The Secret to Making & Keeping Friends with Dr. Marisa G. Franco
February 16, 2023
Glennon Doyle:
Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. We are back here with Dr. Marisa Franco. We talked so much in the last episode about how important connection and friendship is. And today we’re going to talk about how the hell to actually get it. And I just want everybody to feel like, well, this maybe won’t work for me, or how is this going to happen on a podcast? Just trust me, it is working for me. Okay. If it’s working for me, it can work for you.
Glennon Doyle:
Dr. Marisa G. Franco is a psychologist, international speaker and New York Times bestselling author, known for digesting and communicating science in ways that change people’s lives, which is so true for me. She works as a professor at the University of Maryland and authored the New York Times Bestseller, Platonic. How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make and Keep Friends. I’d like to talk to you, Dr. Franco, about this idea we have that friendships should just happen organically. That like, oh, if I don’t have friends, it must be because I’m not good enough or people don’t like me enough or because friendship is just supposed to happen. Talk to us about that idea?
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Yeah, so I think a lot of us developed this assumption based on our childhoods, where it was like we were in the playground, we went to school together. It seems like we just made friends more naturally. And there’s this sociologist, Rebecca Adams, who identifies the ingredients of the organic friend as seeing people repeatedly over time in an unplanned way school. None of us were like, let’s meet up at this time. Just we see each other regularly. And then also letting your guard down. So vulnerability.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
So when we are part of groups or a workplace or a school where those ingredients occur, then friendship might happen more organically, but most of us are not. I might see people at work every day. I’m not often vulnerable with them. And so it’s not happening organically. And so in adulthood we can’t rely on the same assumption that we had as kids, which was like, it’s just going to happen. We need to try. Because there’s a study that found that people that think that it just happens are lonelier five years later. Whereas people that think friendship is something that takes effort are less lonely five years later because they make the effort, because they show up, because they go out of their way to try and meet and connect with people.
Glennon Doyle:
So it’s not just bubbly magnetic extroverts who have friends, it’s actually any sort of person who’s very intentional about making friends. So in the previous episode I told you about my friend who’s teaching me about friendship. The way that we became friends, Dr. Franco, is that I got a letter from a third party. It was full paragraphs about the things we both have in common and why we should be friends. It had pictures of celebrations, friendship, celebrations, so I could see the type of friends and the community that they were. It was kind of like an application. And it was like, check yes or no, are you interested or not? And I who had been asking for signs for friendship couldn’t ignore that one. So I was like, okay. It was the most intentional. And then we had to say yes to a breakfast date and they came over with a little orchid and we sat at a table for four hours at 8:00 in the morning. But you call this idea unapologetic initiative. Give us some examples of what people who have friends do to get them.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
So first of all, they are signing up for things which give them opportunities to meet people. Whether that is sports league, gardening, improv class, language class, book club, volunteering, alumni group, whatever it is that’s going to give you the opportunity to actually meet people, which helps you to overcome something called overt avoidance. Which is like, I’m scared of people, so I’m just going to stay at home.” So you have to overcome that. But not only that, here’s the kicker. Once you get to that event, you have to do something else, which is overcoming covert avoidance. Covert avoidance is, I show up physically, but I’m checked out mentally. I’m on my phone, I’m talking to the one person that I already know, I’m standing in the corner, I’m keeping my headphones in my ears. I’m just waiting for someone to approach me.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Once you’re there, you actually have to engage with people and say, oh, hey, my name’s Marisa. How have you liked this book club so far? Or How’s your day going? You have to show that interest in people. Which feels scary because it makes us more vulnerable to rejection. But again, we try to assume people like us, and when we think about what appeals to people when they’re deciding whether to connect with us, one of the misconceptions that I had was like, people will want to connect with me if I’m funny, entertaining, charismatic, putting all this pressure on myself to have to be like, I don’t know, some sort of amazing maverick. But as I read the research, I see that the quality that people actually value the most in another person is that that person makes them feel valued and they matter. And the entertaining part is the least important quality people rate. And this is a larger theory called the theory of inferred attraction, which is people like people that they think like them.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
And so when we engage with people, we say, hi, my name’s Marisa. How’s it going? How have you enjoyed this group? Tell me more about yourself. Fundamentally, what we’re doing is that we are conveying interest and liking in other people, which makes them feel safe enough to convey that interest in liking right back. But going back to our earlier conversation, if we’re always afraid of rejection, we tend to do the opposite. We don’t convey any interest in other people. We withdraw. We come off as cold. And so that’s why I tell people to assume that people like you, because what that’s going to do is it’s going to free you up to show interest in other people, to make other people feel loved, to make other people feel like they matter.
Glennon Doyle:
I once took our kids… Well all the time, we’d used to go to this little cat shelter because my ex-husband was really allergic, so we couldn’t have one. So we would go sit in the little room with all the cats. And this one day, one little orange kitten came up to Amma and approached her and she played with it the whole time. And then a gray kitten went up to Tish, and then a different one came up to me. And we all played with our cat. And then when I got back to the van, I said, “Which cat did you all like the best? What was your favorite?” And nobody said like, oh, that cat in the corner was so beautiful, or That one was so playful. Every single person immediately identified their favorite cat as the one that had come to them.
Glennon Doyle:
And so it was, oh, if we want to be liked, we have to like. That’s it. Nobody leaves a party going, oh, my favorite person was that pretty bubbly one in the corner. It was like, the person who approached them and showed interest. And then I love when you talk in your work about the idea that… Because my go-to would be to go to a party or go to a room or go to whatever, because I’ve been forced to. And then to immediately decide, this is too clicky. Everyone’s in corners. I hate this vibe and shut down.
Amanda Doyle:
See, I knew it. I tried. I tried. And look, everyone was exactly like I thought they’d be.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, yeah. You said if you don’t like the social context, change it. Social context isn’t something that just happens to us. We create it. What?
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Yeah. So I think a lot of people can relate, in that we go into these social contexts and we’re so passive. We’re just like, how are people treating me? But making friends is really about thinking a lot more about how am I treating people? How am I coming off to people? And so I used to do it too, where I would go into an event and be like, “Nobody’s saying hi to me. Everybody’s in their cliques. Nobody’s engaging with me. And so I’m not going to go back.” But I was not holding myself accountable. Am I making people feel loved? Am I engaging with them? Am I approaching them?
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Because if I did, I would have a different experience of this entire social community. And I think a lot of platonic is seeing ourselves as active agents in our social world. It’s not that we just have to wait. I think introverts will say for an extrovert to adopt me. Even though I’m an introvert, I can also make friends and initiate with other people. So introversion is not antithetical to making friends, that we can actually make an effort and try and create change in our social world that we have. We have agency and we have power.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s like you don’t always have to just be the thermometer of the room. That’s what I always was. I will get in here and decide how cold it is. You can be the thermostat. You cannot just read the temperature. You can warm up the temperature and change the rooms you’re in.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
That is so good. Not the thermometer. I can be the thermostat. I really love that way of putting it. That is such a good way of putting it.
Glennon Doyle:
Thanks.
Amanda Doyle:
And if you don’t have friendship applications filling up your email box.
Glennon Doyle:
Well, just one.
Amanda Doyle:
I think that’s how I got the group of friends that I have now. That was my first post-college group of friends. Was I remember seeing, same thing that you said at daycare pickup. I’d see them every once in a while. And it was just routine enough not planned that there were these three or four women that were already in a group, and I liked their energy. And I just emailed them and said, “Would you all like to come to my house? I’ll have bagels and cream cheese and do you want to come over?” And they were like, “That sounds good.” And they brought their kids and it was really kind of scary because they could have said no, but they did. And it’s nine years later and we’re all just still in this group of friends. And I think a lot of times, what if I hadn’t sent that email? I would still just probably be being at school pickup and be like, “Hi ladies, you still look nice. I don’t know you.” And so sometimes you do have to just take the plunge and initiate the first thing.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Yeah. Being the thermostat is… I’m going to keep using that. I think it’s so awesome. But what I also heard within your answer, so something I talk about in Platonic is that if you want to make friends join something repeated over time rather than something one off. Don’t go to one happy hour, join a professional development club where you’re going to see people more regularly. Even better join the board of it. Don’t go to one lecture, go to that language class, because we have this unconscious tendency to like things that are familiar. And this is based off of a study. These researchers plopped women into a psychology class. And at the end of the semester, it was a big lecture, so no one remembered any of the women, but they’ve reported liking the women that showed up to the most lectures, 20% more than a woman that didn’t show up to any at the end of the semester.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
And so we have this unconscious tendency to people when they’re familiar to us, which means, you Amanda had that repeated interaction over time, or you kind of see these people, they see you, you see these people, they see you. You’re building this trust and building this connection even if you’re not engaging just because you are witnessing and being exposed to each other. And so joining something repeated over time, developing that mere exposure to each other. But then you also overcame covert avoidance by saying, Hey, it’s been so lovely to see you all. I’d love to have you over some time to connect. And yeah, that’s great. I’m so glad.
Glennon Doyle:
Also want to say at pickups, y’all, everyone listening to the Pod Squad, don’t stand in circles with people. This is why I used to stay in my car. I think that people who are insecure friendships, yay, good for you with all your people, should always stand in horseshoes or leave an extra space. Because, it’s very hard to approach a circle of women. But if you intentionally leave space open for somebody who might be untethered, that feels invitational. And also you say to reach out to old friends. If you’re not feeling like you want to join a class yet, you’re still on level one. I like this one. Reach out to an old friend that you remember really liking, but you’ve lost touch with. That’s a little bit less vulnerable. Or you’ve talked about consider location, that actually you were more likely to stay friends with people if they’re close to us. Is that right?
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And since Platonic came out, there’s a study that came out that found that when you try to reconnect with someone from your past, they appreciate it more than we tend to predict. So again, similar to the liking gap, but applied in a new way. And I did a speaking engagement at a church and this guy was like, oh, I just thought all my friends were busy. Or they’ve kind of moved on with their lives. But no, actually the research finds that they are more likely to appreciate it than you think. And I get this assumption a lot. People are like, everybody already has their friends. And I’m like, have you looked at the statistics? Everyone’s a lot more likely to be lonely and isolated than they are to already have friends. So more than likely they’re going to be really happy to hear from you, really happy that you created that opportunity for friendship with them rather than being like, oh, I already have my network and there’s no more room.
Amanda Doyle:
And you said transitional. People are way more likely to be receptive to outreach if they’re in transitional period. What other than if they’ve just moved to your town, what are other transitional periods where people are receptive to that?
Glennon Doyle:
I’m thinking you could hang out outside of divorce court and just find your girlfriends there. Those people are vulnerable. They are ready for change.
Amanda Doyle:
They’re ready to party also.
Glennon Doyle:
Is that good?
Amanda Doyle:
There’s a lot of enthusiasm.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Absolutely. Yeah. So divorce court, awesome idea. But then any sort of time of transition, people tend to be more open to friendship, also more lonely. So you move to a new city, you just start a new school. If someone’s new at the job, they’re going to be probably be a lot more open to connecting. Someone just retired. New parents, for example, tend to be really a lot more open to connecting to new parents as they’re transitioning into this new role. And so yeah, I think times of transition in our lives tend to be a really good time to bank on friendships. So if I meet someone who’s new to the neighborhood, I know, okay, there’s someone that might really be open to it if I ask them for coffee. Or, who just moved to a new city? Like, oh, that might be someone who’s really open to connecting with, if you’re afraid of rejection.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
And I have heard people say, “I’ve been trying to connect with people and they haven’t been as open because…” I’ve really been trying to connect with these people who have been here for years, and it’s a little bit more difficult versus trying to target those people who are a little more open. And I think when we join those social groups, we tend to find those people that are more open too. People that tend to pursue their hobby and community with other people. One of the reasons that they tend to pursue it in community instead of just doing it alone is because they are particularly open to connecting with people. So that’s also another good way to meet people.
Amanda Doyle:
I know that a lot of people listening to this, we’ve all commiserated over that we haven’t made time for our hobbies, but a lot of people are very interested in pursuing hobbies. And I love your advice of make a hobby a community. So if you are interested in learning to knit, go find the knitting store where they meet on Tuesdays and do that. Or if you’re interested in riding your bike around, there’s places to turn that hobby into community and do both at one time. I really like that idea.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Absolutely. And I think it’s also a good tip for people that are busy. It doesn’t have to be another thing added to your day. You can just do the things you already do in community. So, for example, working from home, I decided to make my friends, my colleagues and invite them to work in the same place with me. Or if you have a wellness routine, do you want to meditate together? Do you want to exercise together? That’s what was the origin of Platonic for me. I was going through a breakup and trying to heal from it, and I decided to start this wellness group with my friends to practice wellness. And so we cooked and we meditated and we did yoga together.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
I think in a way it was for me to be more accountable to practicing wellness at this difficult time. But then it changed my life because I was like, oh my gosh, the thing that’s making me most well out of all these things is friendship and community and being with these people that I love, who love me every week. And it really led me to question that romantic love is the only form of love that mattered. I was like, well, why doesn’t this form of love matter? This feels so strong and so powerful and so sacred to me.
Glennon Doyle:
And why doesn’t this form of wellness matter?
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Exactly. Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
All the other ones cost money. All the other ones cost money.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Oh, capitalism.
Glennon Doyle:
And then you say that we should trust the spark, which I loved. When you know are with someone and you feel like, oh, I think there’s a spark between us, that you say we’re usually right about that in the long run.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Yeah. There is research that people can sort of predict in their first interaction with some success, whether they’ll be friends later on. So if I find someone who I’m initially like, “Oh, it seemed to have a connection.” I really try to make sure that I say, oh, it’s been so nice to chat with you. I would love to connect further. Are you open to exchanging contact information?
Glennon Doyle:
Are you feeling that between us right now? Because I feel-
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Of course, Glennon. Of course.
Glennon Doyle:
Thank you. I’m just sparking.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
You bring all the research to life. You turn it into a metaphor. You spin it into a story, to make it more complete.
Amanda Doyle:
I love it. So our first step is we set ourselves up for success by either finding people in transition, making our hobby community repeated occurrences. Then our second step is to be brave and humble and realize it has very little to do with us. It has to do with the way we make someone else feel. So we have to be brave and take that leap. And that could look something like, I would like to be your friend. I am looking to set aside time for people that matter to me or people I want to build relationships with. Do you want to get together? And I think part of that is just saying what every little person you have a tiny little crush on that you want to hang out with. It’s like, I love your energy. I love the way you have so much excitement when you pick up your kid. I love how snarky your jokes are. Whatever it is, something that you like about that person to make them feel liked. Now we’ve gotten together and our third step is then we need to-
Glennon Doyle:
Be vulnerable.
Amanda Doyle:
Then we need to be vulnerable.
Glennon Doyle:
So now let’s get into the stuff that’s scary as shit, Dr. Franco.
Amanda Doyle:
As if the first two were not. The first two were also scary, but scariest so far is vulnerability.
Glennon Doyle:
Because we’re talking about friendship now. We’re already there. We’re at the thing. Now we have to figure out how to deepen and make real this relationship. And you say we have to be vulnerable. Your work about vulnerability, I think has changed how I think about vulnerability. You say in Platonic that, “Vulnerability is sharing the true parts of myself that I fear might result in my rejection or alienation.” And one of the things I love so much about the way you talk about vulnerability that I haven’t heard talked about, which has always driven me nuts, is that there’s nothing that’s inherently vulnerable. It’s whatever each of us was taught to feel shame about in/or about ourselves. Which is why somebody can be saying a vulnerable thing and it’s not their vulnerable thing. And you can tell it’s what they think is all the other people think is vulnerable, right? It’s different for everyone. Can you talk about that for a second, please?
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Yeah. This came out of my interview with Dr. Skylar Jackson, a professor at Yale. And he studies stigma and sharing stigmatized identities. And defines vulnerability kind of as this social construct that reflects our unique past, our unique baggage, our unique culture, our unique experiences to influence what our bodies find vulnerable. And so you can say something that might be vulnerable to other people but is not vulnerable to you, and that’s not actually vulnerable because you’re not going to feel closer to someone unless you do something risky. All of connection is like you have to take a risk to actually feel closer to you. And so if it’s not feeling a little bit risky, I’m not going to experience the relief that comes from you were able to hear me, you were able to listen to me. Now I feel like I have a closer connection with you.
Amanda Doyle:
So can I give an example of this? So for example, what is vulnerable to you is what you have been taught to be ashamed of. So I am a person who was not taught to be ashamed of my power and my accomplishments. Some people might have been. Like, if your little girl, don’t brag, don’t be bold, don’t make other people feel bad. For some people it might be standing up and saying, I’m smart and I know the answer to this, might be their most vulnerable thing. For me, I was taught to be ashamed of rest and ease and taking a break. So for me, showing up in my most vulnerable is I need help. I need rest. I can’t do this by myself. I can stand from the rooftops and scream about how I know what to do, that’s not vulnerable. It’s what I don’t know what to do. And that blew my mind because every single person is going to have a very different thing that they were taught to be ashamed of. So you have to find that thing.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Yes. And it makes me think of… I have a friend, one of my best friends, and she never asked me for anything. And she was moving and I went out of my way to be like, “Can I help you move? Do you need help? I have this time available.” And she was like, “No.” And then two weeks later she’s like, “Yeah, I was in the taxi and had my arms around these big bins and they were kind of falling out of my hand. And I was like, maybe I could have really used that help.” And it makes me realize as I’m hearing you talk about this, Amanda, that when someone does something really out of character for them, so when the friend that never asked for support is asking for support, it might be a really important moment in the friendship for you to try to show up. That might suggest to you that this is something really, really vulnerable for them.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
And even if for you it would’ve been like, oh, it doesn’t really matter that much that I ask for support. So I don’t really care whether you can give it to me or not because I’ll just ask next time. That when someone does something so out of character, a friend who’s always strong is calling, is crying, that’s our sign. We really, really need to show up in that moment because that person is really going to remember what happened in this vulnerable moment. Just from a perception of our memory, we tend to remember things that are more soaked in emotion. That’s what our brain will tend to remember. And so in those experiences when we’re being really vulnerable, they’re going to create a greater impression on us regarding the friendship than any other moment. But the tricky part again is that we don’t always know those vulnerable moments. So we can look for those uncharacteristic moments from our friends.
Glennon Doyle:
You said when they call you crying and some people don’t cry, I wonder if that’s an avoidant thing, but-
Amanda Doyle:
It’s also the drugs.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s the Lexapro too. But it reminds me of where you say, don’t just listen to what people are saying but how they’re saying it. And that’s so important because somebody can say something to me, I don’t think it’s vulnerable because it’s not a big deal to me. I’m not ashamed of that thing. Somebody tells me they’re struggling with drinking or whatever. I’m not vulnerable with that, I talk about it all the time. I might not know because everybody’s vulnerabilities are different, and I might not react that person wants me to because I don’t know it’s their vulnerable thing. So we have to listen not to just what people are saying, but how they’re saying it. Do they seem scared? Do they have tears? Is their voice shaking? Because that’s a better indicator of how they’re saying it than even what’s being said.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Yes. And going along that point, freeing ourselves up to express our vulnerability non-verbally. I talk about how I was feeling all this shame over not getting over someone from my past. And I mention it in passing to my friend. Yeah. I still think about it or something. And my friend is then dismissive of it, because I’m not coming off with how much this has haunted me, that I’m not over this person. I’m not showing this non-verbally at all. Because for me, it’s so scary for me to be vulnerable about this thing because I feel so much shame over it. So I’m going to do this halfway vulnerability. I’m going to dip a toe into vulnerability by mentioning the content of this thing. But by trying to come off in such a composed and polished way, not realizing that my choice to offer this stilted version of vulnerability was contributing to me not getting the support that I wanted. Because I wasn’t communicating vulnerability wholeheartedly.
Amanda Doyle:
That is huge. And so that is such a clue because I feel like there are people right now who are saying, “I just don’t know what I’m vulnerable about. I don’t know what I’m ashamed of exactly.” So is the clue to what that is, the thing that you haven’t uncovered, which is why you haven’t received the love and gotten the height of the benefit of friendship and love, is the things that you have defense mechanisms for. So the things you have to laugh off, the things you have to… What are our defense mechanisms we use and how is that a clue to what we need to mine deeper for?
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Oh my gosh, I love this connection. I didn’t even think about it that way. And I wrote this book. But that is so great.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s a good book, Dr. Franco. Really makes think,
Dr. Marisa Franco:
But Amanda is writing a book too in front of my eyes. I’m like, yes, that’s an add-on, right? I didn’t think of it like that, but that is it. That is what I’m saying. That’s like what’s underneath the text. Thank you so much. Yes. So let’s start talking about authenticity. So I was so let down by authenticity. Because we get this thing, it’s like it’s our true self. What the heck is my true self? I don’t know. Is this my true self or is this my false self? So as I dig deeper into the research, I find that people consistently are reporting authentic moments when they feel safe. Like safety being key to vulnerability. We only know who we are authentically when we can access feelings of safety. And when we never feel safe, it becomes very hard to know who we authentically are, because we are consistently hijacked by these defense mechanisms to protect us from the lack of safety that we feel.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
And we are acting in ways that are reactive rather than that intentionally flow from our bodies, flow from our spirits, flow from our sense of selves. So just to ground this a little bit, I share a quick example in the book, that a lot of the times we feel things and we don’t honestly acknowledge that feeling. And instead it manifests in a defense mechanism to kind of blur or suppress or push away that feeling. A small example is, I want my kid to go to an Ivy League school. My friend’s kid got into an Ivy League school, my kid did not. I am feeling jealous. I am feeling inferior. That is the authentic emotion. The defense mechanism is, well, Cornell isn’t the best Ivy anyway. It’s not one of the top three. That we use these defense mechanisms to protect ourselves from our vulnerability, but we sacrifice our relationships in doing so. And so authenticity is being able to acknowledge the emotion underneath that defense mechanism. I feel jealousy, I feel a little bit inferior. So we don’t have to engage in these defense mechanisms that are fundamentally deteriorating our relationships.
Glennon Doyle:
Because we mistake rawness, as you say, rawness for authenticity. And this is a big issue. It’s like the person who’s like, well, I just tell it like it is. They call it brutal honesty. But y’all that’s what Dr. Franco was saying is not authenticity. Your knee-jerk reaction to things is actually not your truest self.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Exactly.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s your adaptation that has gotten you to this point, that helped you up until now and is not helping you with friendship.
Glennon Doyle:
So how do we figure out who our authentic self is? So I’m that person whose kid didn’t get into Cornell and the other kid did. I might think, well, I’m just going to be true to myself and I don’t want to talk to that person anymore.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
So the thing about the defense mechanism is it kicks in faster than our selfhood does. And that’s why rawness is different from authenticity. Because often what we want to say, the first thing we want to say is a reflex to protect that more vulnerable thing. And so often for me, it’s like if I want to be defensive, for example, you told me that I did something wrong and part of me wants to say, no, that really wasn’t an issue, or this is why it’s actually your fault, and that’s a raw response, that’s not an authentic response. Because if I was authentic, I would say, I might be able to acknowledge this is making me feel bad about myself. And so I’m trying to find a way to distance myself from those feelings by dismissing you, by dismissing your concern. And so it often requires us to take a pause to really, in those stressful moments, in those triggered moments, to pause.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Because the first thing we say is going to be the defense mechanism. What is left after we are able to kind of mindfully watch that defense mechanism want to come out of us, and then we pause and then we take a moment and we think, wow, what is that defending me from? What do I actually feel here? What’s the actual emotion here? So authenticity is acting intentionally and not reflexively. So sometimes authenticity will look like you being able to say, this is a really important moment for my friend, and I acknowledge that. And even if I’m feeling jealous in that moment, I can lean into the part of myself that feels happy for her. And that doesn’t feel inauthentic when it’s a choice that we make rather than something that happens reflexively. So it’s not that we never are able to prioritize someone else in those moments, it’s just that we do it with intention and we understand our reasoning rather than it being because we’re hijacked.
Glennon Doyle:
And it could actually be saying to your friend, I am so happy for you. I’m struggling with jealousy right now. I just need a minute. I just need a week. Is that too vulnerable saying that to a friend? And by the way, how can we possibly be that if we’re not self connected? Because some of us not even know what we feel underneath it? We actually just think she’s a bitch.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
These are triggers with the other person. Yeah, absolutely. It is an act of authenticity to say, I want to be happy for you, but part of me is feeling really jealous, so I might need a moment. And that also being an act of love for the relationship because you did not act out and you did not turn that into a defense mechanism. You can choose the authentic thing. You can choose to focus on your friend in that moment. There’s just more flexibility in authenticity. It’s not feeling restricted in terms of the ways that you behave because you’re so desperate to protect yourself against this triggered feeling.
Glennon Doyle:
I want to mention one thing you say about vulnerability, which I think is so important for us to hear and really got me. Intention behind vulnerability is so important. So you say, and Pod Squaders, just please listen carefully. “We share because of this safety we feel in a friendship, not to create or overcompensate for safety that isn’t already there. Oh, lordy.” I just flashed back to a million moments where I was in conversation and this person, I don’t think that this person likes me, so I’m just going to ratchet it up with some kind of saying, some vulnerable thing that is going to make them be vulnerable or make them like me or make them try vulnerability as shortcut to something that you want as opposed to a reflection that you’re like a flower that’s blooming because of the what’s in the soil already.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Absolutely. Is your vulnerability a defense mechanism against your fears of abandonment in this moment? Or is it an authentic reflection of you feeling safe within that person? Because anxiously attached people will often be seen as oversharing. Someone’s pulling away from them and then they begin to share more. Whereas when we see securely attached people, they share, someone doesn’t meet them there and then they pull back. They say, this person isn’t safe for me, so I’m not going to offer something vulnerable to them. And we also need to think about protecting ourselves even with vulnerability, because vulnerability is only restorative to the extent to which the receiver is a restorative receiver for our vulnerability. So we have to intertwine our vulnerability with discernment. What’s the impact that this is having? Am I feeling more comfortable? Are they reciprocating with me? Is this driven by fear or is this driven by feelings of closeness? Staying really present with ourselves within our vulnerability so we can find that vulnerability that is really restorative and really bonding.
Glennon Doyle:
And you keep saying safety when we feel safe. And I heard you say that safety is how we feel after we hang out with someone?
Dr. Marisa Franco:
I think sometimes we have the sense that, I feel really drained, after hanging out with a person. And part of that can come from the fact that part of you felt like you couldn’t be authentic in the interaction. And inauthenticity is inherently draining for us. It’s related to poorer mental health and wellbeing. It makes us feel kind of dirty. People report wanting to brush their teeth after feeling inauthentic.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. And take a shower.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Yeah. That you’re feeling really drained after this interaction could be a sign that this relationship wasn’t a safe place for me to express my fullest self within it.
Amanda Doyle:
When you’re talking about authenticity, what you say is, when we are in relationship with others, we get closer to ourselves. And the way I see that is the friendship is a laboratory to get to know yourself. Because if you’re just with yourself, you’re just you and your defense mechanisms. But it’s only in the laboratory of relationships with people where we figure out what our thing under our thing is. So it’s not like we have to get authentic and then be in friendship. Sometimes you can just be in friendship and then begin to learn what is authentic to you. So it’s not get perfect and then show up. It’s like you learn as you go. Right?
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Absolutely.
Glennon Doyle:
All right, let’s move on to harmonizing with anger. Because we’ve had expressing vulnerability, pursuing authenticity, the real authenticity, and then you talk a lot about harmonizing with anger. And my sister must have called me 16 times about this part, which is about two different kinds of anger. Anger of hope and anger of despair. So let’s talk about those two. And then my favorite little sentence ever, that is, “how can we best get the need met that’s nestled in our anger?”
Amanda Doyle:
I love this so much. Anger is my native tongue. I love anger. Anger is my number one defense mechanism. And so I have always thought that conflict is the way you show your love. And I realized when I read this that that is what I’ve been doing. My anger is the anger of hope. It’s this idea that we can use conflict to get our needs met. That it’s proof of hope. It’s like we can make this better than it is, and so we’re going to use this conflict to do it. I understand from you that there is another interpretation of anger. So can you talk to us about those?
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Yeah, that is so good and so interesting, Amanda. Because I’m just so different. I’m always like, I’m so afraid of engaging in conflict. It’s so interesting.
Glennon Doyle:
So you’d be a repressor. You’re a repressor.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
And I definitely am a repressor.
Glennon Doyle:
And Amanda’s an aggressor.
Amanda Doyle:
I’ve been called that.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Yeah. So these concepts of anger, of hope and anger of despair, originally created by John Bowlby, one of the fathers of attachment theory. He’s observing these kids. One of the kids, she’s more secure. She has an operation when she’s young. Later on, she’s watching a video of this operation alongside her mom. She’s angry at her mom because her mom couldn’t be there with her in the hospital the entire time because of visiting restrictions. So she turns to her mom and she embodies anger of hope when she says like, “Mommy, where were you?” It’s not an attack on her mom, it’s a, “Mom, where were you? I had this need that wanted to be fulfilled.” It’s not meant to incite, punish, destroy how we typically might think of anger, which is more like anger of despair. Anger of despair. John Bowlby uses this other child who he didn’t have primary caretakers, was living in the hospital, going through different nurses, were taking care of him.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
One of the nurses, Marianne, she goes off and gets married, comes back to him. Reggie, instead of saying, where were you, Marianne? He says, “My very own Marianne, but I hate her.” And so Reggie is anger of despair because he has no hope that if he expresses his needs, someone will actually fulfill it. And then his only active reconciliation that he has, his only way to get his need met is then vengeance for him to not feel as vulnerable anymore and as weak anymore for having this need. And so he then looks out to incite, punish, destroy Marianne through his anger because he doesn’t have the assumption. It’s kind of like the assume people like you, the assumption. He’s hopeless, that if he expresses this need, she will actually fulfill it. So instead his need be turns into this act of self-destruction because then at least he gets some dignity out of the experience.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
And so in that chapter, I’m sort of piecing apart that a lot of us think of anger as anger of despair. A lot of us think that anger has to be combat. Conflict has to be combat. It has to be a fight. It has to be antagonistic, that it can be this anger of hope, which is fundamentally an act of love and an act of reconciliation.
Glennon Doyle:
So if we have repressor up here and we have aggressor with sister, you call that anger out, anger in. But both of those keep us, you say, from productively addressing the underlying issues that drive anger and impede intimacy. But if we do address those, that deepens our relationships. So anger of hope is actually one of the most important forces in deepening intimacy.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Yes. Yes. It is life changing. I will say it from someone… I’m not quite on the other side of being so comfortable expressing anger. It might take me a few months still, but I’ll actually bring it up. And I have seen such a change in the level of intimacy in my relationships, because for us fellow suppressors out there, we think we need to suppress it and get over it, but we do not because that’s not how feelings work. And then we end up withdrawing and we’re so afraid to address it because we think that the relationship will end and then we guarantee that it ends because we withdraw from the relationship. And so for me, it’s like I didn’t realize that my trying to suppress it for the other person’s sake was actually really harming them and harming me. And then I read another study that found that these people that try to suppress their anger, they raise other people’s blood pressure because people can still pick up on it.
Glennon Doyle:
Ooh, yes.
Amanda Doyle:
Whoa. I hear that.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Yeah, people can still pick up on it and then they’re just like, something’s off, but you’re not telling me. And this makes me feel really unsafe and uncomfortable. And so for me, realizing it’s actually an act of love to bring up what’s bothering me because the alternative is not that this thing is not bothering me. The alternative is I’m withdrawing from you and I’m breaking down our connection to protect myself.
Amanda Doyle:
So the people that have more conflict, have more quality friendships.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
The people that have more empathic, loving, reconciling conflict have healthier friendships. Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
Okay. I see where you’re going with that. I see where you’re going with
Glennon Doyle:
A nice try though, sister. Nice try. Dr. Franco, can you give us an example of what healthy empathic conflict might sound like with Billy? Tell us about that.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Yeah, so Billy, pseudonym for my best friend. And I had gotten upset with her, and it seemed like all these little things. She yelled at me when we were playing board games and I set her a chapter in my book and I never heard back from her. And it just started to accumulate. And I was noticing myself starting to withdraw from her, but also so afraid because I confuse conflict with combat, that if I bring this up, it’s going to be a war. So what are my choices here? Withdraw or have a war? And then I realized from reading all these studies that there’s this third option of using anger of hope, of learning how to do conflict in a way that brings us together. And it starts with framing. Framing means saying that you want to have this discussion because you are invested in the person and you love them.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
So for me, approaching Billy and saying, “You’re my best friend, you’re so important to me. And there’s been stuff on my mind. I don’t want it to get between us, which is why I’m hoping for us to be able to talk about it.” And then it’s me being able to offer my own feeling and my own view of what’s going on. And so it’s not me saying, “Billy, you suck. You didn’t respond to me.” It’s not me saying, “Billy, you yelled at me during this board game. You got to control your anger.” It’s me saying, “Hey, Billy, I felt kind of hurt in that moment when you yelled at me.” Or, “Hey, Billy, I felt a little dismissed when I didn’t hear back from you when I emailed you.” And then it’s me engaging in perspective, taking by offering to Billy what was going on for you in those moments.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
And I literally hear from Billy, “Marisa, I emailed you back about that manuscript. Did you not see it?” And I’m like, “Oh.” So when I ignore the issue, it’s unfair because I’m holding my friend guilty before giving them a trial. It’s like putting them in jail before even giving them a chance to defend themselves. And so at that end of that conversation… Because both of us were suppressors, both of us were ignoring conflict. Both of us realized that there’s a third way through that conversation. And she just starts crying because she’s like, I never knew conflict could feel this loving. And it’s incredible and it’s also contagious. She’s like doing it with her other friends as well, and I don’t know, it’s so beautiful. Thank God for that third option.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Otherwise, we would all be doomed in our friendships.
Glennon Doyle:
It circles back to the thing of Alex saying to me don’t just leave. Try something else first. Oh, that’s so beautiful.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Thank you.
Glennon Doyle:
Tragically, we have to end, but I did want to ask you, just since you’re on the spot right now and we’re recording, sometime in the future, will you come back? Because I want to keep trying friendship and keep collecting my questions.
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Yay. Of course. Personalized friendship coaching on the next podcast episode.
Glennon Doyle:
Thank you, thank you. Thank you for your work. I do really want to recommend to the Pod Squad to go pick up Platonic because it’s a friendship book and it is very helpful for people for whom this is not intuitive yet. It’s also a whole lot more than that. It’s deep individual help and work, and I think it’s really special, really special work that’s helped me a lot. I’m really grateful for you and for what you do in the world, Dr. Franco.
Glennon Doyle:
And for the rest of you, we’re going to go out there. We’re going to initiate, all right, we’re going to assume that the world likes us, damn it. We’re going to invite somebody into our life. We’re going to be vulnerable. Before we end, I do want to say, Dr. Franco says, if you think of a level one vulnerability thing, like my favorite movie, if you think of a level two vulnerability thing like, I feel nervous being at this party. If you think of number three like, I have a history of horrific family trauma. You’re going to go with level two. Okay? Level two is where people feel comfortable at first, right? Dr. Franco?
Dr. Marisa Franco:
Yes. Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
At the initial bagel date. We’re looking for a two.
Glennon Doyle:
We’re looking for a two. That’s the next right thing here. Stay at two. Thank you, Dr. Franco. Thank you Pod Squad, we love you. We Can Do Hard Things.