Essay: The power of strong and good friendships

*"Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joys, and dividing our grief." — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Friends have a large degree of affection and respect for each other. Friends will enjoy the company of each other on a regular basis, and provide assistance if one is in need. Friendships tend to be formed either as a result of an ongoing requirement for people to be in contact with each other (Church, work, school, etc.) or as the result of common interests.

The Book of Genesis records God indicating “It is not good for the man to be alone." (Genesis 2:18). Friendships and other relationships such as family/romantic relationships are extremely important for one's well-being (See also, Physical and psychological effects of loneliness).

David B. Brooks in his 2023 book entitled How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen wrote about loneliness:

“

I’ve been writing as if we live in a healthy cultural environment, in a society in which people are enmeshed in thick communities and webs of friendship, trust, and belonging. We don’t live in such a society. We live in an environment in which political animosities, technological dehumanization, and social breakdown undermine connection, strain friendships, erase intimacy, and foster distrust. We’re living in the middle of some sort of vast emotional, relational, and spiritual crisis. It is as if people across society have lost the ability to see and understand one another, thus producing a culture that can be brutalizing and isolating. The percentage of Americans who said they have no close friends quadrupled between 1990 and 2020. In one survey, 54 percent of Americans reported that no one knows them well. The number of American adults without a romantic partner increased by a third. More to the point, 36 percent of Americans reported that they felt lonely frequently or almost all of the time, including 61 percent of young adults and 51 percent of young mothers. People were spending much more time alone. In 2013, Americans spent an average of six and a half hours per week with friends. By 2019, they were spending only four hours per week with friends, a 38 percent drop. By 2021, as the Covid-19 pandemic was easing, they were spending only two hours and forty-five minutes per week with friends, a 58 percent decline. The General Social Survey asks Americans to rate their happiness levels. Between 1990 and 2018, the share of Americans who put themselves in the lowest happiness category increased by more than 50 percent... The effects of this are ruinous and self-reinforcing. Social disconnection warps the mind. When people feel unseen, they tend to shut down socially. People who are lonely and unseen become suspicious. They start to take offense where none is intended. They become afraid of the very thing they need most, which is intimate contact with other humans. They are buffeted by waves of self-loathing and self-doubt. After all, it feels shameful to realize that you are apparently unworthy of other people’s attention. Many people harden into their solitude. They create self-delusional worlds. “Loneliness obfuscates,” the interdisciplinary scientist Giovanni Frazzetto writes in his book Together, Closer. “It becomes a deceiving filter through which we see ourselves, others, and the world. It makes us more vulnerable to rejection, and it heightens our general level of vigilance and insecurity in social situations.” We see ourselves as others see us, and when we feel invisible, well, we have a tendency to fall to pieces... Sadness, lack of recognition, and loneliness turn into bitterness. When people believe that their identity is unrecognized, it feels like injustice—because it is. People who have been treated unjustly often lash out, seek ways to humiliate those who they feel have humiliated them. Loneliness thus leads to meanness. As the saying goes, pain that is not transformed gets transmitted. The data I just cited about social isolation and sadness is, no surprise, accompanied by other sorts of data about rising hostility and callousness. In 2021, hate-crime reports surged to their highest levels in twelve years. In 2000, roughly two-thirds of Americans gave to charity; by 2021, fewer than half did. One restaurant owner recently told me that he has to ban somebody from his place for rude behavior almost every week these days. That didn’t use to happen. A friend of mine who is a nurse says her number one problem is retaining staff. Her nurses want to quit because the patients have become so abusive, even violent. As the columnist Peggy Noonan put it, “People are proud of their bitterness now.” The social breakdown manifests as a crisis of distrust. Two generations ago, roughly 60 percent of Americans said that “most people can be trusted.” By 2014, according the General Social Survey, only 30.3 percent did, and only 19 percent of millennials. High-trust societies have what Francis Fukuyama calls “spontaneous sociability,” meaning that people are quick to get together and work together. Low-trust societies do not have this. Low-trust societies fall apart. Distrust sows distrust. It creates a feeling that the only person you can count on is yourself. Distrustful people assume that others are out to get them, they exaggerate threats, they fall for conspiracy theories that explain the danger they feel.

”

Articles on the importance of friendships on one's physical and psychological well-being

People with strong friendships are healthier and happier.

See also: Happiness

• Friendships: Enrich your life and improve your health, Mayo Clinic

• Why Friendships Are So Important for Health and Well-Being, Everyday Health

• Psychological Benefits of Friendship, WebMD

• The science of why friendships keep us healthy, American Psychological Association

• 10 reasons why friendship is so important in life

• Why Your Friends Are More Important Than You Think, Greater Good Magazine

• 6 Friendship Benefits: Why It's Important to Stay Close to Your Friends by Arlin Cuncic, MA

Being a good friend will make you happier and help you be a better person

See also: Hedonism and Quotes on friendship

The paradox of hedonism is that focusing on pleasure seeking often has counterproductive results. For example, gluttony and obesity is a causal factor for many illnesses.

According to the Journal of Public Economics, "The “Hedonistic Paradox” states that homo economicus, or someone who seeks happiness for him- or herself, will not find it, but the person who helps others will.

• "The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

• "To friendship every burden's light." - Aesop

• "Never leave a friend behind. Friends are all we have to get us through this life—and they are the only things from this world that we could hope to see in the next." - Dean Koontz

See also

• Social influence
• Quotes on friendship

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