Frientimacy: the three requirements of all healthy friendships | Shasta Nelson | TEDxLaSierraUniversity

Our world is getting better at connecting us, and yet we report feeling more disconnected than ever. The issue is loneliness. The solution is understanding the three requirements of relationship that lead to belonging and intimacy.

Shasta Nelson is passionate about all things friendship. As founder and CEO of GirlFriendCircles.com, a female-friendship learning community, she speaks and writes regularly on this important topic. Shasta is the author of two books: "Friendships Don’t Just Happen! The Guide to Creating a Meaningful Circle of Girl" and "Friends and Frientimacy: How to Deepen Friendships for Lifelong Health and Happiness." Her spirited and soulful voice can also be read at Shasta’s Friendship Blog and in her relationship-health column in The Huffington Post. Shasta has been interviewed on the Today show, Katie Couric’s show, The Early Show and Fox Extra, and she has consulted with many magazine writers.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx.

Our world is fractured
by an epidemic of loneliness.

And I'm not so worried about
the stereotypical recluses and hermits

that we kind of tend to picture
when we, you know, think of that word.

I am more worried about
the vast majority of us in this room

who are lonely and don't acknowledge it,

who may not even
recognize it in our lives.

You know, we often think,

"I can't be lonely. I know more people
than I can keep in touch with."

And yet we report feeling largely unknown.

We know more people
than any time in history,

and yet we feel very much
like we have nobody to confide in.

Our social networks just keep growing
and growing and growing,

and yet so too do our doubts

about whether we
actually have a safety net

and who would be in it should we need it.

Modern-day loneliness
is not because we need to interact more;

it's because we need more intimacy.

Case in point,

one of my moments of loneliness,

I was actually hanging out
with five of my closest friends,

and we had met on a weekly basis,

we had taken a few weeks off
for the holiday vacation,

and we were coming back together

and decided to go around the circle

and each give a little update on what life
had looked like in the last month.

And so when it got to the fourth person,
the one right before my turn,

she said something that reminded somebody
of something they had read,

which reminded that person
of something their sister had said,

and you know where this is going -
the train left the station,

and I had not shared.

And I remember thinking,

"Any minute now, one of them will say,

'Oh, we should get back to the sharing
so we can hear about Shasta's holiday.'"

Nope.

Then somebody looked at their watch,

said, "Oh, I didn't realize
the time. I need to go."

I said, "Oh, they'll feel so bad
when one of them realizes

'Wait, we haven't heard from Shasta yet.'"

And they, one by one, hugged me,
and we all said goodbye, and we left.

And I got in my car, and I was driving
away from time with friends,

and I have this little,
I don't know - you have this?

I have a two-year-old
bratty voice in my head.

She's got pigtails and she was like
all huffy and puffy

and was like, "I can't believe it.

Seriously, you're the one
that's facilitating sharing time,

and then they don't even want
to hear from you?

You need better friends."

I had friends.

My loneliness wasn't from
lack of friendships;

my loneliness was
because I didn't feel seen.

And "frientimacy,"

the closest relationship we have -
"friendship intimacy" -

is where two people both feel seen
in a safe and satisfying way.

I did not feel that, and I am not alone.

When I asked over 6,000 people
in the last couple of years,

"How fulfilling are your friendships
on a scale of one to ten,

with ten being the most satisfying,

how close do you feel with your friends?"

Think about that number for a second.

On any of my surveys,

anywhere between 50 to 70% of us
score a five or below.

We are not just leaning
toward dissatisfaction

with our closest of our relationships;

we are two to four times more likely
to put a one or a two

than we are to say we're fulfilled
with a nine or ten.

This is a lot of relationship
dissatisfaction.

We are hungry for
being close to each other.

And contrary to popular advice,

when this loneliness happens,

the answer is not "Go meet more people.
Join a club. Make new friends."

The answer is actually learn
how to develop better friendships.

The vast majority of us have never taken
a class on how to build relationships.

And so I went and I compiled -

like when you would look
at all the social scientists

and what they're studying

when they look at what bonds
any two people, who we confide in,

what makes two people best friends,

what makes for a healthy marriage,

what builds trust.

Three common denominators emerge.

And it's like a formula:
you have to have all three.

You can't just have two of them,
so I want to unpack all three of these,

and I use what I call
a "frientimacy triangle"

so we can see how they fit together.

At the beginning of all our relationships,
the first requirement is the letter P,

and that is positivity.

Because how many of you
woke up this morning and thought,

"I wish I just had a few more cranky,
whiny, manipulative people in my life

that made me feel
like I was never doing enough"?

(Laughter)

When we want friendship,
we want the reward,

we want joy, we want to feel good.

This comes from smiles
and laughter and kindness

and acts of service and empathy
and validation, gratitude, affirmation -

all those things that leave us
feeling accepted.

And let's be clear.

This does not mean
we have to be Pollyanna.

We still get to cry
on each other's shoulders,

and we still get to vent and complain.

But social science tells us
that every relationship, to stay healthy,

has to have a ratio

of five positive interactions
for every negative interaction.

So that means for every
withdrawal you're making,

from your whining and complaining,

you have to be making
five deposits of joy and reward.

Requirement for all healthy relationships.

The second requirement,
the letter C, is consistency.

Because we've all met people we enjoy

and are positive
and have fun being around,

but if we never saw them again,
that wasn't a friendship.

Consistency is the hours logged.

It's the history we build.

It's the time we spend together.

This is where we make rituals
and we create patterns.

We increase our interactions.

This is where we get to know each other.

This is actually, as we put
consistent time in together,

this is actually how we build consistent -

we start knowing what
consistent behavior looks like.

This is where trust happens, this one.

When we say, "I want to trust somebody,"

we don't want to feel
we're walking on eggshells,

meaning we don't know how to predict
how you're going to respond.

We feel safe when we can predict,

and we can predict
by we have created a pattern,

and we spend more time with each other.

This is actually the one

that made friendship
feel automatic when we were kids

because school was consistent.

And this is the one we still
end up building relationships

at work, at school,
at church and associations

because our consistency is automatic.

You wouldn't pick those people
to be your friends

if you had 20 other options.

You're friends with them
because you have consistency with them,

and you end up building
these other two components in.

A lot of us have relationships
that we enjoy - the positivity -

and that we do things on a regular basis,

but without the third requirement,
it's not a healthy friendship.

And the third requirement
is vulnerability.

Vulnerability is where we share,
where we reveal,

where we let people in
and let more of us be seen.

I teach five different types
of vulnerability in my book,

but suffice it to say,

it's not just sharing
the skeletons in your closet,

the insecurities and the shame.

It's also talking about
what's going well and your successes

and risk bragging to your friends.

It's also sharing our history, our dreams.

It's being able to articulate
what we're feeling

and ask for what we need
from somebody else.

That is tremendous vulnerability.

Because at the end of the day, for us,

we want to feel loved,

and we only feel loved if we feel known,

and we can only feel known
if we actually share ourselves.

Do these three make sense?

These are the basis
of every single relationship.

You've never built a healthy relationship
without these three things.

And I could unpack this triangle
for days, literally,

but we're on a deadline.

So the part that's germane
to our conversation today

is how we can know so many people
and yet still feel so lonely,

and that is because every relationship
starts on the bottom,

on our foundation of positivity.

No matter how much
you think you like somebody

or how much you want
to be best friends with them,

they all start on the bottom
of the triangle.

And then our relationships develop

as we incrementally increase
our consistency and our vulnerability.

In other words, the more time we spend,
the more we get to know somebody.

And so, therefore,

some of our relationships will move
all the way to the top of the triangle,

but they go up bit by bit,

so you can see how the vast majority
of our relationships

will be all up and down this triangle.

For the ones at the top,

that is the one that I have found
that when we describe being lonely,

it is for lack of having built
this top of our triangle.

When we are lonely,

it is not because we need to add
more people to the triangle.

While some of us may be in that situation,

the most of us, when we're lonely,
it is not for needing to add more people,

it's for actually needing
to move some people up.

Because, remember, friendship
is not something we discover,

so I can't say, "Oh, I have an opening
at the top of my triangle.

Let me put on a little job-hiring sign

and audition you,

and, 'Oh, you have two kids,
I only have three ... '"

And we play all these games
like "Oh, do a little tap dance,"

"Oh, she was funny. I like her.
Yeah, we're going to be best friends."

We don't get to like put people in there
based on whether we like them.

This triangle is not about
how much we like somebody;

this triangle is about
how much we practice

the three requirements
of friendship with somebody,

and the only way we get somebody
to the top of this triangle

is by developing those relationships
by practicing these three things.

So by the time somebody
is at the top of the triangle,

we have been vulnerable,
we have shown ourselves,

we have shared our feelings
and shared our stories.

We have done consistency,
we have built history,

and hopefully, we've even survived
some life changes together

so that we continue to find
new ways of being together.

And we have increased our positivity

so that we know how to love each other
in meaningful ways for each other.

That's the top of the triangle,
and that's our goal.

Because when we can do that,
when we have high vulnerability,

then we feel seen.

When we have high
consistency, we feel safe,

and when we have high positivity,
it feels satisfying.

And that's what we all want,

and this is what we're craving,

and this is what our bodies
are literally dying without.

Our physical and mental health
is so dependent on our connections.

Dr. Ornish says, "I am not aware
of any other factor in medicine

than intimacy and love,

not diet" - doesn't matter
if you had a green smoothie this morning -

"not smoking, not exercise, not stress,
not genetics, not drugs, not surgery -

that has a greater impact

on our quality of life, incidence
of illness and premature death,"

from how many causes?

All.

In fact, if we feel lonely,

it is as damaging to our bodies
as smoking 15 cigarettes a day,

it is the equivalent
of being a lifelong alcoholic

and more harmful than not exercising

and twice as harmful as obesity.

Let that just sink in for a moment.

How we answer the question

"How loved and supported do you feel?"

will tell us more about your health
10, 15, 20 years down the road

than any other factor.

Our former US Surgeon General
just came out recently with a statement

in the Harvard Business Review.

He said, "Loneliness is also associated

with a greater risk
of cardiovascular disease,

dementia, depression and anxiety.

During my years caring for patients,

the most common pathology I saw
was not heart disease or diabetes."

It was what? Loneliness.

And he is joining
a resounding chorus of voices

in medicine and psychology
and the social services,

all saying this is -
they're calling out this epidemic.

Truly an epidemic.

I'm not up here exaggerating.
I've been known to do that before.

This is not an exaggeration.

In fact, some are declaring

this to be the number one
public health issue of our time.

Because when you think about it,

it's bad enough to just think
about millions of us being lonely

because that only affects
all these millions of individuals

not being as happy and healthy
and as having as long lives

and as strong of immune systems
as they possibly could,

but that also means
we have millions of people

who aren't as practiced
at these three skills

as we would want them to be

for solving the problems of our world

and dreaming up the solutions
we desperately need.

I can go down a list,
and that's a whole other day.

I can go down a list, though,
of how every single subject,

from addiction - the opposite of addiction
is not sobriety, it is connectedness -

homelessness, acts of terrorism.

Almost every single major problem
has at its roots lack of relationships.

And almost every dream we have
and every idea we want to accomplish

in the business world
and the political world -

I mean, let's just look at politics
and religion for one hot second.

Here's two entities
that both want to be known

for bringing people together
and creating unity.

And they have broken their relationship
with the vast majority of our public

for lack of vulnerability and positivity.

We now distrust them
and have more fear and frustration.

Every organization cannot accomplish
what it's meant to be doing

without knowing how to build
the relationships that matter.

We need to be a part of this.

The world needs us, desperately,

to know how to be adding
more positivity on a regular basis,

for our leaders, for our customers,
for our teams, for our students,

for our children, for every single person

so that each person feels seen
and valued for who they are.

We want to just keep repeating this cycle.

These are the things
we're being called to practice.

These are muscles that can be developed.

And I want to do this for the world.

And before I can show up and be like,

"We're here to change the world
with love and meaningful relationships,"

I have to practice it in my own life.

So as I was driving home that day,

and my two-year-old was just having
her little pity party and being like,

"Remember, you need better friends.
You are too good for these people,"

another little quiet but oh-so-wise voice
was trying to get my attention too.

She eventually broke through
my little sob story, and she said,

"You know, Shasta,

you could have handled that
differently too."

I was like, "Excuse me? Seriously?
You're putting that on me?

That is so not my fault."

And she goes, "We're
not talking about fault.

We're talking about connection.

You could have just as easily said,

'Hey, before we talk about X,

I want to make sure
I have a chance to tell you about Y.'

And you know your friends
would have leaned in a bit, 'Oh, yes.'

It's one thing if they were like,

'No, we're purposefully
not letting you talk.'

But they would have jumped in,
leaned in, been present,

and then you could be driving home,
Shasta, feeling connected

instead of licking your imaginary wounds."

My friends made a mistake; that happens.

That's one act of positivity
that didn't feel all that great.

But at the end of the day,
someone asking about my life

is not one of the three
requirements of relationship.

What is one of the three requirements
is both people feeling seen,

and I had neglected to share.

At the end of the day,

that's an act of vulnerability to say,
"I need to speak up for my needs."

But that's a muscle
I could have practiced building.

I can guarantee you

that any relationship in your life
that is not fulfilling,

it is because at least one
of these three requirement is lacking.

You can look at
any relationship in your life

and identify, "Oh, yeah, that one.

Well, we hardly ever see each other.

It always feels good
when we've got positivity,

but we don't have consistency."

You can kind of quickly start identifying

exactly which one of these
would make the biggest difference

for moving your relationships,

your vast network of so many people.

It is not that you are lonely
from lack of people;

it's you're lonely for intimacy,

for frientimacy.

And we have the power
to move those relationships up.

That loneliness is your body
saying, "I want more connection,"

and that is one of the most beautiful
messages you could ever receive.

Why we would feel shame around that
is just something I'm trying to change.

We should be like, "Oh, wow.
That's - I want more in it.

I want more meaningfulness."

That's amazing.

And I hope today that you now know
exactly what three things -

positivity, consistency
and vulnerability -

that you can practice

in order to move yourself
to greater frientimacy

for your sake and for the world.

(Applause and cheers)