Platonic | Franco, Marisa G., PhD

Lange Beschreibung
Instant New York Times bestseller

Is understanding the science of attachment the key to building lasting friendships and finding your people in an ever-more-fragmented world?

How do we make and keep friends in an era of distraction, burnout, and chaos, especially in a society that often prizes romantic love at the expense of other relationships? In Platonic, Dr. Marisa G. Franco unpacks the latest, often counterintuitive findings about the bonds between us for example, why your friends aren t texting you back (it s not because they hate you!), and the myth of friendships happening organically (making friends, like cultivating any relationship, requires effort!). As Dr. Franco explains, to make and keep friends you must understand your attachment style secure, anxious, or avoidant: it is the key to unlocking what s working (and what s failing) in your friendships.

Making new friends, and deepening longstanding relationships, is possible at any age in fact, it s essential. The good news: there are specific, research-based ways to improve the number and quality of your connections using the insights of attachment theory and the latest scientific research on friendship. Platonic provides a clear and actionable blueprint for forging strong, lasting connections with others and for becoming our happiest, most fulfilled selves in the process.

Rezensierung
'Dr. Marisa G. Franco and Platonic have been invaluable guides on my journey to nurture and deepen my friendships. Her advice is wise, concrete, and effective and my friendships are better for it. Glennon Doyle, author of Untamed, Founder of Together Rising

Dr. Franco s book Platonic is an ode to modern friendship, complete with a practical guide to making and keeping friends. It reminds us of the importance of platonic love in today s society bucking the notion that romantic love trumps everything else in our lives the depth of research Ms. Franco weaves into the book sheds light onto an aspect of our world that like an old and trusted pal it may be too easy to take for granted. Wall Street Journal

'A remarkable examination of the epidemic of loneliness and sound advice for alleviating it...A pleasing mix of research, advice, and humor, this book is a useful tonic to a key social ailment.'  Kirkus Reviews (starred)

'A smart and savvy guide on forging friendships This has wisdom to spare.   Publishers Weekly

As a culture we have long been obsessed with romantic love and parent/child love, and yet it will be our friendships that will most determine our health and out happiness. Reading Platonic will not only inspire a shift in your priorities, but will guide you to create the community you crave. Filled with studies, interviews, and real-life stories, Marisa Franco leads us back to what matters most: love in all its forms. If you want to feel genuinely connected, read this book. Shasta Nelson, author of Friendships Don t Just Happen!

There isn t enough conversation around some of the central relationships in our lives: friends! We are craving information about how to make friends, keep friends, and be a better friend and Platonic delivers. I m so impressed with the research and thoughtfulness in this book, and I learned so much about what might have gone wrong in my past friendships and what I want out of my current and future relationships. I closed this book determined to prioritize my friendships as one of the most important aspects of my life. Laura Tremaine, author of Share Your Stuff. I ll Go First.

'Filled with evidence-based tips and stories you can't wait to share, Platonic is a fantastic guide not just for making and keeping friends it's also a manifesto for how to more effectively invest in the stuff that really matters in life.' Laurie Santos, Chandrika and Ranjan Tandon Professor of Psychology at Yale University and host of The Happiness Lab podcast

Platonic is an intensive exploration about the healing nature and safe-haven to be found in friendships. It s a gentle, yet affirming, call-in for us to investigate how we ve regarded the platonic relationships in our life and opportunities for deep fulfillment that we may be missing out on. Joy Harden Bradford, Ph.D., Founder & CEO, Therapy for Black Girls

If you don t want to see the doctor, see your friends. The evidence on this is very clear having strong connections is the lowest-hanging fruit on the tree of a healthy life. What s less straightforward is how you go about doing that, so see this doctor and she ll help keep you away from the other ones.' Billy Baker, author of We Need to Hang Out

Buchausschnitt
Chapter 1
 
How Friendship Transforms Our Lives
 
Connecting with Others Makes Us Ourselves
 
'Some of the widowed sit at home and watch television for the rest of their lives. They may be alive, but they're not really living,' seventy-three-year-old Harriet remarks, referencing the members of the grief group she attended after her husband's death. Harriet could have easily faced this same fate if it wasn't for one thing: friendship.
 
Harriet didn't always value friendship. In fact, up until she married Federico at the age of fifty, it wasn't a priority. She was ambitious, working twelve-hour days and traveling enough to eventually meet her goal of visiting every country in the world. To ascend in her career, she moved across the US, chasing jobs-from the Northeast to the Midwest to the West and back to the Northeast again-disposing of friendships along the way.
 
But her ambitions never impeded her search for a spouse. 'That was the training of my culture-to live your life to find a husband,' she says. She had a string of boyfriends throughout her life, and when those relationships clipped, she would hunt for someone new. She remembered visiting her co-worker Denise's home and envying how she had it all: an impressive job, a husband, beautiful twins. Single at forty, she struggled to accept the reality that she might never have the husband and children she dreamed of. But, without the towering domestic obligations that arose from family life, she filled her hours with work.
 
Harriet admits friendship wasn't all that fulfilling in her younger years because of how she approached it. She was ashamed of her childhood, as she grew up on a farm, dirt poor. During the summers, she worked on neighbors' farms to pay for school. As she rose in her career, and her network increasingly churned with wealthy elites, she never felt like she belonged. Friendship was a place for her to live a double life, to perform the culture of affluence she never felt fully accustomed to: attending estate sales, dropping Benjamins on dinners, arguing over mundanities like the color of neighbors' lawns. She never let herself get too comfortable around friends, lest they figure out where she really came from, who she really was.
 
Then, two things happened that resuscitated her view on friendship. First, when she married Federico, a social butterfly, she acquiesced to hosting friends in their home for regular gatherings. 'People wanted to be around us because of how happy we were,' she says. From him, she learned that being around others could be a joy rather than a toll.
 
But it wasn't until Federico died that she truly understood the value of friends. To heal her grief, she attended counseling for the first time, where she learned how to be vulnerable. She transferred the skill of vulnerability to her friendships. When she did, she experienced old friendships in new ways, as her bonds ceased to be places of pretend. While some friendships buckled under the honesty of her grief, others deepened, and she realized that being vulnerable, asking for support, could be a portal to deep intimacy.
 
In her old age, Harriet values friends more than ever. One friendship, she realized, has been her longest love story. She met Shirleen in college, when she was studying abroad in Marseilles. Shirleen was the least judgmental person she ever met, one of the only people Harriet could open up to. Although they lost touch after college, fourteen years later, Shirleen tracked her down and called her. Shirleen lived in London but made the effort to visit Harriet in Washington DC five times over the course of a couple of years. As much as Harriet loved Federico, he wasn't one to talk about feelings, so throughout her life, Shirleen was her only true confidante. 'For our life to feel significant, we crave someone to witness it, to verify its importa