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> “There is a limited amount of time and emotional capital we can distribute, so we only have five slots for the most intense type of relationship,” Mr. Dunbar

> “There is a limited amount of time and emotional capital we can distribute, so we only have five slots for the most intense type of relationship,” Mr. Dunbar said. “People may say they have more than five but you can be pretty sure they are not high-quality friendships.” This was the part I found most interesting. They describe people you're in touch with daily or weekly as being in the "close friends" category. Personally, I'm fortunate to have deep, meaningful, long-term friendships with my wife and one other friend, and a few other friends and family members I consider close even if we talk something more like "every couple months" - when we do, it's about important stuff. We freely say that we love each other, we hug, and I feel more relaxed and happy around them. I'm tempted by stuff like being liked on social media, but when I think about it, it's pretty meaningless compared to these few relationships. Given X hours for maintaining friendships, I'd rather have fewer and better.

musha68k 10y ago
You can be good friends with more than five people - I wonder if they ever heard of the concept of "quality time".. The problem to me seems to be Facebook's pervasive "friend" lingo (certainly not true in most cases) and a heavy cultural bias in that article.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  I think the issue may be that "good friends" and "most intense friendship" are very different entities. I'm sure I don't have more than five of the "most intense" sort of friends, but there are a lot more people than that who I care deeply about. Relationships that are very close when 'active' are presumably a different category - I think most of us have old friends and family who we feel strong connections to, but don't actually talk to on a daily or weekly basis. Time places hard limits on how many people we see frequently and at length, but frequency and quality are fairly independent axes. I'm assuming "most intense" requires a high score on both.

musha68k 10y ago

You can be good friends with more than five people - I wonder if they ever heard of the concept of "quality time".. The problem to me seems to be Facebook's pervasive "friend" lingo (certainly not true in most cases) and a heavy cultural bias in that article.

Bartweiss 10y ago
I think the issue may be that "good friends" and "most intense friendship" are very different entities. I'm sure I don't have more than five of the "most intense" sort of friends, but there are a lot more people than that who I care deeply about. Relationships that are very close when 'active' are presumably a different category - I think most of us have old friends and family who we feel strong connections to, but don't actually talk to on a daily or weekly basis. Time places hard limits on how many people we see frequently and at length, but frequency and quality are fairly independent axes. I'm assuming "most intense" requires a high score on both.