The Psychology of Best Friend Relationships

Introduction

Best friends are extremely influential parts of our lives. They reign supreme in our social networks, provide emotional support when we need it, and can often develop into deeper relationships. Even in modern-day Britain, GPs are using human contact with best friends as a factor to determine the severity of psychological illnesses. These friendships are characterized by extraordinary lengths of time they last, their emotional and communal elements, and the extensive range of activities undertaken over their development. The frequent occurrence of these friendships in society is therefore of great interest.

We propose that a psychological view of such friendships is timely. Work in a closely related area has shown female friendships to carry a range of important psychological functions and has found an association between friendship mutuality and participant well-being. This makes identifying one’s own approaches to a psychological theory yet to be tested of great pertinence.

There is a need to address this form of relationship, which is best friendships. This study focuses on friendships identified as 'best friend' or 'mateship friends' and examines the qualities of these friendships. These friendships involve warm initiation, commitment, understanding, shared experiences, and caring thoughts. The roles of surplus friends are discussed. Unlike other friendships, romantic rights and tolerance are not prominent. These friendships are the closest and have a higher likelihood of lasting a year. They are ranked as 'fairly, very, or extremely close' or 'one of my closest friends' on a scale. Female participants rated them slightly higher than males. These friendships are important and should be discussed more in psychological publications. The section 'critique of the model' explores whether these factors make a friendship great or ideal. Potential criticisms about the uniqueness of friendships are also explored.

The Benefits of Having a Best Friend

Best friends are the people who really know us, share some of our closest secrets, and stay in our lives for years. Some cultures have special terminology for designating a best friend, such as the Amharic term "chewata," which implies a sense of unity among friends, chosen family, or best friends who may view themselves as each other's "soul mate." According to the people potentially involved, people may come and go in one's life. Research showed the many benefits of having a best friend. First, people often get much emotional support from a best friend and usually know that if they need to talk, the best friend will likely be there for them. Second, friendships provide another strong source of self-validation and, therefore, can bolster self-esteem. For example, self-esteem is typically associated with having a high opinion of oneself to match positive evaluations of the self by others. Thus, when people are surrounded by close others who view them positively, self-esteem improves. Research has found support for such views.

Third, these findings have important implications for stress management. Particularly, talking to one's best friend may be a path to stress reduction. When a best friend simply sat and talked with a trauma victim five years post-trauma, the victim was found to have significantly reduced post-traumatic stress disorder compared to a control group of victims that did not receive this same best-friend intervention. Fourth, best friends are often partners in critical personal growth areas, such as deciding to go for a college degree, seeking a career change, getting married, or moving to another location. Having a best friend increases the likelihood that such moves can more easily be processed, hopefully leading to results more consciously dictated by a person's true personal interests and development. In another study, it was found that having a best friend in one's life decreased life dissatisfaction for all age groups and increased feelings of companionship regardless of life stage. In becoming a successful adult, a positive relationship was found between the emotional support provided by a best friend and an adult's involvement in significant relationships, including bonding with children, marriage, and employment. Empirical research conducted two studies demonstrating that men and women with a best friend, regardless of relationship status, are significantly happier than men and women without a best friend. Therefore, it appears that entering adulthood with a best friend may enrich one's physical and emotional self in many ways. Summing up all of these findings, they point to possible positive aspects of best-friend relationships for potentially enhancing future psychological well-being.

Challenges in Best Friend Relationships

Best friend relationships are not always perfect. Even when friends have similarities and share commonalities, differences can arise in what they expect from the relationship and each other. These differences may result in misunderstandings, jealousy, and outright conflicts. Differences in individuals' personal motives, the amount of disclosure they want, their preferred modes of support, and interaction are consistent with differences in relationship commitment and closeness. When differences result in misunderstandings or conflict, one or both friends may be hurt and hold grudges. People's friendships sometimes don't last because they are unable to resolve the increasing amounts of resentment and misunderstandings. Fortunately, most friends can prevent these problems by using what they know about the other person and themselves in avoiding, resolving, and overcoming difficulties. They are often able to find creative solutions to new problems and experience personal growth in the process.

One precious possession in life is a best friend who can also be a companion in any situation and who can share with you what you think and feel. But what happens when this friend is not comfortable in such situations? This lack of joint zest obviously poses not only social difficulties for a group of people living together and their leader but also philosophical questions about personal relationships. What is there in the highest form of human unity that is so inconstant and imperceptibly fault-finding that the slightest deviation from routine unity brings hidden joy to the soul while setting the teeth on edge instead of letting them come together as they have been suggested? These difficulties can reduce the importance of best friendships if people are prepared for the challenges that present themselves in setting up and maintaining best friendships. Friends maintain these friendships successfully by recognizing and overcoming the strain that results from developing and maintaining best friendships. If you are aware of these challenges and expect to encounter them, friends can adopt a realistic approach to best friendships. They can appraise their best friends' positive and negative attributes more accurately and avoid mislabeling minor disagreements as catastrophic. In the stress of these difficulties lies best friendships' opportunity for success and development.

Maintaining and Nurturing Best Friendships

One reason friends who’ve known each other for a long time are best friends is that their friendship has endured. Part of their closeness likely also stems from the length of time they’ve been together. As we already know, time with a person is part of what can constitute a BFF relationship, so having the time of a lifetime raises the odds of that happening. Medically, it turns out that the importance of shared time is foundational to a nurturing romantic relationship, and probably even more so to a best friendship. It’s not just enough to have contact with friends. The best romantic relationships occur with people who have not just more contact, but more contact of a quality that includes perceived partner responsiveness, that is, the extent to which the supportive listener is perceived as understanding, validating, and caring about what the speaker is discussing.

Communicating regularly with friends can help these relationships endure — we need regular shared time for people to feel oriented to one another and committed to the relationship. And friend time together makes it feel like a real ongoing experience of a set kind in the same way. Obviously, fun activities consisting of delicious restaurant food, adult beverages, other people’s superb concerts, theater and stand-up comedy performances, and even outdoor activities like races can be a lot of fun. Many friends also support each other during success or stress. Time together at work is also a bonding experience, but some of the more dominant forms of emotional bonding can happen between friend groups that also include a side of mutual active care or nurturance. A birthday celebration among such friends could be closer to a return to center that begins a return to a way of life than just a party.

Conclusion

This review has shed light on what psychology can tell us about the relationships we have with our best friends. To some extent, best friendships constitute an evolutionary hangover from the broader adaptive network that was beneficial for human survival and reproduction. However, beyond these evolutionary foundations, it is clear that best friendships continue to be an essential ingredient of psychological functioning that positively contributes to our overall well-being. Despite efforts towards a conceptualization of this high-quality friendship dyad, it is also apparent that the new transactions the dyad has to navigate are power and conflicts of interest. Prevalent within the methods of the included studies is the notion of effectively and consciously operating within these transactions, given that they also underscore a direction for nurturing best friendships. The studies discussed have highlighted the importance of finding ways to repair and learn from conflicts.

The troubles in researching best friendships highlight additional needs. Three themes: 1) qualities traced back to evolutionary history, 2) overlooking the individual in favor of survival and reproduction, 3) lack of focus on diversity. Transactionism of modern life may require a shift. We maintain selflessness in long-term best friendships. Female homotypic evolution shows corresponding purpose. We evolved tight, cooperative best friendships, modifying criteria from our monogamous system. Evolution is a blueprint, not a fingerprint. More work is needed. Future research should focus on children's best friendships, conversation topics, breakdown causes. Consider modern friendships and neoteny effects.

Did you like this example?

244

10