Platonic: How Understanding Your Attachment Style Can Help You Make and Keep Friends

The study lends credence to a psychological theory called reciprocity theory, which emphasizes that people treat us like we treat them. If we are kind, open, and trusting, people are more likely to respond in kind. Secure people, then, don’t just assume others are trustworthy; they make others trustworthy through their good faith.

When others are confused as to why anxious people freak out over trivial issues, they assume anxious people have the same neural wiring they do. But anxious people’s brain response illustrates that they experience the same events fundamentally differently and more painfully.

Initiate, unapologetically, and then do it again and again.

Their faith in others also reassures them that they’ll have support when disappointed.

Authenticity, however, involves allowing ourselves to feel rejected by the friend who abandoned us, hurt by our friend’s taunts, or incompatible with our childhood friend. It’s a state of internal honesty. It’s who we are underneath these defense mechanisms we’ve constructed for our self-protection.* And when we dislodge these defenses, we find we

When others reject or leave them, the loneliness feels omnipresent and unbearable.

Overt avoidance is when people don’t show up to events because they are too uncomfortable. When people invite you out, and you don’t show up, they’re less likely to invite you out again;

When I meet a new group of people, my inclination is to find the few I can be comfortable with and forget the rest.

avoidants are shame-prone.

the spark is real. So trust yourself when you meet someone who feels familiar or comfortable, when there’s chemistry, when you sense you might be experiencing a kindred spirit. Following up with these promising seeds of connection will lift your chances of finding the deep friendships you are looking for.