If this information is correct, it would explain why many women enjoy talking for hours with their friends, especially their female friends: they are all getting the same happy drugs in their heads.
I remember spending about four hours one evening last spring talking with a couple of girlfriends outside a restaurant. The restaurant was the kind that you order at the counter, then sit where you want. No waitstaff. It was a weeknight and the place wasn't crowded, so we sat at a table outside in the warmth and talked. The first friend had to leave about half an hour after friend #2 arrived; friend #2 stayed for nearly 3 hours ... until 9:30. We talked about many different things, most of which I don't remember now because they weren't long-term-memory topics; the important thing was the talking. The bonding. Feeling terrific.
The majority of my conversations and contacts currently are online. I do talk on the phone to one friend about every other weekend or so, but we'll talk for two hours. I talk on the phone to my BFF off and on; sometimes we'll talk every day, sometimes two weeks can go by and all we'll exchange is a few texts and some quick emails. My best girlfriends from way back don't call and they don't write, but if I come to town they seem happy to see me and spend time with me. I don't understand that, but I am rather clueless about many intersocial things. (Karen the therapist and I think it's due to my missing out on some important developments at key stages in my early years.)
I would love to add more friend conversations to help with both my brain chemicals and my social development. Given the recent boom in online-friend-making that I've come into, more long talks with friends may be a possibility. I'd much rather talk than take more medications. Good conversation seldom leaves me feeling drugged or hungover.
I don't think it's worth asking what gives men feel-good chemicals in their brains.
I don't think it's worth asking what gives men feel-good chemicals in their brains.
Note: Oftentimes, writing a coherent piece — be it blog post, non-fiction, or fiction — takes time and many revisions to make the piece logical and flowing. Sometimes — this time — the piece writes itself and requires very little editing or revision. Of course, maybe I'm seeing it that way due to the medications ....
About your "Note" at the end.... ah ha ha ha, or it could be the angels helping you! (You knew I was going to say it. I HAD to!)
ReplyDeleteOkay, then just YAY for friends, no matter how we find them or how we can communicate with them. Simply YAY!
Julie
Might be this study?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.learningplaceonline.com/change/women/stress-friendship.htm
When under stress, oxytocin is released which in women buffers the fight or flight response, and makes us want to tend children (or, I assume, my cats) and gather with other women. And when we do that, more of the hormone is released. Testosterone dampens oxytocin, estrogen enhances it.
Great. If the tigers come, we're gonna get eaten in a great big ball with the other women and babies. Frik!
You know, I'm NOT a caller. I have a good handful of friends whom I only see once a year. But if I think about it, I've always had a roommate, and then I got married. Also, I had a very social job, working at a big bookstore. Lots of fun people to interact with every day, lots of interesting conversations, people to lunch with, going out after work to talk, etc. No shortage of socializing if I chose.
But the last 3 weeks my husband was out of town, and I'm unemployed. So this is when I got together with some of those friends I haven't seen all year, and had some friend phone calls.
And over time, as my friends got into more serious relationships, moved out with boyfriends etc, they became more like me -- less phone calls, less going out.
So to some degree I think it's just a factor of your job, the people you live with, how much busyness there is going on in your life. And then your personality--whether you're a phone person. (I have one friend who never emails, so we have to talk on the phone. But I make it his responsibility to call me.)
I'm sure your old friends are totally happy to see you when you visit, and even think about you during the year, as I think of my friends whom I see once a year. And they don't call, for some mundane reasons that aren't a reflection of how they feel about you.
That is my 2 cents for the day.
As for Julie's angels, well let's face it, the poets have always believed in spirits. That's what the word inspiration means, right? :-)
Glad you had a better day!!
@Julie: if you continue to taunt me, I feel compelled to create an atheists tarot card deck ... and give it to you.
ReplyDelete@London Mabel: "Great. If the tigers come, we're gonna get eaten in a great big ball with the other women and babies. Frik!"
HA HA HA HA HA HA! Thank you.