Anxious is high effort, low reward.
Secure is high effort, high reward
when it comes to friendship.
WPR: And then what about friendships
where there's not necessarily
a difference in values,
but maybe a distance,
whether that's a physical
distance has been created
or some sort of emotional distance
because your life has changed in some way?
How do you suggest people
go about maintaining
and nurturing those types
of relationships?
MF: So there's research
on long-distance friends
that finds that we are helped
when we perceive our friendships
as flexible, not fragile.
So when we perceive that,
"Oh, I haven't talked
to this person in a few months,
I'm going to assume that friendship
is asleep, not that it's dead,
so that I can reconvene
this friendship at any time."
Right?
So it's being able to recognize
that our friendships ebb and flow.
And when we're at an ebb,
that doesn't mean,
"OK, I'm never going to contact
this person again,