I may be using a slightly nonstandard definition of ‘friend’. People I only interact with as part of a social group count as acquaintances*, not friends, and I do find such groups to be valuable. Someone goes from ‘acquaintance’ to ‘friend’ when I find myself interested in spending time with them personally, and while being moved to that group can be taken as a compliment, it’s generally net-neutral for me—I’m introverted enough that maintaining relationships with people who’ve passed that bar but who haven’t passed the first ‘trusted friend’ bar is actually about neutral cost/benefit-wise most of the time. (This does vary, but usually I find out that someone is unusually good as a friend well after I’ve started considering them one, and I don’t assume it’s going to be the case.) Passing the first ‘trusted friend’ bar, on the other hand, is a pretty big deal, and passing the second is even bigger, but also very rare.
* Strictly speaking, I consider someone an acquaintance when I reliably recognize them as an individual, which is nontrivial, so most groups that I socialize with consist of some mixture of acquaintances and strangers with possibly a few people from the other categories mixed in.
Wow. That’s surprising. Do you just figure you have plenty of friends already or is there more to it?
That one I understand. I perhaps hadn’t gone as far as to invoke a ‘trusted friend’ label but there were certainly different categories.
I may be using a slightly nonstandard definition of ‘friend’. People I only interact with as part of a social group count as acquaintances*, not friends, and I do find such groups to be valuable. Someone goes from ‘acquaintance’ to ‘friend’ when I find myself interested in spending time with them personally, and while being moved to that group can be taken as a compliment, it’s generally net-neutral for me—I’m introverted enough that maintaining relationships with people who’ve passed that bar but who haven’t passed the first ‘trusted friend’ bar is actually about neutral cost/benefit-wise most of the time. (This does vary, but usually I find out that someone is unusually good as a friend well after I’ve started considering them one, and I don’t assume it’s going to be the case.) Passing the first ‘trusted friend’ bar, on the other hand, is a pretty big deal, and passing the second is even bigger, but also very rare.
* Strictly speaking, I consider someone an acquaintance when I reliably recognize them as an individual, which is nontrivial, so most groups that I socialize with consist of some mixture of acquaintances and strangers with possibly a few people from the other categories mixed in.
Backwards?
Er, yes. Thanks. *fixes*