Popularity is generally viewed as a good thing but what do you do when you accumulate too many friends?
While having many friends definitely comes with a lot of benefits, it really comes down to the old saying of “You only get what you give”. In a nutshell, if you have 100 friends but only regularly make an effort to see 50 of them, eventually the other 50 are going to either drift away or become resentful and therefore be anything other than friendly towards you. The other end of the scale is that you bust your bum trying to see all 100 friends but in the process become stressed yourself and, most likely, end up with 100 close acquaintances and zero close friends.
So how do you manage the demands and responsibilities of friendship and where do you draw the line? Well, it sounds nasty but you have to admit to yourself what category your friends fit into and this will help you to avoid making promises you can’t keep.
Friendship categories
1) Really close friends: those you communicate with more than a few times a week
2) Close friends: those you communicate with a few times a month
3) Friends: those you communicate with once every month or two
4) Acquaintances: those you communicate with once or twice a year
Obviously there will be super close friends that you only speak to every few months and acquaintances you see every day…this certainly isn’t an exact science. It is just a way of recognising your own limitations on what you can promise other people so you don’t end up being that guy who constantly says you’ll be somewhere but everyone knows you’ll bail at the eleventh hour. Every time.
Don’t be that guy.
The Modern Manic 