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You're listening to Life Kit from NPR. Hey everybody it's it's Mariel. When I was in college and in my early 20s my friends

and I would spend a lot of time going out to bars and basically looking over each other's shoulders, hoping to meet a romantic partner or somebody to hook up with.

It was almost like friendship was a placeholder until we could find a romantic connection. I think that's pretty common.

And then folks start pairing off, right, getting married. And again, friendship takes a hit.

It becomes like an accessory to your life. And again, friendship takes a hit.

It becomes like an accessory to your life,

not a central part of it.

I will say, at some point, my feelings about friendship changed.

I realized how much love I already had right in front of me. I mean, I've known some of my friends for decades. We've seen each other through breakups and bad haircuts, illness and job losses, but there's a lot of had to unlearn about where friendship should rank

on your priority list. Psychologist Marissa Franco has studied friendship for years, and she says

it's just as important to our happiness and well-being as our romantic and family ties.

We can be lonely even if we found our one and only and that's not weird and that doesn't mean you don't have a great spouse,

but that's just like inherently

part of our hard wiring as social creatures.

Because if we're only around one person all the time, only a certain experience of ourselves

continues to crop up. Marissa wrote a book called Platonic, how this is a of our

experience of ourselves continues to crop up.

Marissa wrote a book called Platonic, How the Science of Attachment can help you make and keep friends.

...