Remember the last time you felt a tinge of sadness when you realized how far you have drifted from an old friend?
Daily interactions and text messages become one-liners and irregular catch ups. Meetings must be planned weeks in advance and eventually, life updates are only gleaned from social media. You run into each other at a wedding and inevitably exchange the obligatory “we must catch up soon” tagline.
As I entered my 30s, it became exceedingly clear that the number of friends I had was decreasing. This alarmed me initially as I was always someone who had many friends across multiple groups — high school, college, sports groups, colleagues.
Close friends started dating, got married, and had kids. Regular social gatherings slowly became annual get togethers and eventually disappeared completely. It was clear that priorities had changed and people were growing up.
On the other hand, I have close friends who have gotten married, had kids, and yet still meet up regularly and are still very much in each other’s lives till this day. The older you get, the more you treasure these relationships.
Sometimes, I wish I knew years ago who would remain as a close friend and who would not. I could have saved so much time and effort with people who would eventually drift out of my life, and instead spend the energy on those who would remain.
I developed a simple framework to help me prioritize my social circle to manage the time and effort I spend on my friends.
I call this the “Concentric Social Circle”. Imagine a series of concentric circles, with you right in the middle of it.
The first circle around you — the inner circle — consists of your closest friends. These are people you have shared in-depth experiences with, people you have bonded with and have a deep connection over similarities in values or ideals. The inner circle requires a certain level of effort to maintain. Effort is required to spend time together, provide emotional support in times of need, and offer intellectual suggestions when decisions are required. If you were lying in a ditch somewhere with only 1 phone call left in your cell phone, who would you call? That person would be in your inner circle. The inner circle is is a highly selective group that if you were honest, most of your friends would not belong in.
The next circle as we move outwards are your happy times friends — friends you consider as close enough to invite to your wedding, meet up once every so often, but would probably not call if you were lying in a ditch. Happy times friends are people whom you have good vibes with, make you laugh, and support you through good times and bad. However, they are unlikely to be the first ones you go to in times of joy or need. Compared to the inner circle, you would spend a lot less effort and time with this group of friends. Realistically speaking, most friends you think of as “close friends” are likely to be happy times friends.
Beyond happy times friends sits the outer circle — old friends whom you really connected with in the past, but for some reason or another have drifted further away than you both would have liked. They might have moved abroad or simply got caught up with life. However, outer circle friends still make an effort to connect when your paths cross. This could be a Saturday afternoon brunch with spouses and kids, or an evening beer at the local pub. Outer circle friends leave you with a sense of satisfaction, that despite all this time apart, you are still able to have a great time together. It might be years before you meet again, but you can be sure it would be a bloody good time.
At the outer end of the Concentric Circle lies the circumstantial friends — people you were close to at one point of time due to a common set of circumstances. You might have attended class together, trained in the same soccer team for years, worked together, or grew up in the same neighborhood. However, once the common circumstance is removed, circumstantial friends go their own way. I say this with absolutely no negativity as this is a realistic fact of life that increasingly makes sense the older I get.
As we get older, more time is spent focusing on our careers, spouses, kids, aging parents, mortgages and adulting in general. We have a lot less time to spend on social activities, and thus it is of utmost importance that we spend our limited time on those who matter the most. Having a mental compartmentalization of our social connections is a great way to help us prioritize our time and effort.
Remember, people in the Concentric Social Circle can move across layers. Inner circle friends can eventually move to the outer layers if not properly managed.
Identify your inner circle today and tell them you love them.
