“Platonic” by Marisa Franco

A friendship famine? Along with everything else we’ve had to put up with for the past two years? We’re a lonely society--in need of friendship, says Marisa Franco, a psychology professor at the University of Maryland and the author of “Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends as an Adult.”How do we make and keep friends in an era of distraction, burnout, and chaos, especially in a society that often prizes romantic love at the expense of other relationships? Franco says it’s important to understand how we bond these days. If your friends aren’t texting you back it’s not because they hate you.To make and keep friends you must understand your attachment style—secure, anxious, or avoidant. That’s the key to unlocking what’s working (and what’s failing) in your friendships.  Making new friends, and deepening longstanding relationships, is possible at any age—in fact she says, it’s essential. The good news: there are specific, research-based ways to improve the number and quality of your connections using the insights of attachment theory and the latest scientific research on friendship. Guys, she tells Steve Tarter, sometimes have a harder time bonding with another man due to fears that it will be taken as a sign of being gay. But friendship is important enough to find forms of connection, said Franco.