Word: friendships
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Paradoxically, the optional nature of friendship, which makes it more fragile than family ties, may increase its value. "Friendship contributes more to people's happiness in old age than their family relationships do," says Rebecca Adams, sociology professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. "If we don't like our friends, we terminate the relationships or let them fade, so the ones we're left with are often fairly positive compared with family relationships, which we can't terminate." Furthermore, we tend to feel more gratitude for a friend's kindness than for a relative...
...lumped together in research measuring the link between health and social support, they are distinct and separate in real life. The chief difference? "You choose your friends, but you're stuck with your family" is how an adolescent might put it. That's good news and bad news for friendship. "Friends don't make the demands that family members do. Friends generally won't be asked to give money or nursing care," says sociologist Jan Yager, author of Friendshifts. "They are probably going to mainly have fun together." On the other hand, she notes, "because it's optional, friendship...
While families are finite, friends are a renewable resource, which is fortunate given the odds against sustaining a friendship. The career-building years can entail repeated moves that result in separations from friends. In midlife, the competing claims of work and child rearing can force friendship onto the back burner. Then there's divorce, which divides spouses not only from each other but often from the friends they once held in common. When we retire, the migration to the Sunbelt takes a toll both on those who leave and those who remain behind. Finally, as we age, our social networks...
Both men and women need friendship but approach it differently. Women tend to engage in "face-to-face" interactions, in which they meet specifically to talk, often about personal concerns. Men tend to favor "side-by-side" relationships, in which conversation, which may be casual, occurs in the course of participating in a common activity. James R. Erlenbaugh, 65, a truck driver in suburban Chicago, is typical in that regard. He chats with his three best buddies as they fish, ride motorcycles and attend sports events together. It's the togetherness that matters. "I don't know what...
When friends are separated, staying in touch by phone or mail is an important stopgap, but to keep a friendship vibrant, there's no substitute for being there, at least from time to time. Says Friendshifts author Yager: "If you watch children and teenagers, you see that we knew what to do when we were younger. You hung out with friends and did stuff together. It's important to share experiences, to create memories, to bond the relationship. You're not going to say in 10 years, 'Remember that great phone conversation we had?' or 'Remember those wonderful e-mails...