Are we really friends? #6

By Pierce Ng (with contributions from Phil Ossefie and Todd Ler)

TLDR: to see and understand us (enough) for what we are, again and again.

Despite knowing how friendship works, we could still lack experience of real world variables that gives us better judgment of character and so on. Here, we can further work to improve it by examining what makes a “friend” and asking the worst questions about friendship.

Are we using the term “friends” too loosely?

Looking at the conditions, you have 4 tiers of friends.

Just because we’re not close, doesn’t mean we’re not friends. We don’t have to be close to be friends.

In the spirit of not taking things so seriously, and to avoid being fussy and pretentious, yes, Tier D still count as “friends.” Sure, sometimes it may be unclear where’s the line between the Tier Ds and acquaintances, but keeping it simple:

If we meet them enough (decided by us) and we like them, it’s alright to call people we aren’t close to “friends”

But sometimes, not often, it’s not so simple. Real life complexity can make accurately judging someone’s character difficult. We can end up being very wrong about people we like.

For example…

A newly divorced woman could realize her straight male friends didn’t actually want to be just “friends” when given the “opportunity to strike” (Aba N Preach).

So, calling someone we don’t really know our “friend” can look like our friendships are shallow.

Shallow is fine

As we’ve said, lots of things are fine. That includes Tier D friendships having value. Don’t take life so seriously, after all. However, if we’re the type to find such friendships to have no value to our lives, then we either deepen the friendship and get to know them more, or cut ‘em off (more on this later).

So are we calling people “friends” too loosely?

I personally don’t think so. Being a poor judge of character or getting people wrong isn’t something we should beat ourselves up for. Sometimes scenarios where people show their darker parts never show up, or when they do it’s too late.

However, I can only say this as someone who has never suffered costly consequences of poor character judgment. Depending on where we are, these consequences can be very damaging, so I’m definitely not speaking for all. Regardless, it serves us to avoid mistakes, let alone repeat them, so it’s probably worth studying people a little more.

How well do we know each other?

It therefore makes sense that there should be a

minimum knowledge threshold

of what we need to know about a person before we’re considered friends, not strictly enforced though of course.

This may sound like a background check and doing that to people we’re supposed to call friends may rub some of us the wrong way. However, I’d say

this is a case of “not what you do, but how you do it.”

Learning these things about your new friend should be a joyful process, as opposed to a mere “background check.” It would enable us to be better friends, look out for them better if they run into trouble. The results of a “background check” are just a bonus, as in making sure they’re not a a bad person, and reducing the odds of the following situation happening:

“I don’t even know you anymore.”

This is a scenario of whether to stand by friends or not when it feels like the world turns against them (which can occasionally affect us by association). Since things don’t happen in a vacuum, the answer isn’t all clear cut, and we have to investigate,

“What do we think we know about them that turns out we don’t?”

That leads us to check the facts of the situation:

• Did our friend a) actually mess up or b) are people attacking based on misinterpretation or worse, misinformation? (Answer should be: b)
• Did our friend infringe on anyone’s human rights? (Should be: no)
• Did our friend encourage or support the infringement of anyone’s human rights? (Should be: no)
• Did our friend do the opposite of add value—reduced someone’s odds of survival and/or demotivate them from living—i.e. be toxic or an asshole? (Should be: no)
• Are we worried about our friend, or ourselves? (Should be: our friend)

If the answer to what happened is, “Yeap, seems like the type of trouble they would get themselves into,” then great news: we know our friend.

On one hand, nobody’s perfect, everyone has flaws, selfishness and inner darkness. If we don’t give our friends, of all people, the chance to communicate openly, be understood and maybe learn from mistakes, we might want to look into developing empathy and kindness or acceptance and forgiveness. To not stay friends would probably make us fair weather.

On the other hand, everyone also has the capacity to harm others. That’s far more intolerate, let alone excusable. This is the worst level of “darkness” because it’s not “inner” anymore. So if the answer to the situation is,

“I don’t even know you anymore,”

then it’s likely that most decent human beings would support your decision to cut ‘em off, like Ashton and Mila to Danny. But at the end of the day, we know best what we should do

Do they even care about me?

Let’s go back to how friendship “has value and simply isn’t free. It’s only worth something because it costs something” and that it isn’t so much “transactional” as it is “conditional.” One of the most important conditions is of course:

reciprocation.

Have you ever realized, “Nah, this person doesn’t care about me?”

• Do our friends actually like us? (2016 NYT article)
• Would they make time for us?
• Who’s initiating, reaching out, texting first, asking to meet?
• Who opens up more, listens more?
• Do they even text back?

Of course, it would be weird and socially inept behaviour to constantly calculate and keep score because friendship isn’t transactional—we don’t put numbers on it.

Just because in the last 1 year, we initiated 3 times doesn’t mean they need to match us by reaching out as many times.

It’s also not a competition for who’s the better friend. If we get them a more expensive gift, we don’t get a medal or performance bonus later down the road.

However, friendship being conditional means that in the absence of numbers, there’s an unspoken exchange of value, most commonly known as “effort.”

Effort is still indicated by who’s texting first, asking to meet more, etc.

So actually in a sense, we’re naturally ambiguously calculative by gut feel. If it feels one-sided, then we hash the problem out in feelings, not numbers.

Are we the problem?

It’s worth checking this first because the worst thing we could do is “feel” like our friends don’t put in effort and then lose them for life based on an ill-informed judgment call.

1) Are we putting in effort?

We should probably check if we’ve been a good friend, whether we’ve conveniently forgotten all the times we failed to reply or didn’t want to give them the time of day.

It’s also possible we could be complaining and adopting some self-pitying victim mentality expecting them to initiate because we deserve that from them… even though we never really reached out ourselves.

2.1) Are we needy, desperate and a general turnoff?

People tend to have a good sense for it and tend not to like it, it makes us less enjoyable to be around.

2.2) Have we made ourselves worthy?

Common advice is to

“focus on ourselves”—we need to have something going for us (more in #7).

Since we can’t expect people to be available to us on our whims, we should find something to do if we don’t already have that. Get a hobby, strive at our job, something we can do independently within our control without the need for friends. With them it could be better but it’s not a must.

People don’t need a “reason” to care but they still need the right conditions.

So yes, we need to be deserving of it because friendship is conditional—an interaction should be conducive to feeling good in each other’s company.

By the same token, let’s not give them a “reason” to stay away. If being with us is not an experience worth living, then it makes sense that they wouldn’t want to put in effort.

3) Do we actually like them for who they are, or are we just using them to fill our need to be seen and understood?

While exercising can just be a task we do to keep in shape,

being with friends should NOT feel like a task to keep ourselves sane.

Sure, in a sense every human uses other humans to save their own mental health. Reductively speaking, “everyone uses each other” and is self-interested.

However, seeing human interaction and relationships this way doesn’t seem very healthy (though we’re free to do it if it doesn’t negatively affect us at all). Consider reframing it as: we’re friends, friends boost each other’s motivation to live, and enjoy doing so.

4) Are we “taking life too seriously?”

So we mentioned that people who think Tier C and D friends don’t add value should either deepen the friendship and get to know them more, or cut ‘em off. However,

this mentality could be a contributing factor to us not having enough friends and feeling chronically lonely.

Maybe we’re being precious and snobby, holding some lofty ideals or high expectations of friendship. That sounds like serious business, which may make things unnecessarily difficult or even counterproductive to the point of friendship about feeling good.

Can’t be sure

Whenever we’re uncertain if our friends care about us, we would always recommend continuing to believe that they do. Trust that we’re still really friends. The instant we don’t, we’re more likely to behave in ways that lead to the downfall of the friendship in the fashion of a cruel self-fulfilling prophecy.

That doesn’t mean blindly assume that everything is ok.

If we feel this disturbance in our gut, trust that too.

It’s pointing us to what we might be taking for granted, and that we have to work harder to expand our awareness of the situation and get a better read on everything. That’s equally important if we want to develop being people-centric and adaptable. Studying people can feel like a chore sometimes, but often chores are for our own good too.

— to be continued in Should we save one-sided friendships? #7 —

Best before dead,
Pierce