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“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”<\/span><\/p>\n ― Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934 <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n There have been few studies on the value of friendships. Most of the studies<\/a> show what activates in the brain when we are with a friend as opposed to a stranger. This is true even if the stranger is similar to us. <\/span><\/p>\n “In all experiments, closeness but not similarity appeared to drive responses in medial prefrontal regions and associated regions throughout the brain,” Krienen said. “The results suggest social closeness is more important than shared beliefs when evaluating others. <\/span><\/p>\n Read Montague, PhD, of Baylor College of Medicine, an expert on decision-making and computational neuroscience, said, “The authors address an important component of social cognition — the relevance of people close to us,” Montague said.<\/span><\/p>\n So while the science is in that there is relevance of people close to us, why do some of us have few friends? I am of course speaking about the face-to-face friends rather than the 500 friends you have on Facebook or the 1000 followers on Twitter.<\/span><\/p>\n What I see in my practice is the slow demise of friendships after marriage<\/a>. Studies show that women maintain and keep friends longer than men. <\/span><\/p>\n But how important do we see friendship I wonder this because while working with couples, I am often surprised at a partner’s expectations of each other. What I mean is, “if you love me, you will take care of all my needs and be my everything.” Now I have never heard those exact words, but I have definitely heard the sentiment. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/span>Why do some of us have few friends after marriage?<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n