|
December
10, 2002:
The Importance of Close Friendships II
Interview
with Dr. Will Miller, author of Refrigerator
Rights
Mike
Carruthers:
Americans today have fewer truly close and intimate friends and
relatives than ever before.
Dr.
Will Miller:
People say, "Hey, look, my life's too busy, I don't
have enough time for new friendships." But I have to say
back to those people, "Do you not have friends because
you're too busy, or have you made yourself too busy because
you don't have friends?"
Dr. Will
Miller, author of the book Refrigerator
Rights.
I think
a lot of our lifestyle behavior is a compensation for what we
don't have fundamentally, which is brothers and sisters and
the kinds of relationships that are refrigerator rights relationships,
which would be much more preferable a life.
Refrigerator
rights relationships are with people who can go into your refrigerator
and take something without asking your permission. Most of us
have few of those close relationships, except maybe the one
with our spouse.
As a
therapist, I can tell you, the majority of marriages that fail,
fail because two people became too dependent on just one other
person. We're not wired that way; we're wired to be in connection
with a variety of relationships.
Dr. Miller
not only preaches the philosophy of refrigerator rights relationships,
he has lived it.
When
I made the connection that my own struggles with anxiety and
worry and difficulty being a person of serenity was connected
to my social isolation, and I began attending to that and connecting
to the people that are in my community, it has had a tremendous
positive effect on my mood.
You can
link to Dr. Miller's website
from ours, somethingyoushouldknow.net.
I'm Mike Carruthers and that's "Something You Should Know."
|
