Book Review: Platonic by Marisa G. Franco
How understanding your attachment style can help you make and keep friends
“Friendship files down the barbs of life’s threats”
Marisa G. Franco, a psychology professor at the University of Maryland, finds herself unmoored after a breakup and wonders why romantic relationships take precedence in society. With loneliness being labelled a global epidemic, Franco notes that people have fewer friends than ever before, in part due to the ways our lives are structured around work or partnered relationships.
Yet, friends hold a unique place in our lives. Unlike parents, they “do not expect us to live out their hopes and wants for [them].” Unlike partners and spouses, “we are not shackled with the insurmountable expectation of being someone’s everything.” And so, “friendship, in releasing the relationship pressure valve, infuses us with joy like no other relationship.” We can simply have fun. Still, we struggle to navigate and balance them alongside our other social responsibilities.
Franco’s goal is to restore friendships to their rightful place in the fabric of our lives. She blends research, insight and personal anecdotes into accessible advice with the potential to have a life-changing impact. Her writing elevates friendship’s mundane trials and tribulations into reflections of our core needs.
She defines and distinguishes between different types of love with powerful clarity. There is platonic love, romantic love and sexual love - “platonic (appreciation and liking towards someone), romantic (heady passion and idealisation of someone), or sexual (desire to have sex with someone).” For example, we can feel romantic love towards friends without sexual desire. Franco writes, “These days we typically see platonic love as somehow lacking - like romantic love with the screws of sex and passion missing.” But, she points out, the original term came from Plato’s “vision of a love so powerful it transcended the physical. Platonic love was not romantic love undergoing subtraction. It was a purer form of love, one for someone’s soul.”
Using the framework of the theory of attachment, first developed by John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth in the 1970s, Franco makes it easy for us to identify our own behavioural patterns as well as those of our friends in order to connect and communicate despite our differing tendencies.
There are three primary types of attachment - secure, anxious and avoidant. The book contains a helpful worksheet to decipher your attachment style. Secure people believe they are worthy of love and assume they can trust others to love them. They are more able to ask for support, establish intimacy and simply assume others like them. “Secure friends make you feel safe.” They don’t take conflicts or skirmishes personally and are able to leave ample room for the fluctuations in a friendship.
Anxious attachment types tend to assume others will abandon them. They can be people-pleasers, or forge intimacy too quickly as a way of making it difficult for another to extricate themselves. An anxious type may find it stressful to receive a terse message from a friend, whereas the sender might simply have sent off a functional response while busy. It is these tiny acts and the way in which we interpret them that can change the course of a friendship, sometimes sending it downhill. In knowing our patterns and those of others, we are better equipped to bypass the misinterpretations.
The avoidant attachment style is also afraid of abandonment but avoidants handle this by keeping their distance. They “eschew vulnerability and leave relationships prematurely.” Avoidant types hold the belief that they don’t need anyone but themselves. “Friends move or change jobs, and when out of sight, they drop out of mind.” One individual tells Franco that friends would be upset that he didn’t call or write but he didn’t feel the need to.
Our attachment style also influences the way we handle conflict and resolutions. Franco finds that anger is healthy and can be constructive when expressed with authenticity and love. She makes an illuminating distinction between anger of hope and anger of despair. “Anger of hope energises us, indicating that we need to heal an issue wedged between us to be close again” and can serve as “a healing force that can deepen friendships.” “Anger of despair, however, occurs when we have lost hope of healing a relationship. It confuses conflict with combat and sets out to defend, offend, punish, destroy, or incite revenge.” While secure people are able to depersonalise and bounce back, anxious individuals may struggle with conflict and insecurity.
Contrary to the popular belief that early relationships with parents ingrains our attachment style and are unchangeable, the truth is that experiences, peer groups, therapy and personal work can influence and shift attachment styles in positive and negative ways. Franco reminds us that we are not either insecure or secure. At different times, we are one or the other. “Growth is bending towards security even when total security eludes us.”
The bright, conversational tone makes one feel like one is learning from a kind friend who wants the best for you. The book is full of stories of friendships enduring, friendships ending, individuals redefining what friendship means to them and the role in plays in their lives across different decades. Most readers would find their experiences reflected in these tales, which makes for comforting reading.
Franco acknowledges how hard it is to make friends and she offers advice on forging connections as an adult - it must be intentional. It requires making that phone call, actively making a plan, accounting for busy schedules or complications, but having faith and reading cues to see if the other party exhibits interest. Assuming someone is not interested in hanging with you may prevent you from giving it a shot.
Beyond that, the tenets of building intimacy are affection and vulnerability. Most of the time, we loathe to ask people for help or to reach out when we are feeling despondent. Franco nudges us to think of how we feel when a friend expresses a need for our support. Being there for someone we love gives us great joy. We must assume our friends would feel the same way when we ask them to show up for us in our time of need.
“Our ancestors lived in tribes where responsibility for one another was diffused among many. Friendship, then, is a rediscovery of an ancient truth we've long buried: it takes an entire community for us to feel whole.” This book is a paean to the relationships that form that community. It is a powerful guide to our inner workings as well as a roadmap to understand where our loved ones are coming from. Throughout, it is relatable and nuanced and is sure to have something useful for everyone.
Platonic: How Understanding Your Attachment Style Can Help you Make and Keep Friends
Marisa G. Franco
314 pages, Bluebird Books, 2022
Rs. 699/ USD 28