I used to believe that being comfortable with someone required either a depth of knowledge on their personal life or a large amount of time spent together.  I now know that both are necessary: If I know a lot about you personally, but I haven’t spent much time with you, then it’s a [celebrity/resume/online profile] relationship and not a real friend relationship.  If I spend a lot of time with you, but you never share your feelings or your thoughts with me, then I don’t know you at all and we’re not friends.  Both have to happen: exchange of information, and time shared.

From that conclusion comes how to make friends! Spend time with them, and open up.  It’s easier to open up after the other person has, so if you want to make it happen, be the first.  If they are judgmental, don’t worry: whatever they falsely judge you for will get corrected over time.

I used to think that exclusivity was a necessary part of friendship: that if you are friends with too many other people, that dilutes the strength of my friendship with you.  Therefore, I used to be jealous and unhappy when my friends would hang out without me.  But I learned: friends can have other friends, that doesn’t make your friendship any less to them if they are your friend.  I stopped avoiding strangers as a way to protect and preserve my current friends, and instead opened up to strangers as either potential friends or chances for an interesting conversation and new perspective.

I used to divide people I knew into two categories–close friend and not friend.  When I did start trying to make friends, I got confused: Do I treat these not-yet-friends as a close friend or not?  This question gave me social anxiety because it’s too early in the relationship to decide whether they are going to be your close friend or not.  However, if I don’t treat them as a friend, then how will we ever become friends?  And if I do treat them as a friend, and the friendship doesn’t work out, am I a liar or a bad friend to that person, acting as a friend but not following through with genuine friendship?  I soon realized my binary view of reality was wrong: relationships come in ranges, and your relationship with everyone is constantly changing.  Some relationships are strengthening while others are weakening.  As a result of this knowledge, I learned how to be friendly in degrees, according to how close I felt to that person at that time, instead of strictly cold to strangers, and strictly warm to close friends.

Would you rather believe you have no friends and be right, or believe you have friends and be wrong about some?  After having no friends made me depressed, I decided I’d rather risk being betrayed than depressed.

Friendship is mutual.  Just because you treat someone as a friend, doesn’t mean they will reciprocate.  And just because they are friendly to you, doesn’t mean they are actually your friend.  So how do you tell?  One way is to see what they voluntarily do without you asking for it, or even what they do without asking you if you want it.  Let’s say you’re moving.  A friend instantly starts thinking about whether they will be able to help you move that day, without you having to ask them.  Let’s say you’re sick.  A friend may buy you soup without asking if you want soup, or what soup you like (giving you an opportunity to politely decline.  And if you do politely decline, a friend may bring it anyway.  “I’m bringing you soup” is stronger than “do you want soup?” is stronger than no offer at all).  Problems with this method is that sometimes people are just shy, or being proactive isn’t part of their personality, so it’s unfair to say they aren’t good friends simply because of who they are.  This problem is best explained with invitations: some people organize and host events, some people don’t.  If someone never runs an event, they never really are in charge of inviting people, so you might never get an invitation from them, but they still might care about you like in the moving or sick example above.

Not all friends are equal. I used to think friendship was math: execute contact/lunch/event every now and then, prioritizing people I’ve seen the least, so as to fairly and equally distribute time.  This became a problem for two reasons: I treated close friends and distant friends the same, which sends the wrong message, and I didn’t give them my best because instead of showing up excited to meet them, I showed up like it was my job to be there.

Believing exclusion is mean, I felt like including everyone would be kindness.  However, I learned that even that can be taken too far: by trying to include everyone, you have to constantly switch people’s priorities from high because you haven’t talked to them yet, to low because you just talked to them.  This inconsistency in how you treat others makes you seem like a shallow, undependable friend, which is mean.  Ironically, by trying to be kind to everyone, I ended up being mean to everyone in turn.

I used to think I have to be the same person to everyone, in order to be honest and “true to myself.”  However, different people bring out different sides of me, since I have different things in common depending on the person.  My identity to each person is different, and while that’s a bit scary and confusing, it’s OK.

Read Personality and Impression, A Time and Place for Judgment, Getting Comfortable with a Friend

• Friends as an Asset Class – An Investor’s Take on Friendship
• Conversations Friendship
• Where to Meet People
• How to Meet People
• What You Should Know About Friendship

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I used to think the comfort level I had with someone was based on EITHER the depth of knowledge I had about their personal life OR the length of time we’d spend together.  However, it has come to light that the friends who I feel most comfortable with have simply been the ones I’ve spent the most time with, and not necessarily the ones I know the most about, or have shared the most with.  People who I spend a lot of time with but I don’t know much about, aren’t really friends because they’ve just been in the background—no connection had been made.  As such, I now know it’s based on both.

This explains why it is hard to have many friends—I thought that with the appropriate “interview” skills, I could sustain a friendship at a cognitive level with minimal time input.  I am finding out a friendship based on cognitive connection alone is not possible—the list of people I have knowledge about has never been so large, the list of people whom I can call request to hang out has never been so large, and yet the list of people who consider me a friend—since friendship must be mutual—is not as large.

From very valuable feedback, I have learned that my once per month or more frequency of contact, slow response time to requests on the order of days to weeks, and priority based on time since last contact rather than strength of relationship, gives the impression of inconsistency, a lack of care, and generally not the behavior you’d expect from a true friend.

This concept has been difficult for me to grasp because while time is an integral part of developing a relationship, I have always believed that the strength of the relationship is not dependent upon the frequency of contact, and the reason I believe this is because I have some friends whom I rarely talk to ever now, perhaps a couple times a year, and yet they are friends for sure.  However, when I think about it now, I realize it’s because at some point in the history of the relationship, a very large investment of time was made—there was a period of time where the frequency of information exchange was high enough that it was not just a shared experience cognitively, but a shared experience period—a friend experiences your life with you, not just knows about it.

More on What I Learned About Friendship in 2013

This year, for the first time, I spent Thanksgiving Thursday and Friday alone instead of going home and visiting friends and family like I normally would.  I chose to do this because I wanted to do some soul searching, without any external influences, and find out more about myself, so I could make some important life decisions.  On Thursday I finished my ~2 year project of sorting and processing my entire life up until today, and on Friday, I took account of my present, and mapped out my immediate future in relation to that reality.  However, while the purpose of this constructed isolation was to focus on me instead of friends and family, I ended up spending quite some time thinking about family and friends, and I realized that what I am thankful for this year, are the friends who missed me, and the friends I missed.  Here’s how I arrived at that conclusion:

While I was on my own, I would occasionally frequent Facebook, and browse through the Thanksgiving gatherings that showed up on my newsfeed, and I would wonder and reflect on my relationship with that group of people.  How we knew each other.  Why we drifted apart. What might have made things turn out differently.  But most importantly, I thought: over the last few days, some people have reached out, asking about when I’d return and if we’d hang out.  What drove those people to contact me, and the others to not?  Who are the ones I’m going to contact, and why them and not others?  The answer: those who miss me, and those I miss.

That train of thought led me to the topic of this post: of those people I miss and wonder how they’re doing, who can I comfortably contact again, and who has drifted far enough that it would seem out of the blue?  It is sad to think that former associates with whom camaraderie was had are no longer available for contact.  But it’s just part of life, that in our travels we will continue to meet more people, and the new friends we make will cause some old ones to slip away.  However, the silver lining in this is that that fact adds another dimension to how special the ones whom we can continue to connect with are, so I am extra thankful for the friends who can miss me, and the friends I can miss.

Gary Blauman – How I Met Your Mother Season 9 Episode 21 – “You will be shocked when you discover how easy it is in life to part ways with people forever.  That’s why, when you find someone you want to keep around, you do something about it. ” – Ted

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