Some people have one best friend. Some people have several very close friends or confidantes. Other people seem to have fairly strong connections to a large number of friends.
Some people have several close friends and a larger number of friends that are not so close. Other people seem to have an army of friends, but none of them are particularly intimate friends.
I wonder if people have a genetic code built into them that determines how many and what kind of friendships they will develop. Could you build three or five or more categories (type A: one close friend; type B: no close friend; many acquaintences; etc.) for the various models?
Thinking further, will a "Type A: one close friend person" never be able to sustain two close friends? That is, will that person end up changing close friends rather than adding a second close friend?
Or, if a person seeks a CLOSE friendship with a "Type B: no close friend" person, is that effort doomed from the start?
This line of thinking contemplates people as hardware with a certain number of ports available for connections. In this scenario, a person would be unable to change themselves to another category of person.
Or is the structure of relationships around a person more environmentally influenced? This might mean that when a person was in college he had more close relationships than later in life. Or that a married person might have more friends because of the development of couple to couple relationships.
After observing people for many years, I keep gravitating back to the genetic "friend capacity" idea. Some people seem simply unable to sustain many relationships, while others manage an extensive network of friends.
I wonder: is this just a matter of personal choice, or is it influenced by environment, or is it more a matter of the way we are constructed?
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3 comments:
I love this topic, and I think that you have to say that we are a product of our genetics and our environment. I've always been a one friend person, and I struggle when I have a girlfriend of making the friend and the girl work. It's possible, but it takes so much more effort than I would like.
On the other hand, my sister Tate has a million friends and they are all really close (even though they went off to different colleges, they still get together on the holidays and it is like nothing has changed). I'm jealous of her, but I wouldn't give my best friend up for all of hers (I asked and they said no way, but I'm sticking to my story).
You can't trade me tucker, sorry.
I've noticed that some of my now married friends seem to only have couple-friends that they share, and some of the now married guys still seem to be able to keep in touch with blokes like me...
I seem to be someone who can only stand a few close friends at a time -- often my "old friends" suffer when I find new friends that aren't as close...
An important point for someone like me is the "out of sight, out of mind" issue...
I need to have weekly friend-reminders in my outlook or something: Shep, remember to call So-and-so this week. My phone will sometimes ring and I’ll think, “oh yeah! I forgot about that person!” tragic.
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