Having lots of friends does have benefits. Research shows that people who regularly interacted with 10 or more friends in midlife have higher levels of psychological well-being than those who had fewer than 10. But you don't need dozens of friends to enjoy the fruits of friendship. Even having one friend is a net positive. Instead of trying to keep in contact with everyone you've ever met, consider the value of a few close confidants.

Quality friendships are better than quantity

A study by evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar showed that people could cognitively handle up to 150 meaningful social relationships (including family and friends). Out of those connections, Dunbar found that people can have five close friendships. Those in whom you've invested the most time are likely to be part of the inner circle of intimate friends. Here you can be unabashedly yourself without the need to self-censor or perform. They make you feel energised, comfortable, restored, authentic, valued, and vulnerable, and in turn, you also delight in supporting them.

You only need three (or four, or five)

Deep friendships require effort. You'll need to share time and space often to deepen a friendship. <ul><li>Be available and have the energy to hang out.</li><li>Having a reliable routine ensures you see each other regularly, such as attending a weekly yoga class.</li><li>Knowing another what's going on in a person's life helps to better connect in the moment.</li><li>Each of your friends can fulfil a different role in your life.</li></ul>

How to foster these relationships

Focusing on your community and supporting others can help blunt the effects of loneliness. An easy way to bolster your social life is to engage in casual conversation with acquaintances and familiar faces such as fellow parents. These relationships can blossom into close friends.

When just a few friends isn’t enough


When it comes to friendship, quality is better than quantity.

loveandrelationships

Love & Relationships

The case for fewer friends

Maintaining close friendships is becoming increasingly challenging for ambitious, career-oriented people. The problem can feel worse considering how we feel when we lose touch with close friends or work buddies. However, making the most of our friendships and connections is important to our existence. We can maintain friendships without sacrificing the pursuit of our dreams.

Maintaining good friendships

Your career is probably busy enough, and without an intentional plan to maintain your friendships, they will likely grow old and fade into non-existence. A simple way to preserve close friendships is by keeping them on a schedule.<ul><li>Regularly and consistently call your friends rather than occasionally liking their pictures on Facebook.</li><li>Make plans with your friends to go somewhere at least once a month.</li><li>If the distance is a problem, video calls can help to create lasting experiences.</li></ul>

Be intentional

Never assume or jump to conclusions about people's actions and motives. It will most likely end up in a misunderstanding. Instead, ask your friend for clarification before you make your conclusions.

Never assume

Close friends are often clear sounding boards that can prevent us from making the wrong choices. A word from a friend or some new insight from a friendly conversation can be just what you need for your role in your office. Losses could feel easier to manage if you have someone with whom you can share your experiences.

Reach out for needed perspectives

When you set ambitious career goals, it is important not to sacrifice close friends in the process. Recognising that friendships demand prioritisation and effort can increase your career performance and life satisfaction.

Balancing friendship and work

Not all friendships are worth it. If you feel strained by a friend or realise that your deeds of friendship are not reciprocated, it may be time to cut ties. The length of time you've been friends with someone does not correlate with the strength of the friendship.

Know when to pull away

If you have drifted away from a close friend or lost contact, you can try to reignite the friendship. Intentionally start working on your friendship to improve it.

Reignite old friendships

In recent times, maintaining close friendships has become increasingly challenging for ambitious, career-oriented men and women. The problem becomes even more pronounced considering how sad or low…

career

Career

Practical Steps to Balance Work and Friendship

Losing someone you thought would always be in your life can be devastating.
But friendship breakups are inevitable, and we need to learn how to deal with them in healthy ways.

The loss of a friendship

We often assume that friendships will last forever. Because we don't view the loss of a friendship as normal, it feels like we have failed and should be ashamed of it.
But that is not true. Friendships sometimes aren't meant to be, and maintaining them can be unhealthy.

Normalize the idea that some friendships do end

To the brain, a breakup is a breakup. The feelings tied up in a friendship is profound, and the loss thereof can cause some people to wrestle through stages of grief.
Be honest with other people in your life about what you're going through.

Give yourself space to grieve the loss

With a romantic partner, you will usually have a breakup conversation. But the nature of a friendship makes it hard to make it final.
Diagnosing what went wrong and how is it affecting you can be helpful. Then try to get clarity from your friend to gain a sense of closure. If a friendship ended badly, you may have to accept that you won't get a final conversation. Try to stop rehashing what you should have said and done. If you did something wrong, you need to apologise.

Get closure if you can

Once you understand the impact of the breakup on your life, then you can treat it appropriately. It might mean talking through things with someone you trust or giving yourself space to grieve.
To help you move on, use the language of gratitude that puts the relationship in the past tense. "I'm so thankful they were in my life during that season."

Identify what you need to do to move on

A concern that comes with a friendship breakup is how it will affect your wider group of friends.
<ul>
<li>Don't hide what's happening. When friend groups don't have healthy boundaries as part of their friend culture, it can happen that the whole group will fall away when one person falls out with another person in the group. If this happens, it means those friendships weren't healthy to start with.</li>
<li>Maintaining healthy boundaries means that it is OK to connect differently with one another in a group.</li>
</ul>

Assess your other friendships

The loss of a friend should not make you feel unworthy.
We often find our identity in our friends. When a friendship is over, we may lose that sense of belonging and acceptance. This is all the more reason to find a sense of self-worth that is innate.

You still deserve friendship

The end of a friendship can hit you with a heartbreak that you're not prepared for. Friendship coach Danielle Bayard Jackson and entrepreneur Kristen Newton explain how you can navigate this loss and move forward.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

How to get over a friendship breakup

We want people to be less rude, to do certain things, to avoid doing certain things, and to change their lives, eventually feeling frustrated when we realize that we cannot control them and it is impossible to change anyone.
The core error we make all the time is that we want others to be in a certain way, which almost never happens. The other alternative which hardly anyone follows is to let others be whatever they want to be and be at peace even if they are annoying.

When Other People Frustrate You

<ol>
<li>Understand that you don’t control anyone and people can live however they want.</li>
<li>See the good side of others and let go of the ideals that you have in your head.</li>
<li>Understand that even they are coping with many things, and trying to do their best in their own struggle.</li>
<li>Try to listen to them, empathize and make them feel accepted.</li>
</ol>

Steps To Be Less Annoyed By Others

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

mentalhealth

Mental Health

When Others Frustrate You - zen habits zen habits

<ul>
<li>The term Narcissist is named after the beautiful Narcissus, a youth in Ancient Greece who was so self-obsessed with his own reflection that it killed him.</li>
<li>A narcissistic attitude is a product of self-loathing, and not self-love, according to an academic study.</li>
<li>Narcissism is mostly misunderstood and is in fact a cover-up or a defence mechanism on one’s negative self-worth and deep insecurities.</li>
<li>Narcissism can be described as performative self-elevation, where one pretends to be more successful or important than one really is.</li>
</ul>

Narcissism As A Defence Mechanism

<ul>
<li>Grandiose narcissists are in a complete self-delusion and believe every word they say. Some experts classify this category of narcissists as psychopaths.</li>
<li>Vulnerable narcissists don;t believe what they are saying; they are seekers of fame and status, probably due to some psychological wounds at an early age.</li>
</ul>

The Two Kinds Of Narcissists

They may seem grandiose, but some narcissists are just compensating for their deep-set insecurities. Others are out-and-out psychopaths

communication

Communication

Self-love or self-hate? The surprising truth about narcissists

<ul><li>you feel like people take advantage of you or use your emotions for their own gain.</li><li>you feel like you’re constantly having to “save” people close to you and fix their problems all the time.</li><li>you find yourself sucked into pointless fighting or debating regularly.</li><li>you find yourself more invested in a person than you should.</li><li>you tell people how much you hate drama but seem to always be stuck in the middle of it.</li><li>you spend a lot of time defending yourself for things you believe aren’t your fault.</li></ul>

You Have A Boundary Issue If…

Having healthy personal boundaries means taking responsibility for your own actions and emotions, while NOT blaming others.People with high self-esteem have strong personal boundaries. And practicing strong personal boundaries is one way to build self-esteem.

Personal Boundaries

People who blame others for their own emotions and actions do so because they believe that if they constantly paint themselves as a victim, eventually someone will come to save them.People who take the blame for other people’s emotions and actions are always looking to save someone.Predictably, these two types of people are drawn strongly to one another, yet completely fail to meet each other's true need to feel loved. The real solution would be for both to take responsibility for their own problems.

Poor Boundaries 

Victims and savers both get kind of an emotional high off one another.<ul><li>For the victim, the hardest thing to do in the world is to hold themselves accountable for their feelings and their life.</li><li>For the saver, the hardest thing to do in the world is to stop fixing other people’s problems and trying to force them to be happy and satisfied.</li></ul>Both need to start the process of building self-esteem. Both should eliminate needy behavior.

The Vicious Cycle

Sometimes you have to make sacrifices for the people you love.The catch is that if you make a sacrifice for someone you care about, it needs to be because you want to, not because you feel obligated or because you fear the consequences of not doing it.

Sacrifice

PSA: Setting strong personal boundaries are not a cure-all for your relationship woes (or your lost keys). In fact, they're more of a side effect of having a healthy self-esteem and a general low level of neediness with people around you. Boundaries in relationships work both ways: they create emotional health and are created by people with emotional health.

The Guide to Strong Boundaries

When faced with challenges which of the two sounds more like you? 
<ul>
<li>You switch into fixing mode. You like taking control of things, make to-do lists and finish the tasks in the lists as soon as possible, and you like giving out advice; or</li>
<li>You pull back, plead assistance from anyone who would give you the time of day, you hope that other people will take responsibility.</li>
</ul>
If you're the former, then you're more likely to be an overfunctioner while the latter, an underfunctioner.

Overfunctioner vs. Underfunctioner

The relationship between an overfunctioner and an underfunctioner translates into dangerously reinforcing each other's habits: The overfunctioner takes on more than their fair share of responsibility from housework to finances while only reinforcing the underfunctioner's dependency. 
A relationship like this often curdles that could to lead to fighting or nagging. This applies not only to romantic relationships but it could also be happening at work and between family members.

The Reinforcing Trap

In situations as such where nagging becomes constant and it's unbearable to stand, Harriet Lerner, suggests that the overfunctioner needs to take a step back and do less. 
The overfunctioner should potentially allow bad things to happen. This is called the "hanging in" method.

The Reinforcing Trap: Breaking The Pattern

‘Once you learn of the OF/UF pattern, it’s hard to avoid seeing it everywhere’

Do you overfunction or underfunction in a relationship?

We express or receive love in five fundamental ways:
<ul>
<li>Acts of service (like washing the partner’s car).</li>
<li>Spending quality time.</li>
<li>Words of affirmation or motivation.</li>
<li>Gifts</li>
<li>Touch, intimacy and closeness.</li>
</ul>
Often, the two partners have different love languages, and there may be misunderstandings about not receiving the kind of love that is being given by one partner.

The Five Languages Of Love

One needs to have a constant, open line of communication to ensure there is never a need to ‘talk’, which only happens because it wasn’t happening by default.
If one partner feels stuck in a relationship, it is a great idea to talk and clear out things and then decide what one’s role would be in response to that. One cannot impose one’s own line of thinking all the time.

Keep Talking All The Time

Being explicit with your wants is helpful for two reasons:
You both know the realistic starting point and aren't second guessing
You can decide what your own input is going to be...or perhaps how much you are willing to give

Ask people what THEY want, and assert your role in relation to that

Humans are social creatures, interdependent on one another. Socializing is at its core, a mental workout, and an essential part of brain development.
Being alone, one can start to lose the sense of who one is, as our identity requires a reflection from others to become real. Self-isolation, with zero interaction with other people, makes a person disappear gradually.

Losing Your Identity

Human beings form social circles averaging to 150 individuals; this is called the Dunbar’s Number. 
A lack of people around us can actually make our brain shrink. The region known for formation of new memories, called the 'dentate gyrus', reduces in size if there is no human interaction. There is also a reduction in spatial processing (locating objects in a given space) and focus.

Being Alone Affects The Brain

Positive solitude is a state of being alone without being lonely, in a contented manner.
Loneliness, on the other hand, is isolation with a hunger for social contact, something that distorts one’s perceptions, damaging the ability to interact in a normal way with others. It also lowers one’s self-esteem leading to a loneliness loop, characterized by social withdrawal and depression.

Solitude, Loneliness And Isolation

Social bonding is essential to almost all animals, with even rats who live alone being shunned by groups of rats.
Likewise, humans need face-to-face interactions. Teens spending time alone start to show signs that they are not socially competent, even though they would love to connect with others, even if the other person is a stranger.

Socially Awkward

Humans are deeply social creatures, so what happens when we’re alone for a long time?

health

Health

How solitude and isolation can affect your social skills

While the desire for quality time comes from a good place, it is not part of reality. One side of us is influenced by movies and wants everything to be special. But that ideal is almost impossible to live up to and often results in disappointment.

Quality time

Instead of wishing for quality time, every minute can be quality time. It's using the time between the busy moments to hang out, and work out, and do things together.

Every day is special

Driving your children around should not be seen as an inconvenience. It is a moment between moments where you have an opportunity to connect and have fun. It is where you can share and learn things you'd never know otherwise. 
This is true for other relationships. These in-between moments, in a car, waiting for a delayed plane, allow for conversations that never would have happened otherwise. We get our best times when we look at the moments we have right in front of us.

The best quality times

When you're too busy aiming for it, you miss the moments in front of you I t's one of those lines we throw out casually: "I want to spend more 'quality time'... " whether it's with friends, with family, with your kids, or with yourself.

The case for fewer friends

Practical Steps to Balance Work and Friendship

How to get over a friendship breakup

When Others Frustrate You - zen habits zen habits

Self-love or self-hate? The surprising truth about narcissists

Connor K.