Friends - Do You Need to Have More?

                                                                                         

Lots of studies show that it’s important to have close friendships and relationships, and to have close emotional connections to other people.

People who make good emotional connections to others are physically and mentally healthier and they may even live longer than people who don’t.

When you have more friends and loved ones in your life that you see regularly, you will be happier and healthier.

How many close friends do you have? How many do you really need?

A few weeks I read in the newspaper that the average American person has only two close friends or relatives they can confide in. And in most cases, the persons they confided in were usually members of their immediate family.

When I read this I was shocked, because I didn’t think that two people to confide in was enough. And it turns out that just two decades ago, the average American person had at least three people they could confide in. So, it seems the number of close friends the average American has is going down.

Although it might be hard to prove, the researchers also thought that most Americans now have far fewer people close to them than people who lived in that country would have had a hundred years ago.

Now, if you don’t happen to live in the United States, you might think, “What does that have to do with me?”

Many of the same factors that are making it harder for Americans to have really close friends that they can confide in are also affecting people in other parts of the world as well.

All over the world, more and more people have to move to big cities to try to find work. Often they have to leave behind the close-knit communities where their families lived for generations.

Once they are in big cities, they find that cities can be very exciting places to live, but cities are also filled with lots of lonely people crammed close together. Too often, the people crammed into these cities are not connecting with each other.

Many people today all over the world are having to work longer hours just to pay the bills and stay alive. Lots of times they spend hours commuting, and when they come home they are too tired to do much more than eat supper and watch television.

The sort of free time our grandparents had to visit with each other on the front porch and relax has often disappeared. In many places, the sense of community has disappeared because too many buildings have been knocked down and replaced by high rises, and too many long time residents have moved away to be replaced by strangers.

Even our technology that is supposed to help us connect with each other can also keep us apart. Television can show us what is happening to people around the globe, but when we keep our eyes glued to the television set we end up not knowing the people who live down the street.

So, loneliness is becoming ever more common as we get more advanced.

So, what can we do?

Instead of moaning about the fact that society has become too busy and too impersonal, we can each take steps to ensure that we slow down and examine whether we are getting the human contact we want.

And if we are not getting enough human contact, we must each make the individual commitment to try to change things for the better in our own life, and for those around us.

Reach out, talk to more people, show that you care about them, and thank them when they care about you.

About the author:
This article was written by friendship expert Royane Real, author of the new book “How You Can Have All the Friends You Want – Your Complete Guide to Finding Friends, Making Friends, and Keeping Friends” To improve your friendships, download it today at http://www.royanereal.com

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