Dr. Shari Nicole, Psychologist and Key Consultant of Everyday Psychology, joins us to talk about the importance and challenge of adult friendships. We discuss cutoff culture, attachments styles, boosting confidence and more including answers to these common questions:

How many friends do most people have?

How do childhood experiences affect adult friendships?

How do you know if a friendship is worth saving?

How do you know that it’s time to break up with a friend?

How do you go about breaking up with a friend?

How do friendships affect intimate relationships?

How do friendships differ according to gender?

How can you be more confident in your friendships?

Follow Dr. Shari on Instagram and Facebook. Be sure to check out her podcast 3 Psychs and a Mic.

Please see here for a rough version of this transcript.

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Rough Transcript:

This is a computer-generated rough transcript, so please excuse any typos. This podcast is an informational conversation and is not a substitute for medical, health or other professional advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the services of an appropriate professional should you have individual questions or concerns.

How to Break Up With A Friend

00:00:05 - 00:05:03

You're listening to the sacs with dr jess podcast sacks and relationship advice you can use tonight Welcome to the sex with dr. Just podcast i'm your co host brandon. Wear here with my lovely other. Half dr jess how are you. I'm good man. You know. I'm excited for today. Because i have a lot to learn about this topic we are going to be talking about friendship and it is such an important topic because friendship's just like intimate relationships can have such a significant effect on your mental health. You're physical health happiness life. Ill meant and as i started digging into the research while one thing i found is that social isolation has actually increased over the last few decades in north america. And i'm talking far prior to covid. And i was looking at the two thousand six study found that the number of friends people feel they can discuss important matters with reduce to well. There's two in there. That's pretty good. Yeah so it fell from two point nine four so almost three in one thousand nine hundred five to two point. Zero eight thousand four. I'm sorry but that's all right is does does your partner. If you're in a relationship does your partner count as a friend to the in this study. Do you know that's a great question. I'm not sure. Because i feel like i don't know that i would have two point nine or three friends with whom i would feel comfortable discussing serious matters. I think i can think of one. Maybe two depending on the topic. But if if you're not in that mix it's it's now you know you can't tell mysterious That's interesting because i start to think about my numbers. And how do i say this. I'm not sure it's particularly relevant. How many there are right. I don't know that it's that. I need eight versus four. Or you know. It's so easy to say like when i was counting. You know as i do this. I have you and there are four others in my life whom i feel. I can approach with really serious stuff. There are probably actually more than that. But there's four that i'm kind of close with and i don't wanna look at this and say oh i'm above the two point zero eight. I think really what matters is the quality of the relationship as opposed to the number of friends. But as i did dig into the research.