WOMEN’S FRIENDSHIPS LIFT MOODS, SAVE LIVES
When it comes to reducing stress and anxiety, forget “fight or flight”. Instead, call your friends. Women do it all the time and studies are now validating how healthy reaching out to others can be.
About a decade ago a study carried out at UCLA examined the benefits of friendship among women. It made official what many women have known all along: Our friendships not only make us feel better, they are a positive force for reducing stress and helping us lead healthier, happier lives.
The UCLA study found that women respond to stress with a rush of brain chemicals that makes us seek out women for comfort and support. Prior to this study, most stress research (like most other medical and psychological research) was conducted on men. That may be why the “fight or flight” response was so heavily linked to events that are stressful: In the good old days those two options represented the only survival mechanisms available to warriors and other men.
Now, however, researchers suspect that women have a wider response to stress. According to one of the UCLA study authors, Laura Klein, now an assistant professor of bio-behavioral health at Penn State University, it seems likely that when women are stressed, their brains release the hormone oxytocin which encourages them to surround themselves with other women. This instinct releases more oxytocin, further countering stress and inducing a calm state. This response doesn’t occur in men, Dr. Klein says, because testosterone, the male hormone, seems to reduce the effects of oxytocin while estrogen, the female hormone, enhances it.
The catalyst for this research came when Klein and a colleague, Shelley Taylor, realized that when women working in their lab were stressed, they gathered together to commiserate, while stressed-out men went off on their own.
The fact that women and men respond to stress differently has major implications. For one thing, “tend and befriend” as Klein and Taylor call it, may explain why women live longer than men. Many studies have shown that social ties reduce the risk of disease and increase survival time among seriously ill people. Even having a woman nearby in stressful times makes a difference: Doula-supported childbirth in which a woman supports the birthing mother has been demonstrated to reduce labor by more than an hour. In short, friends help us live calmer, longer, better lives.
One study conducted by Harvard Medical School found that the more friends a woman had, the less likely she was to develop physical ailments associated with aging. Widows have been shown to survive the experience of losing a spouse without long-term, permanent physical or emotional damage if they have at least one close friend.
Friendship isn’t only good for women. According to a recent article in The International Herald Tribune, a ten-year Australian study revealed that older people with a large circle of friends were 22 percent less likely to die during the study period than those with fewer friends. People with friends have been found to have fewer colds. And in Sweden, a study of over 700 middle-aged men found that having friendships reduced their risk of heart attack.
But women’s friendships appear to be particularly beneficial, both physically and psychologically. In a 2006 study of nearly 3,000 nurses with breast cancer, for example, women without close friends were four times as likely to die from the disease as women with ten or more friends. And there isn’t a Second Wave feminist alive who doesn’t know how important validation and support can be. Such support leads to a lowered heart rate and blood pressure, and a reduced desire to overeat. Both the immune and digestive systems are known to work more efficiently as well. As one expert put it, “In general, the role of friendship in our lives isn’t terribly well appreciated.”
A new book about female friendship may change that. The Girls from Ames: A Story of Women and a 40-Year Friendship by Jeffrey Zaslow recounts the friendship of 10 childhood friends from Ames, Iowa. Now in their forties and scattered throughout the U.S., theirs is a story of friendship that has helped these women survive divorce, breast cancer, the death of a child, and more. As a reviewer said, “The role of friendship in their health and well-being is evident in almost every chapter.”
Mothers and daughters, sisters and cousins, school chums and co-workers are experiencing healthier living through female friendship, whether newly acquired or so long a part of life that it’s in our DNA. My own Crone group goes back to junior high school. I don’t know what I’d do without these special women in my life. They give me a joie d’vivre that I find nowhere else in quite the same way.
The writer Anais Nin understood the value of female friendship. She wrote, “Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive…” So did actress Marlene Dietrich: “It’s the friends you can call up at 4:00 a.m. that matter,” she said. Any woman with friends like that not only has a precious gift; she may well have a longer, happier life too.
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DATING VIOLENCE AMONG YOUTH IS KEY CONCERN
On their third date, Michael takes a woman to an expensive restaurant. Afterwards she invites him to her apartment. She asks him to wear a condom if they are going to have sexual relations. He refuses. She says “no.” He seduces her beyond where she wants to go.
Susan’s long-term partner wants to have sex with her but she is angry with him about something and doesn’t want to be intimate. He persists, forcing himself upon her.
Marsha’s husband has been drinking. He grabs her, takes her into the bedroom and makes her have sex.
Each of these incidents is an example of acquaintance or date rape. So exactly what does the term mean?
“Hidden rape,” as it is sometimes called, refers to sexual violence where the victim knows the rapist. It occurs when someone familiar – friend, relative, co-worker, boyfriend, husband -- forces or coerces another person to have sex. Date rape is not exclusively perpetrated by men against women, but women are subject to dating violence at least twice as often as men and boys. Women also suffer significantly more injuries than men do.
Since the 1980s acquaintance rape has been recognized as a serious problem. Scholarly research coupled with personal memoirs and a plethora of public cases charging acquaintance rape galvanized public attention. Subsequent legal decisions have been handed down in which definitions of rape were clarified. Issues such as what constitutes “menace” and “duress” were examined. The definition of “consent” was expanded to mean “positive cooperation in act or attitude pursuant to an exercise of free will.” The courts determined that “a person must act freely and voluntarily and have knowledge of the nature of the act or transaction involved.”
Now the problem of acquaintance rape is drawing new attention because of emerging data on teen dating violence. According to the National Teen Dating Violence Prevention Initiative, teens are at greater risk than adults for intimate partner violence. Young women between 10 and 24 years of age are more vulnerable to such violence than any other age group, at rates nearly tripling the national average. About one in five female high school students report being physically and/or sexually abused by a dating partner, and 58 percent of rape victims report being raped between the ages of 12 and 24.
Both before and after high school girls are likely to be victims of violence from someone they know. One study revealed that among female and male 8th and 9th graders, 25 percent had been victims of nonsexual dating violence and eight percent had been victims of sexual dating violence. On the other end of the spectrum, a national study of college students found that 27.5 percent of women surveyed said they had suffered date rape or attempted rape at least once since the age of 14.
Only five percent of those experiences were reported to police, a figure much lower than reported rapes when the perpetrator is a stranger. Experts suggest the reasons for under-reporting of date rape range from self-blame to guilt to fear of being held responsible. The American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress suggests that women and girls often confide in a friend about their experience but resist going to authorities. They say girls fear the reaction of family and friends if the victim has been drinking, has invited her violator to her room, or has had previous sexual relations.
Recently, researchers have been looking at who commits acquaintance rape and why. Social scientists suggest there are certain characteristics that can increase risk factors. For example, overt and subtle messages given to men and boys about what it means to be male – dominant, aggressive, uncompromising – can contribute to a mindset which accepts sexually aggression. Hostile attitudes towards women, condoning force in sexual relationships, and the amount of prior sexual experience all seem to correlate to aggressive sexual behavior among males. Early parental neglect and abuse have also been linked to such behavior.
A newly published study of men aged 17 to 21 who commit intimate partner violence found that more than half of the men surveyed had faced challenges earlier in their lives. “Until now we didn’t have much information on young men who hurt their partners,” says Dr. Elizabeth Miller, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the University of California/Davis and a senior author of the report. “This is a critically important piece of the puzzle in terms of designing meaningful prevention and intervention programs to prevent adolescent relationship violence.” The study concluded that further research is needed that considers environmental aspects of sexual violence such as family life, school, and peer environments.
The consequences of date rape can be severe. High levels of anxiety and depression are reported as well as complications in subsequent relationships and difficulty in attaining pre-rape levels of sexual satisfaction. Some women become increasingly withdrawn while others act out sexually, becoming promiscuous as their self-worth diminishes. Post traumatic stress disorder is common.
Prevention is key to ending date rape. Experts counsel women to be assertive in setting boundaries. “Be assertive, not victimized,” says one counselor. “Use an individual’s behavior as an indicator of intentions. Don’t put yourself in awkward situations. Tell potential offenders that acquaintance rape is a serious crime that can be fully prosecuted. Be prepared to act defensively.”
That’s all good advice when individual safety and well-being are at risk, especially for youth.
