Frientimacy: How to Deepen Friendships for Lifelong Health and Happiness

by Shasta Nelson

Overview

With the constant connectivity of today’s world, it’s never been easier to meet people and make new friends, but it’s also never been harder to form meaningful friendships. In Frientimacy, award-winning speaker Shasta Nelson shows how anyone can form stronger, more meaningful friendships, marked by a level of trust she calls "frientimacy.”

Shasta explores the most common complaints and conflicts facing female friendships today, and lays out strategies for overcoming these pitfalls to create deeper, supportive relationships that last for the long-term. Shasta is the founder of girlfriendcircles.com, a community of women seeking stronger, more fulfilling friendships, and the author of Friendships Don’t Just Happen. In Frientimacy, she teaches readers to reject the impulse to pull away from friendships that aren’t instantly and constantly gratifying.

With a warm, engaging, and inspiring voice, she shows how friendships built on dedication and commitment can lead to enriched relationships, stronger and more meaningful ties, and an overall increase in mental health. Frientimacy is more than just a call for deeper connection between friends; it’s a blueprint for turning simple friendships into true bonds and for the meaningful and satisfying relationships that come with them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781580056076
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	03/01/2016
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.45(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Friendship expert Shasta Nelson is the founder and CEO of GirlFriendCircles.com, the female friendship matching site where women of all ages go to make local friends, and the author of Friendships Don’t Just Happen! The Guide to Creating a Meaningful Circle of GirlFriends.

Shasta has appeared on The Today Show, Katie, The Early Show, and Fox Business and has been featured in Cosmopolitan, More, Redbook, Good Housekeeping, the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and the San Francisco Chronicle.

Her spirited and soulful voice can also be found at ShastasFriendshipBlog.com and in her Huffington Post column where she regularly addresses the topic of relationship health. She also teaches, lectures, and hosts Friendship Accelerator events in her hometown of San Francisco and throughout the US.

Shasta’s training includes a master's degree in spiritual growth and a bachelor's degree in communication, plus a decade of experience in short-term counseling, coaching leaders and teams, speaking at international motivational and teaching venues, and organizing events and retreats.

Read an Excerpt

The chances are high that you have what I call an “intimacy gap” in your life. I’m not referring to the intimacy of a romantic relationship, but rather the lack of depth many of us feel in our friendship intimacy, or “frientimacy.” That is, a gap between the kind of friendships you want to have and the ones you do have. This isn’t to say your friends aren’t great people, or that you’re not a great friend. This is to say that, if you’re like most people, something in you knows that you have the capacity to both give and receive far more support, love, and intimacy than you currently enjoy.

This is because we’re social beings. We don’t just thrive on feeling emotionally connected to others; research shows that we’re wired to connect with others—that we actually function best when we feel we are woven tightly into relationships. Unfortunately, too often in this day and age we feel less connected than we’d like—no matter how many social media friends or connections we have.
Here are some ways that many women have expressed this desire:

I am over being networked; I just want a few close friends.
I am ready for comfortable.
I have a social life, but that’s different than feeling really connected.
I just want to feel like I belong.
I long for more relaxed time to connect with the people I love.
I prefer deep.
I want friends I believe in and admire.
I want to feel accepted.
I want to know that someone is there for me.
I want to laugh and tell secrets with someone I trust.
I wish I had a tribe.
I’d give anything to be surrounded by friends—really, really good friends.

If just one of the lines above speaks to you, then know that what you want is very human. It’s the bravest, healthiest, and most loving among us that will admit our desire for greater frientimacy. Know too that you’re not alone. I believe we live in a world where the need is nearly universal. Our sense of disconnection is far more cultural than it is circumstantial, more widespread than it is personal.

The good news is we can work to close this gap. In so doing we will not only invite more intimacy into our lives—we will actually deepen our lives. This is because healthy, vibrant relationships help us to develop and actualize the joy, meaning, and peace that we crave.

But to get there we first we will want to do a few things:

Acknowledge that we can only control ourselves, not others.
Acknowledge that a healthy relationship starts with bringing our best self to the relationship: that means working on ourselves.
Resist the temptation to run at the first sign of difficulty. Instead, we can learn how to lean in to friendship. How? By working on ourselves.

Now, of course, sometimes self-reflection can be a bit scary, so some might balk at the words “working on ourselves.” But know too that acknowledging and attending to our gaps also creates energy, providing the impetus to make meaningful changes in our lives.
The chapters to follow will walk you through all this and more.

In Part 1: The Intimacy Gap, we’ll discuss what it means to acknowledge and own our intimacy gaps.
In Part 2: The Frientimacy Triangle, we’ll discuss the tri-fold approach to embracing and deepening frientimacy: by enhancing the positivity, consistency, and vulnerability in all our friendships.
In Part 3: Obstacles to Intimacy, we’ll discuss the various stumbling blocks that can trip up our path to frientimacy.
Then, in the conclusion, we’ll cover how we can measure how far we’ve come by tracking our growth in the areas of relationship growth, courage growth, and love.

If you have fewer confidantes than you’d like, and less support than you need, then I welcome you to join me in learning how you can close your intimacy gap and deepen your frientimacy. In so doing you can improve your health and longevity, increase the joy you experience, add meaning to your life, and feel more loved.
But you’ll be doing even more than that. I think the world is dying without the intimacy it needs. In improving your own relationships, you can also help to heal the world. Every person who feels connected and valued is more likely to share the love—and love is something this world needs a whole lot more of.
Join me!
With huge love,
Shasta

Table of Contents

Introduction xi

Part 1 The Intimacy Gap

1 Acknowledging Our Intimacy Gaps 2

2 Committing to Closing Our Intimacy Gaps 13

Part 2 The Frientimacy Triangle

3 The Way to Intimacy: The Frientimacy Triangle 30

4 Identifying the 5 Intimacy Gaps 46

5 Positivity: Giving and Receiving 58

6 Consistency: Building Trust 80

7 Vulnerability: Deepening Meaning 98

Part 3 Obstacles to Intimacy

8 Leaning In to Intimacy 123

9 Obstacle to Intimacy #1: Doubting Our Self-Worth 137

10 Obstacle to Intimacy #2: The Fear of Rejection 158

11 Obstacle to Intimacy #3: The Toxic Friend Trend 178

12 Obstacle to Intimacy #4: Jealousy and Envy 195

13 Obstacle to Intimacy #5: Holding Ourselves Back 210

Conclusion: Three Ways to Measure Our Growth 228

Epilogue: Friendships Can Save the World 235

Editorial Reviews

Many women feel they have enough friends but are stuck feeling unsatisfied...Frientimacy is a thorough and indispensible guide to help understand what's missing, and learn how to take the next steps to connect in the most fulfilling ways possible.”
—Andrea Bonior, PhD, author of The Friendship Fix and the Washington Post Express column "Baggage Check"

“Shasta Nelson has put her finger on the pulse of our cultural malaise: We need good friends to have a happy life, but we are disconnected from one another. Repair takes, insight, courage, and strength, and Shasta provides outstanding encouragement for us to get up, snap ourselves out of our self-defeating patterns, and create the friendships that our souls are longing for. Frientimacy has already changed my life, and it will change yours.”
—Marilyn Paul, bestselling author of It's Hard to Make a Difference When You Can't Find Your Keys

“The best friendships never have been simple.... Lo and behold, Shasta Nelson's gentle urgings toward self-improvement result in vastly more satisfying friendships.”
—Theresa Donovan Brown, co-author of The Social Sex: A History of Female Friendship

“I used to get a terrible sinking feeling in my stomach when I read articles about how women with a close circle of friends live longer. I had such a hard time developing satisfying friendships after a certain age. I was lonely! But not anymore, and I attribute part of that ability to connect to Shasta Nelson wisdom. If you want—and need!—deeper friendships, then please read this wise and useful book.”
—Jennifer Louden, bestselling author of The Woman’s Comfort Book and The Life Organizer

"Even women with large numbers of friends yearn for close, intimate friendships: Relationships that are easy and forgiving, and that allow friends to communicate in shorthand yet feel understood. In Frientimacy, Shasta Nelson offers practical advice to help women hone the skills and mindsets that are fundamental to the development of healthier, more satisfying friendships."
—Irene S. Levine, author of Best Friends Forever: Surviving a Breakup with Your Best Friend

“Compassionate and encouraging, Shasta Nelson teaches how to not only make friends but create deep connections and avoid 'expectation hangovers' in our friendships. I am so grateful for this book, and all the loving, connected, and lasting friendships it will create.”
—Christine Hassler, bestselling author of 20 Something, 20 Everything

"Every woman can relate to the feeling of having plenty of Facebook ‘friends’ or contacts to scroll through in her phone but still longing for the intimate connections she had with childhood friends, back when her BFF was her everything. I know I can. As I read through Nelson’s description of why women experience loneliness—because we lack close connections, not because we don’t know enough people—I found myself wondering how she got in my head. Anyone who has admired intimate friendships in pop culture and wondered, ‘Why don’t I have that?’ will want to pick up this book.”
—Rachel Bertsche, bestselling author of MWF Seeking BFF: My Yearlong Search for a New Best Friend

"If you desire friends you can count on and grow with, who will support and see you, who make your life more full and fun, then you’ve got to read Frientimacy. Shasta Nelson has taken a bold stand to end loneliness and replace it with the deep and nourishing bonds of sisterhood we all need and crave."
—Christine Arylo, bestselling author of Madly in Love with ME and Reform Your Inner Mean Girl

From the Publisher