Are you a good friend?

Let's talk attachment styles and important friendship qualities.

I’m sorry this is a couple days late! I had my parents in town and overestimated my ability to time manage with their presence. Thanks for your understanding.

Last week, we discussed a bit about how family and culture impact our friendships. Here’s the thing: Friendships all around play a big role in healthy aging and well-being. Friendships reduce the risk of depression, high blood pressure and an unhealthy body mass index (BMI). Friendships between men are significantly important to increase trust and intimacy/social happiness. Even more, cross-cultural friendships can reduce prejudice and enrich the lives of those involved.

Platonic is a great book to learn more about the importance of friendships and how to build and maintain friendships (something we will talk even more about later this week).

Attachment styles in friendships

How we build an attachment to our caregivers can directly impact the health of our friendships. In fact, “parent-child relationship quality engenders a set of internalized relationship expectations that affect the quality of friendships with peers.” This means that we learn how to be in a relationship with others based off how we learn to be in a relationship with our caregivers.

I had my fair share of friendship breakups as an adolescent and young adult. One of the things that has come up time and time again for me in these relationships is that I always assumed the expectation of loyalty and unconditional love — that I learned from my parents — no matter how I behaved. I had been conditioned to believe that in relationships we can treat others however we want and we’re supposed to stick around (and so are they). This led to a lack of accountability for me to be a better friend, or even learn about other’s needs. Instead, much like my parents, I had a “this is me, take it or leave it” attitude that would make it hard for me to maintain strong friendships. In the past several years, I’ve been able to reflect on how this is tied to my attachment style, which is something I spent years working through in therapy so I can learn to be a better friend.

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Take a second to reflect on how your relationship with your caregivers or parents has impacted your behavior in, or understanding of, friendships. Let us know in the comments!

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When I did a poll on BGT, only about 8% of nearly 6,000 participants responded that they have a secure attachment style. This means that 92% of these respondents have an anxious, avoidant, or disorganized attachment styles. What does this mean for friendship? Let me break it down…