Transcripts
Haley remembers her best friend from first grade, Kitty.
Speaker:The two first met when they were seated next to one another in homeroom, and they spent every weekday together at school ...and soon every weekend, too.
Speaker:They’d talk for hours or just do homework together in silence or walk home together from after school activities.
Speaker:Haley remembers how her friend had been like a lifeline to her.
Speaker:She had just moved to the neighborhood, her parents had just gotten a divorce, and everything in life was upside down—except Kitty.
Speaker:With her she could talk about anything.
Speaker:In fact, the two became so close that they considered themselves inseparable, better than sisters, and swore they’d be best friends forever.
Speaker:Kitty is still in Haley’s life, although they now live on opposite ends of the world.
Speaker:Haley is now thirty-four and discovering that making friends as an adult is ...different.
Speaker:Haley considers herself a kind, friendly person who makes an effort to meet new people.
Speaker:So she doesn’t understand why, years after moving to a new area, she doesn’t feel like she really knows anybody.
Speaker:A woman she really wanted to be friends with, Alex, is the wife of someone she met in painting class.
Speaker:Though Haley felt like they had made a connection, Alex just seemed to drift off, their text messages became strained, and nothing really took off.
Speaker:Haley’s world, in fact, seems full of awkward meetups, promising connections that quickly fizzle, and “friendships” that revolve around drinks every four months.
Speaker:Soon Haley is sick of hearing the phrases “so busy” and “sure, let’s get a coffee or something ...” Why was it so easy to make such a strong connection in first grade, and why is it so difficult now?
Speaker:Dr. Jack Schafer, former FBI agent and author of The Like Switch, has a theory that might have the answer.
Speaker:Schafer is a behavioral expert who first introduced the concept of “the friendship formula."
Speaker:According to him, clicking with a person and becoming their friend is not some random bit of magic, but follows a predictable pattern.
Speaker:The formula goes like this - Friendship = Proximity.
Speaker:+ Frequency.
Speaker:+ Duration.
Speaker:+ Intensity.
Speaker:In other words, friendship will develop most quickly and most firmly when all four factors are strongly present.
Speaker:Without them, friendship cannot emerge.
Speaker:Let’s take a look at each in turn and see how they apply to Haley’s friendships.
Speaker:Proximity.
Speaker:This is the distance between you and the other person.
Speaker:When you think about it, building friendships is simply a matter of fostering increasing closeness—and that closeness is not just metaphorical.
Speaker:The closer you are physically, and the more context you share, the better your chances of striking up a friendship.
Speaker:Haley and Kitty sat right next to each other for hours, every day, for all of first grade.
Speaker:That’s a lot of time!
Speaker:Compare that with her friend-of-a-friend Alex, who she will only see if she makes a concerted effort to arrange a meetup.
Speaker:The psychology of this is straightforward.
Speaker:Human beings tend to like what they are already familiar with.
Speaker:If you are spending a lot of time with someone, they become familiar to you.
Speaker:Sure, constantly being in someone’s space doesn’t necessarily mean they will like you (siblings all across the world can attest to this!), but it does mean that you will increase your exposure to that person, and if there is a potential for friendship, all that exposure will help you make something of that potential.
Speaker:Alex and Haley, on the other hand, are simply not in each other’s world.
Speaker:They each have completely separate, different lives, and to find room in that life for someone else takes an active effort—an effort that people are sadly not too ready to make.
Speaker:Frequency.
Speaker:You can probably already see how Kitty and Haley’s friendship was based on greater frequency than most adult friendships are.
Speaker:Greater frequency means a stronger chance of friendship developing.
Speaker:Even if you can’t spend a lot of time with someone, it’s still worth something to frequently spend time with them.
Speaker:Consider a long-distance marriage where the couple spends only one day a month together.
Speaker:Now consider a different long-distance couple who only spends twelve days in a year together, all at once.
Speaker:Which couple do you imagine has the greater chance of staying connected?
Speaker:Both spend the same amount of time with one another, but the latter couple has more frequent contact, and this naturally leads to a stronger sense of bonding.
Speaker:It comes back to repetition and familiarity.
Speaker:The more frequently you engage with someone, the more they feel like part of your world.
Speaker:There are simply a greater number of opportunities to share, to communicate, to become a part of one another’s experience.
Speaker:You might wave hello and say one or two sentences to your neighbor every single day for years, and genuinely come to think of them as a kind of friend.
Speaker:One day you might meet a person and have a deep and meaningful conversation with them for hours, but never see them again.
Speaker:The connection with this latter person is definitely deeper and more satisfying ...but you probably don’t consider them a friend.
Speaker:Duration.
Speaker:As we’ve seen, friendships can be formed in short, frequent bursts, but all the better if they have the luxury of time on their side.
Speaker:If you add up the total time that Haley and Kitty spent together, it probably borders on tens of thousands of hours.
Speaker:If you add up the total time Haley and Alex spent together ...it’s probably around thirty minutes.
Speaker:Even though Haley and Kitty were joined at the hip, even they weren’t that interested in one another after only thirty minutes!
Speaker:Friendship takes time to build.
Speaker:You’re probably wondering if this is a catch-22 situation - People only spend time with those they’re already friends with, but how can you make friends with someone until you’ve spent a lot of time with them?
Speaker:It’s true that adult friendships are plagued by this very problem, but understanding this snag means you’re best positioned to get around it as quickly as possible (which is exactly what we’ll be doing through the rest of the book).
Speaker:Intensity.
Speaker:The final variable in the equation is how well you are able to satisfy another person’s needs during any social interaction.
Speaker:The more you can, the better the chance of striking up a friendship.
Speaker:Siblings are a great example of how even people with high duration, frequency, and proximity in their interactions don’t necessarily become friends—they may not meet one another’s emotional needs (in fact, they may actively get in the way of them!).
Speaker:Siblings who get on well, on the other hand, often do so because they have a connection based on mutual support through a shared challenge, or else they have come to help one another with their respective needs—i.e., they have intensity.
Speaker:Haley and Kitty found a safe haven with one another.
Speaker:They had long, intense talks about their secret feelings and helped one another through the tough times.
Speaker:Compare that to Haley and Alex—both are independent, self-sufficient adults with husbands, children, and fulfilling jobs.
Speaker:Their lives are full.
Speaker:To put it bluntly, the mutual emotional need for that connection is simply not as strong.
Speaker:Incidentally, flagging intensity is a big reason for the failure of already established friendships and relationships.
Speaker:It is the reason a couple complain of lack of connection when they spend every day together - because when they are together, they’re both distracted, staring at their phones, or occupied with low-level chit chat.
Speaker:As they lose intensity, they lose connection.
Speaker:To return to the equation, you can see that friendships will develop according to the sum of all these four elements.
Speaker:That means that one element can be relatively weak if another compensates by being extra strong.
Speaker:Consider these examples -
Speaker:•Two colleagues work together and happen to spend a lot of time doing the same hobby, too.
Speaker:There’s not much intensity, but they make up for it with plenty of proximity, duration, and frequency, and consider one another good friends.
Speaker:80 00:09:43,800 --> 00:09:54,680 •Two old college friends have long since moved to different countries and now only see one another yearly for a long Christmas vacation together.
Speaker:They spend a full two weeks together, catching up—they lack proximity and frequency, but they have plenty of intensity and spend hours together, just all at one time.
Speaker:This has kept their friendship going for decades.
Speaker:84 00:10:11,000 --> 00:10:27,960 •Two people live on the same block and over time have come to an arrangement—they collect one another’s packages if they’re out, and they pass on messages or check in on the houseplants if the other one goes away for a few days.
Speaker:Despite being two completely different people who move in different circles, they have become friends.
Speaker:They have very low duration (they have seldom chatted for longer than five minutes at a time), but high intensity and frequency since they regularly meet one another’s needs.
Speaker:Though all sorts of combinations can and do come together to make a friendship, naturally there are lower limits, and if the total package comes below a certain threshold, a friendship simply cannot develop.
Speaker:This is what has happened with Haley and Alex - They have low proximity, low duration, low intensity, and low frequency.
Speaker:Haley thinks, “I don’t understand.
Speaker:We got on so well together, and we both really wanted to get to know each other better!"
Speaker:But Dr. Schafer would say that friendship has very little to do with how much people like one another or how similar they are.
Speaker:He might point out, in fact, that many good friendships can form even if people are quite different or annoy each other sometimes or come from wildly different backgrounds.
Speaker:You can probably prove this to yourself by thinking back to your own childhood friends—how many of them were genuinely great matches for you as a person, and how many simply took root in your life because they were there, they were familiar, and you both went through the same experiences together?
Speaker:How to Use Schafer’s Formula to Your Benefit Many people who struggle to make friends start out by asking the wrong questions.
Speaker:How can I be more likeable?
Speaker:What’s wrong with me?
Speaker:Am I not interesting/funny/smart enough?
Speaker:Why don’t they like me?
Speaker:Instead, take Schafer’s advice and deliberately find ways to increase proximity, and the duration, intensity, and frequency of your interactions with people.
Speaker:Here’s how.
Speaker:1.
Speaker:Start by increasing proximity.
Speaker:Your goal is just to get them comfortable with you being around so that you start to feel more and more familiar.
Speaker:The big caveat here is to do this slowly—if you push yourself on people, they’ll perceive you as a threat.
Speaker:2.
Speaker:Once proximity is established, gradually increase the amount of time you spend with that person.
Speaker:At the same time, slowly increase frequency, too.
Speaker:3.
Speaker:Only after you’ve done the above can you start ramping up the intensity by talking about more in-depth things or revealing a little more about yourself.
Speaker:4.
Speaker:If the intensity part goes well, the cycle should repeat, with both of you seeking out more proximity.
Speaker:Over time, a friendship is established, and the same four factors help to maintain it over time.
Speaker:Granted, this seems like a pretty easy process, and it is.
Speaker:It can take time, however, and the biggest reason for failure along the way is impatience.
Speaker:Imagine you meet someone interesting at a party, and you immediately click and start talking.
Speaker:Even though it’s the first time you’ve ever met, you soon notice yourself sharing personal details, ranting about politics and other heavy topics, and probing them for answers to all life’s deep and meaningful questions.
Speaker:Now, whether the other person reciprocates or not, you may find that after the conversation is over, a sudden awkwardness sets in.
Speaker:By skipping the parts where you build proximity, frequency, and duration, you risk going too far too soon.
Speaker:If you’ve ever formed an intense connection with an “instant friend” who then disappeared after a month of knowing you, this might be the reason why.
Speaker:On the other hand, it’s not enough to only increase proximity and so on.
Speaker:The old advice to find friends at shared interest groups or hobbies is good advice—but it’s just a starting point.
Speaker:If you are regularly spending hours every week with people but you never increase intensity or ask them to hang out outside of those scheduled times, chances are the friendship won’t properly launch.
Speaker:In the remaining chapters of this book, we’ll be looking at plenty of different techniques for better listening, asking questions, telling a great story, and building rapport.
Speaker:But all these techniques are best when embedded in a firm understanding of this overall timeline of a developing friendship.
Speaker:Even the wittiest banter and charming conversation won’t help if you’re only at the first stage of gently increasing proximity with a potential new friend.
Speaker:The rule is - go slow.
Speaker:Take your time and build up each successive interaction on the previous one.
Speaker:Put it into practice - Look around your social network and identify one person who is an acquaintance—i.e., someone you know but don’t know very well.
Speaker:How often do you spend time with this person, and for how long?
Speaker:Do you meet one another’s needs in any way?
Speaker:Once you’ve quickly appraised the current status of the relationship, decide on what you need to do next in order to create more closeness.
Speaker:You will probably need to increase proximity or frequency first.
Speaker:How could you do that?
Speaker:This is not necessarily about inviting them out somewhere or conspicuously asking them to be your friend (although if this feels right to you, you can do this!).
Speaker:Instead, become curious about how you might start gently building value in one of the four variables.
Speaker:You don’t need to commit to a lifelong relationship, either—just take action and see what happens.
