Comments on: The March friendship challenge

By: Maureen

Maureen — Wed, 02 Mar 2022 16:27:17 +0000

My bar is much lower: Schedule a girlfriend meetup on a monthly basis. That said, I’ve set it as a repeating task on a weekly basis so I remember to reach out, especially to folks I don’t see in the general course of life, e.g. I lament when kids change sport teams as I don’t get easy contact to my sport mom friends.

By: Diane

Diane — Tue, 01 Mar 2022 18:57:41 +0000

Oh this is a good reminder for me! I run a zoom book club for my mom’s group but have been swamped by work lately so haven’t scheduled anything since January.
I have a standing walking date with a friend every week or two. It started at the beginning of the pandemic, and never stopped… but having the loose standing date helps take half the mental energy out of planning it. We know we will get together, so we just text at the beginning of the week to see where our mutual free time is.
And there are tons of texts from friends for “playdates when the weather gets nicer.” I think the weather is definitely getting nicer!

By: Sarah K

Sarah K — Tue, 01 Mar 2022 12:34:52 +0000

When our kids were little we spent a lot of weekday afternoon/evenings socializing with other parents of small children. These are some of my favorite memories. Now that our kids are 8-16 there is something every weekday evening so we have kind of given up on group dinners etc. Husband and I do social stuff individually during the week (choir for me, being a soccer fan for him, etc). I have two close friends that each live several hours away and I have to plan really carefully to see them. Realized today that I hadn’t seen them since December so that did inspire me to pull out the calendar and text my friend to set up a date. 🙂

By: Kamala

Kamala — Tue, 01 Mar 2022 04:38:05 +0000

Good challenge, I am going to try this, thank you

By: Jessica

Jessica — Tue, 01 Mar 2022 02:09:10 +0000

Originally one of my goals this year was to be more social. However, we are moving to Europe this summer and I decided to let that goal go. While I think people can make time, it seems like everyone is busy running kids to activities. Some of my best friends are still from my oldest son’s baseball team 3 cities ago. However, now that he is older (or this city is more competitive) I sit away from parents at games.

It was a big transition moving here because it was the first time we moved with older kids so we didn’t make “family” friends-I’m sure covid didn’t help.

I was also thinking about this because my husband has been out of town, but I have still done some one on one things with my kids. If a friend would have invited me to play pickle ball or see a movie (things I did with one child) I would have probably said I couldn’t because my husband was out of town. But that obviously isn’t true as I left the other 3 home while I did one on one things.

By: Laura Vanderkam

Laura Vanderkam — Mon, 28 Feb 2022 23:45:43 +0000

In reply to Sam.

@Sam – this is a good point – there may be people we are close to who aren’t close by…and we may have lots of friends but few intimates. It’s probably good to have some number of both.

By: Sam

Sam — Mon, 28 Feb 2022 23:30:59 +0000

In reply to Sam. Just to add: my weekends are actually full of social events, but mostly they are with acquaintances and neighbors (hence the feeling of too many friends/acquaintces). And it is at these larger gatherings (backyard BBQs, for example) where some of my "circle of fifteen" friends may also show up, but of course we can't have close intimate conversation at these large gatherings!

By: Sam

Sam — Mon, 28 Feb 2022 23:28:11 +0000

Funny you brought this up, as I had been pondering friendships these last few weeks. Have you (or anyone else reading this) heard of Dunbar’s #?
Here’s a New Yorker article link on the subject: https://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/social-media-affect-math-dunbar-number-friendships

Basically, the idea is that, in total, your brain can’t handle knowing more than 150 people (this is an average, for some extroverts this could be 200, for introverts perhaps 100). These 150 are further broken down into several “layers” of friends and acquaintances, with increasing/decreasing levels of closeness.

The two closest levels of friends, from the article:
“Then there’s the circle of fifteen: the friends that you can turn to for sympathy when you need it, the ones you can confide in about most things.”
and
“five, is your close support group. These are your best friends (and often family members).”

My problem is that I have **too many** friends and acquaintances. OK, it’s not really a problem, as I have many people I truly adore and love in life. Let’s classify this as a “good” problem. But the problem is that I spread myself so thin across my friends/acquaintances that I realize I don’t have much of a “fiver” group. I do have the “circle of fifteen,” which for me is really 7 women with which I have dinner once every couple of months. My husband is certainly in my “fiver” support group…but that’s it. I don’t have ANY friends that I see on a regular weekly or bi-weekly basis. While I confide certain things in my 7 friends, if I had an emergency and needed all the social support possible, I wouldn’t actually call any of them. Our intimacy is based on having known each other for several years, but the lack of regularity doesn’t give me confidence in any of them being the person-I’d-call-in-an-emergency, which is what I feel a “fiver” should be. Family, or as close as family. And sometimes I do see them with more frequency but it’s always at large gatherings, never one-on-one in a way that would establish a family-like level of closeness.
So I’ve been wondering lately how I can cultivate a “fiver” group. Maybe it’s really only 1 or 2 friends other than my husband (not 4 other people). I’d love to have a girlfriend with whom to chat with regularly, but I feel I must look outside my “circle of fifteen” because all but one live an hour away, and the one that is close by has a very busy life of her own…

By: BethC.

BethC. — Mon, 28 Feb 2022 22:22:03 +0000

This is a great topic/challenge. I am older (just semi-retired), and found that when I was a full-time working mom, it was easiest to keep up with friends via group activities. I did Bunco for a number of years, and am now in 2 book clubs. I’ve found it easier to maintain my one-to-one relationships with long-time college and childhood friends who don’t live near me (perhaps because there is no expectation of many in person get-togethers-we can keep up by text and phone). Now that I have more time available, I’m trying to make more of an effort to do local one to one or couple things when I can. Several of our close couple friends have moved away, but we’re having one couple over for dinner this month. I also decided to invite each of my long-time book club friends out for an individual lunch-and those invites have been well-received so far-still a work in progress. I joined a local once a week easy hiking group and exchanged phone numbers with a couple of women last week-so maybe I will even make new friends in my old age 🙂 I sometimes find it hard to invite someone to do something one on one-residual shyness, I guess?

By: omdg

omdg — Mon, 28 Feb 2022 20:51:38 +0000

Planning all those gatherings sounds exhausting! Also, in general, I’ve found most other people are available way less often than your friends appear to be.