When friends become Barbora Chaloupková's family<

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When bad situations came and it was clear that someone needed help, we stepped in. Family relationships for some of us were not always ideal, but friends always worked. The gang was the chosen family. It made sense to invest time and energy here." This is how 27-year-old Kryštof and Klára, who is a year younger, describe their social bubble, which they exaggerately call a "sect" and which includes about twenty people. Most have completed university, Kryštof works in finance and Klára as a consultant. Even though a large part of them spent several years abroad, they remained loyal to their Prague friends. "We've never found anything better anywhere, and we haven't even tried it," they laugh. They keep in touch daily through social networks, celebrate Christmas together, welcome the other members' new partners and know one essential thing about each other: if anything happens, the group will be here and only for them.

We all suspect that unlike traditional family ties, which do not always result in loving coexistence, friendship offers a freer relationship into which we enter completely voluntarily, pleasant emotions almost naturally. In the event that a family or partnership is not working at its best, friends can even become the strongest relationships we have in life. When we are sick or fired from our jobs, in many experiences, they are the ones who create an imaginary safety net for us to fall into. And even if all our relationships are working perfectly, friends offer a level of understanding and sympathy that we simply cannot find elsewhere. As new mother Lenka describes, her friends from the theater troupe, with whom she has performed since she was a child, are still everything to her today. "A very specific kind of humor has developed between us. I miss it terribly, as well as all other experiences and chances of complete relaxation," he recalls from abroad, where he lives today. In recent years, the seemingly self-evident topic of the attraction of friendship has also been noticed by professional literature, and various researches confirm the positive impact of friendly ties on our health. The simple idea that "friendship is the best family in the world" acquires the stamp of science, but another thing is more important: at a time when the pressure to move through life along a linear trajectory of "marriage - child - house" is opening up, space is opening for new constellations . And friendship offers an irresistible cocktail.

My choice

For twenty-five-year-old Dominika, friends play a vital role for a simple reason: her biological family never gave her much. "Mom is addicted to alcohol and dad has not been working for a long time. I learned not to look for help and support from them, but from my friends," she says. Over time, she developed several friendships that today form her network of closest people. "I know they will always be here for me. Sometimes I think that this is probably what people normally feel in the family," he adds.

In the case of twenty-eight-year-old Ondřej, mutual family relationships are more of an obligation and he only meets his closest relatives a few times a year. “Apart from my brother, I feel no close connection to my own family. I feel a certain remorse about this, because we were led to be together with the family, but apart from the last name, we simply have nothing in common," he describes their relationship. According to him, only with friends does he experience a feeling of understanding, belonging and the knowledge that someone will always listen to him. The 28-year-old doctoral student shares an apartment in Olomouc with his partner and mutual friend and appreciates the homely atmosphere they have there. Recently, he attended two events in quick succession: a family celebration and a meeting with friends who have passed through covid. “It was nice to see the family, but I soon realized that the company was killing me. On the contrary, it was great with friends, that's when we started toasting the fact that we would choose a family. It dawned on me that they are my extended family. I am alive with them," he recalls.

The term "chosen family" first appeared in the United States in the 1970s. It referred to the bonds of friendship with which people – often gays and lesbians – replaced biological families who renounced them. Since then, the term has popularized and is no longer only used by members of the gay community. Replacing a dysfunctional family with friends is a logical step, perhaps each of us to some extent longs for social contact and functioning and pleasant relationships with other people. And as many studies show, few things help our health as massively as taking care of relationships with our loved ones, be it family or friends. In 2010, for example, psychologist and neurologist Julianna Holt-Lunstadt working at the University of Utah, USA, provided evidence for the assumption that we live healthier lives with close people. In a meta-analysis, she combined findings from 148 studies that examined the relationship between mortality from chronic diseases (such as cancer or cardiovascular disease) and the social ties that sick people had. The conclusion of the study, which collected data on more than 300,000 people, sounded clear: if we have a support network of close people around us, the probability of death is reduced by 50 percent. "The impact on our health is similarly strong as if we quit smoking," the study summarizes.

And while Julianna Holt-Lunstadt's analysis explored the positive effects of relationships in general, there has been a growing body of research focusing specifically on friendships. "The data shows that it's important to have healthy, functioning relationships in life, and it doesn't matter with whom specifically. But there are more and more people for whom friendships are the most important in their lives," says anthropologist Anna Machin, who studies the topic at the University of Oxford and next year will publish a new book, Why We Love: The New Science Behind Our Closest Relationships we love: new insights into our closest relationships).

Similar questions are also being investigated by her Oxford colleague Robin Dunbar, who came up with the theory in the 1990s that, on average, each person is able to maintain some form of relationship with a maximum of 150 people. We are closest to about four to five people with whom we are in daily contact and spend about 40 percent of our time with them. This group can include our partner, children or closest friends. The core is supplemented by another ten people, with whom we are in contact on a weekly basis. These 15 people then form our main support group. “How does all this relate to friendship? A significant number of people - and the number is increasing every year - have friends instead of family and a partner. Friends are their 15 most important people. It is they who form that magic network that has a fundamental influence on their happiness or health," explains Machin in a text on the website of the internet magazine Aeon.

Change of Circumstances

Who are the people for whom friends play such a vital role in their lives? If we wanted the shortest answer, it would be "rather younger women," according to the Oxford anthropologist. This is inevitably a biased conclusion that will have many exceptions. But according to Machin, there are reasons to believe that friends are very important to younger people today, and especially to women. According to her, one of the main reasons is the change in the position of women in society, which has occurred over the past 50 years or so. “Women have always had close friendships, but I think recently the options for how they can live their lives have changed. Thanks to contraception, they got a chance to control their own fertility, they don't even have to get married to secure an income," says the anthropologist with the important postscript that she is describing the situation in Western countries in particular. According to Anna Machin, society's expectations towards women are also changing. Whereas earlier they were expected to be wives and mothers and the primary relationship they had was with their husband and children, today there is more room for other constellations to form their support network.

Gradually changing social norms in recent decades also explain why the phenomenon of close friendships often affects younger people, although Machin notes that he also works with the "50 plus" generation in his research. It comes to the - expected - conclusion that today there is a fundamental increase in the number of people who live without a partner or decide not to have children. These are the circumstances that closely influence how much people have the opportunity to devote their time, energy and love to friends.

"When asked about fundamental values, most people mention health, family and friends," sociologist Martin Buchtík summarizes the current Czech reality. "People who feel lonely have a significantly lower sense of happiness in life, it's even slightly more important than the economic situation," he adds. According to him, the high value of friendship is a matter of adolescence and early youth and does not change: friendship was as important to young people 60 years ago as it is today. However, he also sees some trends that contribute to the fact that, also in the Czech context, part of the younger generations now have more space to take care of their friendships. In addition to the increasing age of first-time mothers, which has risen from 23 to 30 since the 1990s, the increasing diversity of lifestyles also plays an important role. "In the West it started in the 1960s with an emphasis on individualization and with the acceptance of the idea that there is not just one guide to life. "Society doesn't push young people to have a family quickly, and a new period of life is created from around the age of 23 to 33," explains the sociologist. At the same time, today's times offer many possibilities to use this "extra" time, from traveling to doing business, says Buchtík, adding that the large degree of individual choice does not suit everyone.

"I'd rather go on a trip with a friend in a van and see the world than have a wedding and a baby on my list," explains the twenty-nine-year-old Alžběta. The employee of a non-profit organization in Prague describes herself as more of an introvert who cares about deeper relationships with a few close friends. Like many young people, Alžběta lives in a shared apartment. "I'm glad for that, we cook together, borrow what we need, it's nice," she says, adding in one breath that it's also more financially beneficial. The 27-year-old nutritional therapist Tereza, who moved to Brno this year, also praises cohabitation. He lives with six other people in a wooden hut in the middle of a city courtyard. "Grandma doesn't quite understand why I did something like that at my age," she laughs, "but I see value in having someone to share space and time with. I could afford a studio apartment myself, but I don't think it would be better at all," she says.

According to Buchtík, precisely the high housing prices are one of the reasons that today affects the "new" life period of young people. "Owning your own home is an unattainable aspiration, but at the same time, in certain professions you have enough financial resources for everyday life and you can afford to work part-time, for example," he explains. However, the sociologist adds that it is definitely not possible to say that every young person has such opportunities. According to him, whether they open up to him or not depends, for example, on the type of school he attends. "If you study an apprenticeship, at nineteen you will be thrown into the job market. In addition, apprenticeships are often less flexible, so you're more tied down in what you can and can't do," he says, adding that the situation will be different for university students and graduates.

Just as it cannot be said that all young people place a fundamental emphasis on friendship in their lives, of course the importance of friendship cannot be limited to only young people. Even in the case of seniors, there is a group of people who today have more space and opportunities to maintain old friendships or establish new ones. "Life expectancy is increasing, retirement remains relatively low and people are healthier, so we are entering a new phase of the life cycle in which people are active and have more time," explains Jaroslava Hasmanová Marhánková from the Faculty of Social Sciences of Charles University, who focuses on the sociology of aging. "But of course it depends on your economic and health situation," he adds. As people age, she says, only the strongest bonds remain. More superficial relationships, such as acquaintances from work, will fall away and people will focus more on those that are already important for their happiness and sense of fulfillment.

They can't see it

While for some people friends can represent a dysfunctional family, in other cases they can fill the space that would have belonged to a partner if they had one. “I'm able to maintain more very deep friendships because I'm single. I have time to take care of my friendly relationships," says 30-year-old psychologist Hana from Ostrava. She expresses a subtle annoyance that, in her opinion, people make too big a distinction between friendships and partnerships. "There is not the erotic and sexual level, but when I hear the stories of some partnerships, those people do not have the strong and intimate emotional bond that I find in friendships," he adds. As in the case of many other people, Hana's experience defies the idea that friendly love is never equal to partner and romantic love. "Society perceives a partner relationship as the most important, friendship is not perceived that way," says sociologist and psychotherapist Markéta Šetinová, who in her practice mainly deals with dating millennials. He thus works with people who do not manage to successfully establish or maintain a partner relationship, but often have strong friendships in their lives. “We all have some relationship needs. Emotional closeness, the ability to lean on each other, some vulnerability, we can have all this in both a partner and a friendly relationship," he explains. According to her, however, we place greater and greater expectations on the partnership, which are usually not fulfilled. On the contrary, friendship is not burdened by exaggerated expectations and people are often rather pleasantly surprised by what everything gives them. For example, 30-year-old Nhung, Hana's best friend, talks about the fact that partnerships could learn a lot from friendship. "I would like to transfer the unpretentiousness and naturalness that I have in friendship to partner relationships," she says.

Based on experience from her practice, Šetinová says that most people who are alone do not assume that it will stay that way forever and have ambitions to find a partner. However, many of them can be satisfied and fulfilled with their current state, in which they pay most of their attention to their friends. For some people, their friendships are the only relationships in which they have never been disappointed. "For a long time, the partner relationship was the basis for me, but when it ended recently after nine years, I realized that I must have been naive. Friends will always be there for you, no matter what happens," sums up the general feeling of Zuzana, a thirty-one-year-old graduate of Sinology. And the 28-year-old storekeeper and production manager Jan speaks similarly: "Friendship is to death, partnership may not work out." According to Šetinová, society sometimes has little understanding for the very deep friendships of unmarried people, and it is not unusual for questions to arise as to whether it has a sexual character . Veronika, a twenty-six-year-old interpreter, has experience with similar comments. She has been living with her best friend for the past seven years and praises their coexistence as ideal. “It has all the benefits of a shared household. We cook for two, if one can't, the other cleans up," he explains. According to her, friendship does not want to replace partnership or family, it simply represents another valuable relationship for her. "From time to time, however, there are comments about whether we have something more together. You simply can't explain it to people who haven't experienced such friendship," smiles Veronika.

According to anthropologist Anna Machin, there is another reason why friendships are so important to us. And thanks to him, absolutely everyone finds great value in friendship - even those who have happy family and partner relationships. With friends, we can experience an absolute level of understanding and emotional closeness. One that we often do not even experience with our partner, especially if he is of the opposite sex. “Interaction between different genders is the most challenging of all because our brains work in a slightly different way. That's also why most people have best friends of the same sex," he says. According to her, there can also be tension in a romantic relationship caused by the thought that the partner might find someone else. Interaction with family, on the other hand, can be stressful, because a person often fulfills a role in it and family members have different expectations of him. “Friends bring relaxation and a sense of acceptance into our lives. We can simply be ourselves," highlights Machin, why we feel so good in their presence.

The mutual feeling of complete understanding and the possibility to open up are described by four friends who met a few years ago during their studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences in Prague. Even though each of them is doing something different today, the friendship has lasted and for all of them represents their essential relationship. "The way I am with you, I can't afford to be with my family. With you, I can experience the identity that I think is mine," characterizes one of the group under the condition of anonymity. "My mom doesn't understand our friendship at all and is jealous of him," she says. "We share things that, for example, our parents' generation would keep only for their partner. But I find it terribly liberating that I have more of those people. Our friendship continues to deepen, today I will tell the girls things that I never thought I would be able to tell anyone," adds another girl.

Nguyen Van Anh called Nhung, who grew up in a Czech Vietnamese family, describes the same situation, but caused by completely different reasons. Her parents don't know Czech properly, she doesn't know Vietnamese properly. "Only in recent years did I realize that they only know me as a daughter. I can't really talk to them about literature, philosophy and other things. They don't read what I read. That's why friendships are like family relationships for me. My friends get to know me completely.'