Nearly 20 years ago, a team of psychologists wrote about how people handle stressful situations. They found that while most men went into fight or flight mode, most women went into an instinctive tend and befriend strategy, solving the stressful situation by making and strengthening interpersonal connections.
Around 10 years ago this article was reviewed in Experience Life magazine, and both men and women were encouraged to go out and make more friends. “Social ties are the cheapest medicine we have. When we erode our social and emotional ties, we pay for it long into the future. When we invest in them instead, we reap the benefits for generations to come.” wrote Anjula Razdan in her excellent review at the time.
Last year, Harvard did a study and found that the secret of happiness was to have close friends and family.
It made me wonder about our support networks. Do we instinctively go into tend and befriend mode when our lives enter a new phase or we move to a new location? Are we after emotional support, or “can you pick up my kids on Thursday” support, or both?
For me, initially, unashamedly, it’s about picking the kids up on Thursday. It is the first point of stress for a professional woman in a new environment. Who can I call on if I can’t pick up my kids from school? How do I find out where the nearest good dentist is? Who can I trust with the house key for if I lock myself out one day? All these are easy to answer if you have a friend or a cousin who lives nearby. Not so easy if you don’t know anyone. So you go and you make friends.
But something strange happens in that process. You make friends. You like these people, they feel comfortable in your company. Soon they become your emotional support network, maybe it was what made you go talk to them from the beginning. Maybe it wasn’t about picking up the kid after all…
I define a support network as that core group of family and friends who help out, step in, are there for us. Our lives would not function without them. Establishing and maintaining a support network takes time and effort. As women, it’s what we do. Women put more effort into getting on with work colleagues, neighbors, children’s teachers… people directly related to us and our family’s daily life. In this way, we build a support network, and make friends along the way.
Whether conscious of the underlying psychological process or not, the best thing to do when you find yourself in a stressful situation is to keep calm and make friends.
This topic has had a lot of interest:
- Wikipedia page on Tend and Befriend
- Scientific paper in Psychological Reviews, first published in 2000
- Personality Research commentary, Feb 2005
- Experience Life article, Nov 2007
- Good Therapy summary, August 2015
- Entrepreneur article, April 2016
- Psychology Today article, Sept 2000 reviewed in June 2016