Emotionally intelligent friendships are the bedrock of a fulfilling social life. Discover the six secrets to cultivating such relationships, where empathy meets understanding, and emotional acuity becomes the cornerstone of lasting bonds.

Study:

People with more friends had a 50% greater chance of survival

  • Having no friends or not being involved in community activities will dramatically affect how long you live
  • One factor in how well the COVID vaccine helps you may actually be how many friends you have
  • That loneliness really does have adverse consequences for your immune system

Make Your Best Friend Better

Help them become a better climber on the mountain of life. When they ascend, so do you. And if they fall, it’s more likely you will too.

  • When either of you improves, you both do. It’s a virtuous cycle.

The Dunbar Number

The average person sends Christmas cards to 154 people

  • Most people have about 5 friends they contact weekly, roughly 15 they talk to monthly, approximately 50 they hear from every six months, and 150 they reach out to annually.
  • If you don’t take care of those relationships, they’re gonna go away. Friendship is fragile. So how do we stop the losses?

Budget Appropriately

On average, we spend 3.5 hours a day on social interaction.

  • Your closest 5 people get 40% of that
  • The other 10 people in the group of 15 get the next 20%.
  • 135 people in a bigger circle each get less than 20 minutes a month – about 37 seconds a day.

Stay In Touch

You’re going to lose a friend about every 2 years

  • Be deliberate and stay in touch
  • Reach out to the friends you want to maintain, let them know they matter
  • Social media only slows the decline of friendships
  • We need face-to-face contact

How To Party

The more the merrier

  • Ditch small talk
  • Open up and get meaningful
  • Students who spend less time alone and more meaningful conversation time have higher wellbeing
  • Similarly, adults who spend more time in meaningful conversations have higher life satisfaction

How to make emotionally intelligent friendships:

Stay in touch: Friendship is not an arena where you want to play hard to get.

  • Gratitude: If we’re more kind to strangers than to friends, we are definitely doing something wrong
  • Quality > Quantity: Share emotional experiences
  • Budget appropriately: Time is limited. Allocate it wisely
  • How to party: Eat. Laugh. Reminisce. The more the merrier
  • Make your best friend better: Make yourself better and help make them better

Gratitude

A little gratitude can go a long way in maintaining relationships

  • Say you’re sorry when you mess up and don’t let grievances build
  • Dunbar’s Number gets all the hype, but quantity doesn’t matter as much as quality
  • So how do we up the closeness?

Quality > Quantity

Quality relationships are built by quality interactions

  • It is doubleplusungood wrongthink to neglect face-to-face time
  • Be vulnerable
  • Ask for advice
  • Share what you’re going through, emotionally
  • Make plans to hop on a car or plane to see those that matter

Source