How to: Make friends

Benjamin Franklin effect:

The Benjamin Franklin effect is the term for a psychological phenomenon in which people are actually predictably more likely to invest into something that they have already invested in, than something they got for free.

Basically, we like things that we work for. Money that we work for is more satisfying than money given to us for free.

Today I was just going about making my lunch when I realised something absolutely crazy about why I have difficulty keeping friends.

I was cooking lunch and somehow thought about two of my close class mates. This past week has really made it surreal that this semester is coming to an end. And that’s rapidly got me thinking forward to what I’m gonna do when semester is finished. Now today wasn’t the first time I’ve mulled over the issue of not seeing my class friends again. You see they are both chemical engineering majors and I’m a civil engineering major and it just so happens that we had an overlapping course.

So I’ve known for a while that after this semester we won’t have any more classes together. The thing is, today realising that semester is nearly over I thought, what if we just never end up seeing each other again. Unexpectedly I kinda got upset at the thought.

You see what happened was, we were in the same group trying to complete a class project together. The project lasted 6 weeks and the last 3 weeks were very time intensive. I must have spent over 30 hours with them in just the last week alone. And since they didn’t show up to class on Monday it’s been a while since I’ve seen them. It’s left me with a sense of emptiness. It’s left me with the desire to hang out with them again.

It’s a feeling that I’m very unaccustomed to. I’m used to being extremely self independent, and self reliant. I have a few friends that I’m in contact with on an irregular basis but for the most part I feel like I have my own self sustained ecosystem of good emotions independent of who I chat with during the week.

The other oddity is; I have no issue meeting new people, interacting with people. I must have had hundreds of opportunities to make new friends in the past 6 months. But the clusters of friendships I did make recently were intense and very short lived. I didn’t really even take much notice of it.

But now I realise that the reason they never worked out for me, is that they just came too easy. I didn’t have to invest any effort or time for a rather large investment on their part. I didn’t have to work to gain their approval. At least in my mind I was putting in minimal effort. If I could accost you and talk to you and make you love me in 10 minutes you weren’t special to me. I could repeat that 5 times in the next hour and have 5 more people that loved me.

I remember particularly that I despised tinder for that reason. It was child’s play. Real life was more subtle and I never realised why I wasn’t satisfied with the friendships I formed.

In hindsight it makes perfect sense that the last meaningful friendship I formed was with a girl I met at uni and we sat and talked for three hours before either of us exchanged contact info. That was a stand out day. How often do you sit with a stranger for 3 hours and become friends in that time?

I realise with the numbers and Facebook numbers I collect that I could also follow the same process of spending time with them later but strangely from my experience that doesn’t work as well.

I think what I’ve realised now is that time spent has to be spontaneous. Scheduling one hour to talk with someone on a date is too formal.

Another friendship that worked out for me was when I traveled half an hour to meet someone, and then we hung out at a cafe, and walked on the beach and then hung out at their house for another 3-4 hours just talking.

You see back to my class mates, we didn’t arrange to be buddies and find out about each other, we shared an experience that we poured out blood, sweat and tears into and the investment of the effort and the time together brought us closer.

I imagine that the army platoons work much in a similar ways. Soldiers don’t sign up to make friends but the blood, sweat, and tears; the EFFORT put into the realisation of a common goal is what brings them so close together.

Another friend I met recently, went to the effort of inviting me out to multiple events, but the thing is I see now, that they were premeditated times to get to know each other better and I didn’t have to invest much. It was too easy, and they were too keen.

That’s the other thing, people that are too keen, are seen as reactive and trying to please, and that’s a put off.

This generous friend of mine and other similar almost-friends I’ve made that similarly put in the initial investment to see me have also consistently had a harder time relinquishing the friendship and as a result attempted to make multiple attempts for more meet-ups.

Something that I’ve been thinking about for over a year now is creating a social circle. My problem is I WANT to put in minimal effort and invest no time! Funnily enough this is the exact opposite mindset of how I should be going about achieving this goal.

It’s like I wanted different results by doing exactly what I’ve always done.

The most precious commodity you can give someone is time.

The perfect scenario for forming friendships I now understand, is neither being the overly eager to please partner, nor the all too casual partner, but striving to have an equal investment ratio from both parties.

 

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