I recently ran across “Half of All Friends Replaced Every 7 Years” (written by the LiveScience Staff), and it almost seemed self-evident to me. They observed that:
“You may have more Facebook friends as the years go by, but when it comes to your close friends, you lose about half and replace them with new ones after about seven years, new social research suggests. As a result, the size of your social network stays about the same.”
They go on to say that:
“People might like to think they have control over whom they choose as friends, but social networks could also be influenced by the context in which we meet one another.”
Facebook (and the other social networking sites) are something of a special case due to the design of the sites and the quirks of technology, so they’re a bit more formal in the sense that they’re more likely to be actively managed than offline friendships.
But otherwise, I suspect that most people never give much thought to – or actively manage – their “friends” roster. Rather, they just hang out with people, are friendly to the ones who seem pleasant enough and then one thing leads to another. Traditionally it’s been rather an informal process.
So let’s examine that more closely
Is it reasonable that the overall size of your network should stay about the same over time? Indeed it is. Friends take a certain amount of “care and feeding” in the form of your time and effort.
And beyond a certain roster size, you’d no longer have enough time to nurture each of your friendships sufficiently well to keep all of them feeling tended to.
Have you ever see a celebrity on a talk show say that they threw a party for themselves and their “5,000 closest personal friends”? If you did, you would have rolled your eyes at that one.
You might not know how many true friends they actually have, but you knew it almost certainly wasn’t more than a dozen or maybe two dozen. We simply can’t be that close to that many people.
Hangers on? Sure. Real friends? Probably not.
Let’s look at how friends get “demoted”
Suppose more than one friend wants to be the one who goes to a particular event with you on a particular day? Which one of them do you take? It’s likely to be the one that you like better.
That will tell the friend who didn’t make the cut that you like them less and that’s likely to result in you yourself getting demoted to a lower rung on their “friends” ladder as well (since they are now clearly on a lower rung on your friends ladder).
Friendship is based on reciprocity and
what goes around comes around
And over time, you’ll meet new people with who you hit it off well and you’ll add them to your roster. And this will mean even less time on your part for nurturing the lowest-ranking friends on your list.
“…
I used to have a neighbor whose ‘number of girlfriends’ matched the number of phone numbers that could be stored in his cell phone
…”
Eventually the “least close” friends drop off the list. There may be a blowout (if there was a major mismatch in the degree to which each of you valued the other), but more often their interactions eventually just decelerate to zero with no formal “closure”. They just drift apart. In time they’re gone altogether.
I used to have a neighbor whose “number of girlfriends” matched the number of phone numbers that could be stored in his cell phone. Whenever he met someone new and interesting, he had to delete one of the existing numbers to make space for the new number. So he’d go through the directory and decide which one he was the least hot for and cull her from the list.
We do a similar process unconsciously with our friends. As we add new ones, old ones fall by the wayside because we can no longer afford to spend the time nurturing those less compelling friendships.
How friends drift away
And as the author notes, friend choices are limited by our opportunities to meet. As a result, the odds are good that many of the people on your “friends” list either work with you or went to school with you.
And when you change jobs or you graduate from your school program, most of those “friends” tend to fall by the wayside as well. In effect, most were not so much friends as they were just acquaintances. These were “friendships of convenience”.
All of that makes sense, if you think about it. Yet many people get upset if they feel that this or that friend doesn’t have as much time for them as they had in the past. They will consider that “friend” to be disloyal. They’ll feel as if they’ve been treated shabbily.
We’ve frequently see women have a major falling out with a former best friend, and to “no longer be on speaking terms” for many years to follow. That is, to move to a state of “active disliking”.
“…
but guys seem much less likely to descend to that level of hyper-drama
…”
But guys seem much less likely to descend to that level of hyper-drama. For us, evolving friendships are the norm and we’re less likely to take it personally.
But many guys don’t make the effort to make new friends from time to time. As a result, it isn’t unusual for guys to end up with few or even no real friends as they get older if they leave things to chance.
Therefore, it’s worth the time and efforts to nurture existing friendships while they last and to meet and befriend new people now and then as well.
That way you’ll replace any friends who have drifted away, and you’ll have a much more fulfilling and interesting life as a result.
Stay tuned,
-Mack Doppler
