Maintining Friendships

Have you ever wondered how many relationships a person can actively maintain?  Believe it or not, it is the Dunbar Number!

Anthropologist Robin Dunbar has extensively studied the  structure of social networks and says we are limited to 150 meaningful relationships at a time.  Even in an age of rising social media where people might have a thousand or more “friends,” there are limits to what can meaningfully be maintained.

Dunbar points out that we all have a cascade of outwardly expanding circles.  The most important circles are 5-15-35.  Most of us have about five of our closest friends who get about 50% of our relational time.  Dunbar says, fifteen of our closest friends get 75% of our emotional and relational time.

All these relationships take the investment of TIME.  Without that time, they begin to decay, or at least begin to change to a new set of friendships.

This makes a lot of sense and explains why our friend networks change when we move.  The old friends don’t cease to be friends, they are just friends that move to an outer circle.  And a new set of friends grows closer.

It also helps to explain why facebook relationships don’t have the weight and gravity of in-the-flesh relationships that occur over a walk or sipping a cup of coffee.

Nurture your fives and fifteens!  They are crucial in life.

To learn more, check out this article and video at NPR.