Regardless of our age, we all need good friends. Good friends allow us to discuss issues in a safe way. But sometimes, we outlive our friends. (Several of my friends/colleagues are dealing with that now.) While we cannot “replace” a person, we can leave ourselves open to finding new people with the potential to be good friends.
Note: I have no idea how many good friends each of us needs. After a brief search, the answer seemed small to me—just three to five people is sufficient. I wonder if that’s the difference between how introverts and extroverts think of friends.
How Do You Think of Good Friends?
In some ways, I’m such a typical extrovert. When I meet people, I put them in the “friend” or “potential friend” category. My introverted friends gasp when they hear this. One of them said, “How can you possibly get to know all those people?”
I can’t. And that’s not the point. My categorization differentiates between “people I do not want to spend time with at all” vs. a sliding scale of “people I’d like to spend time with.” Those are people who—at least—I can offer the benefit of the doubt.
That’s because spending time with people allows me to consider which issues I want to discuss with them. Just as trust is a sliding scale, what I discuss with possible friends is also a sliding scale. (That’s why I’m not discussing people at work. I have definitely worked with people whom I knew I could not trust. Yet, I needed to work with them.)
Maybe my introverted friends (see, there I go again!) differentiate those discussion topics faster than I do. That helps them reduce the number of “real” friends.
But, this is critical: since our friends die, our emotional health and resilience depend on our ability to make new friends. Regardless of how close those friends are right now.
Very few close friends start close. They often start from acquaintances. Then, we move them up the sliding scale. That’s because good friends depend on two-way trust.
Friendship Requires Trust
In the image with this post, I tried to describe the kinds of trust I extend and expect from people.
I meet plenty of people whom I don’t know well, or whose public actions lead me to distrust them. Those are people I avoid. Then, there are some people whom I don’t know well, so I don’t trust or distrust.
In the middle of the scale are the people whom I might trust with work information, or public personal information.
Then, there are the friends and good friends. As with most people, I have plenty of friends, and a much smaller group of good friends.
However, I actively work to attract more friends, so I can retain my small group of good friends. That working to attract more friends means I often look for people who are younger than I am.
I don’t need a lot of good friends, but I do need new friends. The more new friends I make, the more likely some of those people will become good friends. And that creates more resilience for both of us.
That’s the question this week: How often can you make new good friends you trust?
Even though I’m a pegging-the-meter introvert I have a similar thing to your sliding scale. I call it the concentric circles of friendship. Inner circle, second circle, third circle, …, outside the circles.
Nice. I’m delighted you tolerate my extrovertedness. I suspect you can because we mostly interact online ;-).
Hoo boy. While I only need a very few close friends, they are hard to replace in my “advanced” years, mostly because they are 1) hard to meet –no kids in school, no organizations, a quiet life style, etc. , and 2) close friends require face time, something I’m finding difficult to work in with the people who might float from friend to close friend. Younger friends are definitely a bonus, and I’m happy to say that I have two, although distance necessitates interacting online.
So to answer your question, not very often at all.
Hmm. This is one of the reasons I try to meet younger people. They offer me a different perspective (and sometimes, a kick in the pants). But that meet-in-person thing? Yeah. Sometimes that just does not work for me.