overestimate how negatively they'll respond to it. Across the board, we see that generally the world is safer than our brain is telling us, and that our brain tends to remember all these negative experiences and ignore all of the positive. One way to facilitate social connection is to correct for this, right?
Because if we're always assuming the worst, it's going to be very hard to then be vulnerable, then initiate, then reconnect with people, right? And so, the more that we can assume that if I am vulnerable, people might actually really value it, or like it, or if I initiate, they might be open to it, that assuming people like you piece, I think, the beginning when you're initiating new friendship, but throughout the life course of the friendship, can really help the friendship be more maintained.
[00:08:07] Lauren: Are you still friends with that same group that you were getting together with every week?
[00:08:09] Marisa: Yeah, we still meet up every other week now. We have been there together.
[00:08:14] Lauren: And that's amazing. So do you make new friends now or do people think they're part of your study?
[00:08:20] Marisa: I've always liked having more deep friendships and fewer and investing more deeply.
So that's what I'm trying to focus on right now. Like almost having a smaller network, but seeing the people that I want to see more often.
[00:08:35] Lauren: You must be past your twenties cause I heard you say you have more friends in your twenties and it gets smaller. Can you talk about that a little bit?
[00:08:42] Marisa: Yeah, it's called the socio-emotional selectivity hypothesis, which are big words that means.
We get more selective about our friends as we get older because our goals differ. So when we're in our 20s, our goals are novelty, adventure, we want to meet all different people because they can expose to all these new things. But as we get older and we start thinking about how much time we have left, it becomes more important to us to have more quality connections.
So You'll see older people pruning their networks a little bit more and having these kind of high standards for friendship compared to people in their 20s. But I will say times of transition, we tend to be really open to friendship. So that's, for example, when you retire and you're not seeing your work colleagues anymore and you have more time on your hands.
Maybe your kids have moved out or, but you go through a divorce or widowhood. Those are all prime times where people tend to be more open to friendship. So there is friendship making also happening across the lifespan. And in fact, one study found that every seven years we lose half our friends. And you don't have to make friends now. Probably at some point you will have to.
[00:09:46] Lauren: I have kids, college age, so I already see a huge change in that. Now they're out and about. But. It seemed to me moving in, all the parents were like, and he's going to make friends this year. Like I had a lot of parents like, here's my kid. And all the parents were kind of helicopter parenting almost, even though you could tell they may not have been that way, but they were very concerned about the lack of social.
Cause these kids had missed the end of high school, the beginning of college was like locked down in here. They need to learn how to be social. And I don't know how it is on the campus where you're on a big campus, but I don't know. It's just different.
[00:10:27] Marisa: Yeah. The research finds that this youngest generation was their mental health was most affected by the pandemic.
And I think that In general, when we go through long bouts of loneliness, it makes our social skills ebb a little bit. And that's natural. Social loneliness is linked to social anxiety over time. So, we all felt a little weird and awkward, and not all of us are out of that. And yeah, if you feel like I can't take social cues, or I feel like I'm blabbing, or I'm worried that people don't like me, those are all kind of signs of social anxiety.
And that definitely happened in the pandemic. And many people also reported being very exhausted by social interaction. So it was hard on us. But I want to say that because I want to say that if it was hard on you and you felt like, now I feel like I'm weird, that you're not alone and that everybody is like that. So they're not judging you as much as they are. You think, cause they're probably judging themselves.
[00:11:23] Lauren: I just did an episode about being vulnerable, actually it was about being authentic, but it was really about being vulnerable. Cause I went to parents weekend, which is called friends and family weekend now. And I went by myself and I thought I have nothing in common with these people. They, nobody's been had my life experience, you know, the head, the head, the head. And for some reason I shared with. Um, mom, I didn't know anybody there. I was at, in a room, there were no students. I was the only person in the entire school there that my son wouldn't let me see his dorm room, which I just thought was weird as could be.
We ended up having a very good conversation about it. I understand. I completely understand now. He's not a kid that's hiding anything. It wasn't that, but she ended up telling me her daughter would let her see hers. Different reason and anyway, we end up because I said that she told me not right away, by the way, it wasn't like she said me to point like that, but she ended up and I said, would you have told me?
And she said, not if you didn't tell me. And she ended up telling me a lot of other things later, because of course we became friends and now I want to stay in touch with her and everything else because I was vulnerable and said something I was completely ashamed of. Actually, I don't know why I said it.
Probably because I learned from this podcast, doesn't matter what I say, nobody's paying that much attention and really they'll blink and keep going. But anyway, and that it's what I've learned from listening to you. That's how you make friends.
[00:12:53] Marisa: Yeah, definitely. It's, I mean, we tend to think of vulnerability as burdening people, but the research clearly finds that when we're disclosing intimate things, people like us more and people that are more disclosed negative things in their life are actually more likely to make friends in their transition to college.
And I feel like when I heard your story, Lauren, that there's just like this collective exhale that happens when someone is a little bit real. Woo. I can be a real person now. Like they shared their vulnerable thing. Now I can share what's actually on my mind instead of kind of playing this role of stranger or a new person, new acquaintance, and I think it just moves the bounds of intimacy for everybody.
[00:13:39] Lauren: Yeah. I always want to tell people, here's what I've been through because we've all been through stuff. Nobody gets through life unscathed, but you don't put it all out there when you meet.
[00:13:48] Marisa: Yeah. It’s incremental balance. It balances this risk.
[00:13:51] Lauren: Yeah, totally does. So here I'm an empty nester. My daughter was so cute. She's like, are you going to be okay? Like, wow, she actually found a form. I go, yeah, I'll be fine. Don't worry. But I actually have to, I find myself having to put on the calendar. Everyone wants to have lunch. I like, I don't have time for lunch, but I will. Meet you to go for a walk. I have to put that on my calendar.
Cause I won't take the time to get outside. I work from home for everything. And so now I have to, that's my new thing is putting things like that on the calendar. But meeting new people is not that easy. I've gone on a few retreats and I meet people at some of them and I don't at others. So just depends. So what do you recommend?
[00:14:33] Marisa: I recommend pursuing a hobby and community with others. So if you like to paint or hike or even eat, you can join a separate club, just doing that in a group. And then you have repeated unplanned interaction and shared vulnerability, which means that you meet up repeatedly over time and it's in your calendar.
No one has to schedule it. and people are more unguarded because there's this sociologist, Rebecca Adams, and that's what she argues is needed for friendship to just happen more organically. And we have that in childhood, right? School, lunch, recess, gym, but we don't have that as adults. So we need to find ways to recreate it.
And when you do that, you capitalize on something called the mere exposure effect, which is our unconscious tendency to like people just because they're familiar to us. So, in this study, these researchers planted women into a psychology lecture, and at the end of the semester, no one remembered the woman because it was a big lecture, but they reported liking the woman who showed up to the most lectures 20 percent more than the one that didn't show up for any.
So, what that means is when you join this group that's repeated over time, in two to three months, you're going to feel very differently. You're going to like them more, they're going to like you more. It also means that at the beginning, it's going to be awkward. You're going to feel weary. You don't know them.
You don't trust them, right? That's not a sign to abandon the group. That's just a sign that you're, you're in the process of connecting. That's a necessary part of the process and experience of discomfort or awkwardness.
[00:16:04] Lauren: To give it time. I love the idea of what you did with your friends with. You get together every, however often, and switch houses, and have a meal, and one person hosts, gets all the food.
[00:16:15] Marisa: And I've done that in so many ways. And like you, Lauren, I like to use the things that I want to do anyway and just do them in community, right? You want to walk anyway, so why not do that with someone else? For me, I wanted to learn Spanish, so we had La Cena, which was our dinner where we'd all speak Spanish together.
I wanted to write a book, so I had this writing critique group. I wanted to do work that wasn't related to my main job. So I had a life hustle group where we met up and co worked together. Like I just love start all of these different groups because they help me achieve my goals. They give me a certain amount of accountability to hang out with my friends.
Yeah. And not only that, like I teach this class on loneliness and one of my classes is very connected and the other isn't as connected. And I wondered, what's the difference? One of these, in one of these classes, they hang out outside of class and the other class, they don't really. And so I found my observation is the difference is that one of these classes has an igniter, which I define as an igniter is the person who creates a group who's willing to risk rejection and say to everybody, Hey, does anyone want to get lunch after class?
Anybody is welcome. And then because there's that one igniter, 10 different people in that class have more community, 10 different people in this class feel more connected because one person was willing to ask. So I feel like. If we can develop more igniters who create these opportunities for connection, who create continuous on prem interaction and shared vulnerability, who create infrastructure, who are really willing to risk that rejection.
Then so many more people will be more connected, even if they're not having to be as active in forming those connections.
[00:17:54] Lauren: Ah, I love that. We need igniters. We need. Yeah, that sounds dangerous for some reason. In today's climate, but we do, we need igniters. Social igniters. Yes, we need social igniters. Let's put it that way. So what do you do when you’re lonely?
[00:18:07] Marisa: Oh, that's a good question. It's weird. Like, I know from the science of loneliness that loneliness is very toxic for us, as toxic as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. And I know that when you're lonely, you tend to think people are rejecting you more than they actually are and be less compassionate toward others.
So it negatively affects you a lot. And I spend a lot of time around people, like every day I'm hanging out with someone, but I have found that it's important for me to spend a day alone just for myself. And I do sometimes get a little bit lonely at that one day, like not seeing anyone for a whole day, but I've realized that sometimes there's trade-offs.
I need to be able to tolerate a little bit of loneliness for me to recharge. I'm an introvert. So it's like I can't fully escape loneliness to feel recharged. I have to be able to balance. Needing, recharging and needing social connection.
[00:19:00] Lauren: I think there's a difference between being alone and being lonely also.
Yeah. And I know having done this podcast for long enough and knowing how much we need community and connection all of a sudden be like, Oh, I've been isolated. So intellectually knowing and emotionally knowing are two different things. So I can have a head full of knowledge. And yet I think the more we isolate, the more we isolate, it just keeps going and going so to get.
Somebody who's isolating to stop isolating is hard. And so when they're in that loneliness, so it's interesting hearing you say that it's like smoking cigarettes. This is, I know the free people. Yeah, definitely. So what tools do you use for when you're, yeah, you're just sluggish. I'm not talking depression where, you know, like a real clinical depression, but what are your tools? Do you meditate? You had mentioned meditation before.
[00:19:59] Marisa: When it comes to loneliness, research finds that if we spend our alone time more active than passive, we feel less lonely. So if I'm like, Oh, I have this night alone. So let me go see that museum or take a walk in the park versus let me sit at home and watch Love is Blind, five episodes of the hello last night, then we're going to feel more lonely.
So that's one thing. If I feel like I do have this one day where I choose to spend time alone, even if I do feel lonely for the recharging, but no, it's important. Yeah, but if there's other days where I'm like, I would rather be around people, but I'm lonely and no one's available, I'd probably try to spend it more actively.
Go on a date with myself, for example, to feel not lonely, but more alone. I think the people that feel alone rather than lonely, they're able to see their alone time as an offering and ask themselves. What do I want to do with this offering of time with myself?
[00:20:54] Lauren: I love that you've actually got me thinking I'm gonna do a meditation group. That's awesome. I mean that just is so good. Do you have a message of hope that you want to give?
[00:21:05] Marisa: I do. when my niece read my book, she said for friendship to happen, someone has to be brave. So be brave.
[00:21:12] Lauren: Yeah, be a social igniter. Yeah, be an igniter. Be a vulnerable social igniter.
[00:21:18] Marisa: Yeah, if you're extra brave, you want to go to advanced levels of friendship.
[00:21:23] Lauren: Yeah, definitely. Is there anything, I'm sure there's plenty, that I didn't ask you that you're going to be like, Oh, I wish Lauren had asked me this.
[00:21:32] Marisa: Oh, there was one thing I wanted to mention. When you join that group that's repeated over time, you also have to overcome something called covert avoidance, which is our tendency to show up physically, but check out mentally.
So you want to be able to say to someone, Hey, it's been so great to talk to you and this meditation group. And I was wondering if you'd be willing to meet up next time before our group or after our group, right? It's that engagement. There's this theory called the theory of inferred attraction, which is the idea that people like people that they think like them.
So, if you want to be likable, you have to engage with people, show interest in them, initiate with them, tell them how much you like them, how much they mean to you. And that's what really fosters connection.
[00:22:12] Lauren: That reminds me of something else I heard you say, that you might want to reengage with some of your old friends. Don't think that they don't want to hear from you, they probably do.
[00:22:20] Marisa: There was something about that. There is a study that finds that when people were told to reconnect with someone from their past, They underestimated just how much that person would appreciate that reconnection. So if we want to give people one takeaway for today, it's scroll through your phone contacts, find one person you've been wanting to reconnect with, text them.
[00:22:39] Lauren: I just love that. Oh, thank you so much for being a guest today on 52 Weeks of Hope. Your book is platonic and it is, the New York Times gave it a great review, I concur. And your TEDx talk is fabulous too. So thank you. All the links and everything will be in the show notes, of course, and you can find everything on the website and yes, thank you so much.
[00:23:01] Marisa: Thank you so much, Lauren. Appreciate it.
[00:23:04] Lauren: Yeah. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode and take with you Marissa's messages of authenticity, connection and community. Such great messages to take into your week ahead. Be sure to tune in next week for a special episode on the five biggest lessons on how to improve your life and move your life forward.
It's super insightful with all these great tips for your daily life. I know you're going to love that. It's so good. Don't forget to get in touch with one old friend and check it and let me know how it went. We can all compare notes. You can do that over on the Facebook page or just send me a note. I hope you're enjoying the podcast.
Share the love and forward the link over to a couple of your friends. I'm Lauren Abrams. Thanks for listening.