MWF Seeking BFF (5 page)

As I tell Sara during our recap phone call, if TV or books don’t come up organically, we’re really not meant to be.

On Tuesday morning, the three of us exchange “We should do it again!” emails. But considering that when I took Michelle’s
phone number she didn’t ask for mine, I’m not holding my breath.

Having ruled out 75 percent of my potential best friends after only a month, I need to home in on exactly what I’m looking for. What is a BFF, anyway? Most people lump bestfriendship in with love, one of those you-know-it-when-you-feel-it intangibles. But I can’t continue blindly on this quest looking for something even I can’t define. I’ll wade through the year like Goldilocks—this one was too grumpy, that one was too old. If I’m lucky, I’ll find the girl who’s just right, but trying to cast someone in a role is a lot tougher when you don’t know what the part calls for.

If I take the
Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations
route, a friend is both someone “before whom I may think aloud,” (Ralph Waldo Emerson) and who lets me have the “total freedom to be myself” (Jim Morrison). She “leaves footprints on my heart” (Eleanor Roosevelt) and “gets me a book I ain’t read” (Abraham Lincoln). Which is why I can’t stand quote books. These definitions all sound lovely, but don’t provide me with any actual help. If Abe had his way, librarians would be the most popular people in the world.

It turns out that while we may think best friends are people with that magic something we can’t put our finger on, researchers have fairly accurately defined the traits that propel someone from acquaintance to friend to BFF. Journalist Karen Karbo details this ascent up the friendship ladder in
Psychology Today.
In order for someone to move from girl-date to friend, she says, we need intimacy. Not intimacy in the turn-the-lights-down-low
sense. Friendship intimacy starts with self-disclosure—sharing personal information you wouldn’t tell just anyone—and reciprocity, meaning if you tell her your secrets, she better tell you hers. But it’s not just about disclosure. Friendship intimacy calls for whoever is on the receiving end of the information to offer “hefty helpings of emotional expressiveness and unconditional support.” Yet, as Karbo points out, they can’t be too opinionated. So if I’m enraged that Matt canceled our Friday night plans, again, she better huff and puff and agree it was lame of him, but she would never say “He’s such an ass. I’ve never liked him.” Such are the unwritten rules of friendship.

In order to move from a regular friend to a best one, I will need über-intimacy but also what researchers call social identity support. That is to say, my best friend is someone who will reaffirm my social role in society—as a wife, a writer, a pop-culturist—and thereby boost my self-esteem. Sounds a bit self-indulgent, sure, but who am I to argue with science?

Given these criteria, I see why only Hannah so far has been deemed a potential bestie. She’s the only one with whom I felt comfortable mentioning my father’s death and the unfortunate timing of my father-in-law’s lost battle to pancreatic cancer two weeks after my wedding. She listened, said “that’s horrible,” and didn’t harp on it enough to make me feel sad. In turn she told me about her parents’ divorce and the challenges of moving back home. Intimacy and reciprocity. That she invited me to join a Chicago book club told me she respected me as a true reader—social identity support in action.

There are steps I should take to nurture this budding relationship. According to psychologists Debra Oswald and Eddie Clark’s research, there are four necessary behaviors to make a friendship stick. Self-disclosure, supportiveness, interaction, and positivity. I’ve got the first two down. Interaction is pretty
self-explanatory. Call, email, and accept invitations to dinner instead of declining so I can watch
Modern Family.
As for positivity, no one’s going to want to be my best friend if I spend all our time together complaining about having no friends.

These four steps are important. They’re not all that different from what I found on wikiHow—tell secrets, invite her over—but they have the weight of actual research behind them. They are proven friendship guidelines—no matter your age—and will be integral for both building new friendships and maintaining old ones. Now I just need to translate science into action.

I’m meeting University of Chicago professor and psychologist John Cacioppo this morning to discuss my predicament. Now that I’ve started to pinpoint, scientifically, what a best friend is and why I need one, I’d like an expert’s take on just how I should go about finding her. Cacioppo is the coauthor of
Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection.
Since he’s an authority on people
not
having friends, he probably has some insight into how to reverse the problem.

Scheduling an appointment with a college professor to ask for help making friends does feel a bit, well, sad. And formal. It’s not like higher educators have a reputation as the most social beings. As I wander the halls searching for Cacioppo’s office, I’m feeling self-conscious. Like my bestfriendlessness is showing on my face, seeping through my pores. I try to adopt the strut of someone with too many friends to count. Confident, head held high, a knowing grin on my face as if I’m remembering an inside joke with my closest pal.

I’m not sure why I’m putting on this show. The building is
empty save for one janitor, and I can’t imagine he cares about my social life.

I arrive at Cacioppo’s office at 7
A.M.
I’m not usually fit for conversation this early in the morning, but Cacioppo wears a warm smile under his thick mustache that perks me right up. I wonder if studying connectedness all his life has made him especially attuned to friend-seekers like me. His voice is gruff but quiet and, as I jabber on, he’s got that encouraging psychologist’s nod that makes me feel like I could talk forever. I give him my entire I-need-a-local-BFF spiel.

But suddenly I’m wondering if I really do
need
a local one. I want one, obviously. My lack of nearby buddies has affected me enough to spur this quest. But the research I’ve read seems to indicate that long-distance pals do the trick. The physical and mental health benefits of friendship exist regardless of whether your friend is next door or across the country.

“Full-threaded contact is important,” Cacioppo tells me. “This is why social networking sites can exacerbate loneliness. People use them as a substitute for interaction. The person who hides behind four thousand Facebook friends probably feels very isolated.”

Cacioppo says that when it comes to technology, Skype is better than the phone, and the phone is better than texting. “There’s a lot that goes into personal interaction. You have a much richer understanding of someone when you are physically present with her than if you are talking over the phone or email.”

“So how do I find someone to be physically present
with
?” I feel like an overeager golden retriever, panting at the feet of my master until he’s ready to throw me a bone. Cacioppo seems to hold the answers to all my life’s problems.

“Well, you’re already doing the first thing right. You’re
going out and looking. But selection is critical. You need to find people with similar values, attitudes, and outlooks,” he says. “Think about what’s important to you, then find others in the same boat. Join those activities, troll those sites. Then relax. Be your generous self. You’ll meet others like you.”

Sensing my let’s-get-out-there-right-now attitude, Cacioppo issues a quick warning. “If you are looking too urgently—if you’ve got to find your best friend
today
—it probably won’t go as well. You may find people who will betray you or disappoint you. A person can tell the difference between someone who desperately wants to be her friend and latches on right away and someone who seems cool and laid back about it.” Was he on my date with Heidi and Michelle? “You have to have the right frame of mind. Give it time.”

Not to worry, I tell him. I’m giving myself a whole year.

Once I find people I connect with, Cacioppo says one of the best ways to upgrade the relationship from friends to best friends is to venture out of our natural habitat. “It’s like marriage,” he says. “Too often we fall into a routine that makes a relationship stale. Research suggests doing things that are ridiculous. Sharing that kind of experience promotes bonding. The same is true for friendship. You might meet friends in the places you enjoy—like a book club—but then you want to get them outside of that safe environment. Go bowling or dancing. Those are the kind of friendship-building activities you need.”

Got it.

As for my master plan, the whole fifty-two-dates-over-a-year thing, Cacioppo is skeptical. “It’s a lot to take on,” he says. “Friendship brings responsibilities and obligations. If you’re tending too many, you may not have time to get really close to any of them.”

Too many friends? That’s what I call a high-class problem.

Cacioppo adds a final thought. One that is apparently supposed to make me feel better. “Finding a best friend is a low probability for anyone. But you only need one or two to ward off loneliness. What you’re doing is smart, but it will be hard.”

Believe me, I know.

Just after my date with Hannah, I somehow landed an invitation to a second book club. Matt’s coworker Natalie, who I met at a wine-tasting fund-raiser, organizes this one. She mentioned it at the benefit and Matt immediately chimed in.

“Rachel’s been looking for a book club,” he said. “She’s obsessed.” Obviously he’d forgotten that I just found one.

“You should come,” Natalie told me. “We’re reading
Olive Kitteridge.
”

Committing to two clubs a month seemed ambitious. My schedule is getting pretty full between the weekly girl-dates, my yoga classes, and, hopefully soon, follow-up dates. Making friends is a full-time job. The problem is that I already have a full-time job. And let’s just forget crazy notions like spending time with my husband during our first year of marriage.

Against my better judgment, I agreed. I can read two books a month, and double the book clubs means twice the potential BFFs.

As I read through people’s responses to the next meeting’s Evite, I get the feeling I’m going to be the youngest person there. By about ten years. “I’ll be there if I am feeling well and Bill can watch the little one,” says one member. “Sorry,
we’re taking the kids to meet their great-grandparents,” says another.

I was wrong. I’m the youngest person here by only five years, but they feel like important ones. Three of the members have two children (one woman brought her five-week-old while I brought two bottles of pinot grigio), one is a school principal, another mentions her upcoming tenth anniversary. There’s lots of chatter about breast-feeding, composting, and second children. I chime in when the conversation turns to
The Biggest Loser
and
Twilight.

Eventually one woman, Anne, starts talking about the guy she’s dating, a law student. Much more my territory. They finally had the age talk she says, which had been weighing on her for weeks.