> However it misses the point that meaningful relationships must be developed over years of regular contact, mutual trust, and even sacrifice
The benefit of family over friends is that you start with a high degree of trust which can only ever be lost; whereas with friends trust either takes time, effort, or is accidental (in which case, unless you're lucky, you need to expend effort to find). Friendship bonds that started from a young age are more like family in that regard.
I always thought that the emphasis on "trust" was a pop psychology cliche and not very constructive, but only recently have I learned to appreciate that trust doesn't come easy for many people, and that I may be an outlier in being able to more readily trust others on the one hand, and requiring less trust as a precondition to being open, even after they've hurt me. (I suppose a similar dimension is your predisposition to feeling vulnerable. I experience embarrassment and shame all the time, but I don't think those feelings make me feel as vulnerable and hurt as they do for many others, even in the context of my closest friends and family. If you feel more vulnerable to actual or perceived judgments, then it stands to reason you might be less willing to trust others enough to be open and honest--to experience a relationship from which you can derive strength, which may not require sharing secrets but definitely requires being receptive to feelings of affirmation.)
And to the extent one needs external validation, actual or at the ready, active or passive (e.g. a good listener), to maintain a positive, healthy mind, then I could see how loneliness could be especially devastating for some people. The very thing you would need to cope with loneliness is the one thing you lack; digging yourself out of that hole could be difficult, indeed, because not only does the simple act of meeting people and beginning relationships require effort in the face of diminishing psychological strength, developing the type of relationship needed to stop your descent requires even more effort and time.
The benefit of family over friends is that you start with a high degree of trust which can only ever be lost; whereas with friends trust either takes time, effort, or is accidental (in which case, unless you're lucky, you need to expend effort to find). Friendship bonds that started from a young age are more like family in that regard.
I always thought that the emphasis on "trust" was a pop psychology cliche and not very constructive, but only recently have I learned to appreciate that trust doesn't come easy for many people, and that I may be an outlier in being able to more readily trust others on the one hand, and requiring less trust as a precondition to being open, even after they've hurt me. (I suppose a similar dimension is your predisposition to feeling vulnerable. I experience embarrassment and shame all the time, but I don't think those feelings make me feel as vulnerable and hurt as they do for many others, even in the context of my closest friends and family. If you feel more vulnerable to actual or perceived judgments, then it stands to reason you might be less willing to trust others enough to be open and honest--to experience a relationship from which you can derive strength, which may not require sharing secrets but definitely requires being receptive to feelings of affirmation.)
And to the extent one needs external validation, actual or at the ready, active or passive (e.g. a good listener), to maintain a positive, healthy mind, then I could see how loneliness could be especially devastating for some people. The very thing you would need to cope with loneliness is the one thing you lack; digging yourself out of that hole could be difficult, indeed, because not only does the simple act of meeting people and beginning relationships require effort in the face of diminishing psychological strength, developing the type of relationship needed to stop your descent requires even more effort and time.