“Let’s meet up,” part 5

The Friend Criteria

Apparently there are 2 types of people in the world:

• Type 1: People who think friendships need to be maintained.
• Type 2: People who think friendships don’t need to be maintained.

I’m (obviously) Type 1, while my roommate (and good friend) Cory is Type 2. According to Cory, once you’re friends with someone, you don’t need to “maintain the friendship; they just are.”

I was incredulous. “So…what percent of people do you think are like you?”

“I thought everyone was like me,” he said with a wry smile. After pausing for a moment he acknowledged, “I suppose I’m in the minority.”

In the same way that Cory didn’t know Type 1 people existed, I had no idea there were crazy Type 2 people just running amok in the world (much less a good friend I’ve known for >10 years!). I guess that also explains why I’ve experienced so much frustration in the past when I expected good friends to reach out to me; they could have just been crazy Type 2 people, while I’ve always thought that meeting up on a regular basis was part and parcel of being a good friend.

Over Thanksgiving I was catching up with Victor over breakfast when he asked me, “What’s your criteria for a good friend?”

It felt a little bit out of the blue, but I love that he asked this question mainly so I could write about it afterwards. (In case it isn’t clear by now, I treat all of my conversations as potential blogging material.)

“Umm…people I can be vulnerable with, and also have a semi-regular rhythm of meeting up / hanging out.” It wasn’t a perfect list, but it seemed like as good a starting point as any. “What about you?”

“For me, the criteria is if I know how they think, and vice versa. And I would add that the hangouts have to be new experiences versus just ‘hanging out.'” Victor went on to talk about a good friend that he doesn’t talk to all that often even though they run in the same circles, and that they primarily connect if they end up at the same (non-work-related) convention together.

I found his response fascinating since it was so different from my own criteria, and yet also remarkably similar to Cory’s:

1. Emphasis on understanding how they think, and
2. a lack of emphasis on a regular rhythm of meeting up.

Then I started thinking…are the regular meetups a requirement for being good friends, or is it a result of being good friends? Which comes first and how important is it?

I asked around to collect some more data on what other people’s friend criteria were:

• demonstrated mutual interest / investment
• enjoy spending time together
• unique shared experiences together
• comfortable sharing personal aspects of my life
• somebody I can trust
• somebody I can rely on, confide in without judgment, and has positive energy

It’s no surprise that there’s a lot in common between this list and the Venn diagram I drew up in “Let’s meet up,” part 2: of course there’s a correlation between your good friends and the people you meet up with the most.

A few months ago I met Ryan at a friend’s BBQ, and reached out to have lunch with him since he was relatively new to the area and also worked close to me. I found out he has a long distance girlfriend, so I asked him about it. “It’s harder on my girlfriend, I think…I don’t need to see somebody regularly in order to feel close to them.”

Wow, I thought…another crazy Type 2 person. How many of them are there??

To be fair, we’re all constrained by time, and it can be logistically harder to meet up with some friends than others. However, for a Type 1 person such as myself, there is a level of expectation I have for my good friends that we would stay in touch on some kind of a regular basis. The frequency and medium can vary from friend to friend, and it can also change depending on the season of life we’re in, but the expectation is there. Needless to say, the problem is that the expectation tends to be unspoken, and not everybody has the same idea of what a friendship looks like.

In the same way that I’ve had friends not subscribe to what I think “let’s meet up” means, I’ve also had friends who don’t do the whole “good friends stay in touch on a semi-regular basis” thing. Sometimes it’s not a big deal, and other times it can cause a lot of frustration and disappointment. In those cases I’ve found that it’s helpful to do one or more of the following:

1. Recalibrate the friendship and expectation you have. Do you have an unspoken expectation of your friend that you need to address or give up? You’ll need to explore and discern whether your friend is Type 2 but is committed to the friendship, or if they’re just not as interested in being friends. If it’s the latter you probably need to pull back and give the friendship some space. If it’s the former then you’ll need to adjust your expectations of how the friendship is maintained (i.e., you may need to do more of the reaching out).
2. Tell your friend how you feel. Make known your expectations and hopes, and understand that your friend may not feel the same way.
3. Make new, better friends. Half kidding here, but honestly, I feel pretty fortunate that I love meeting new people, and in general try to treat everyone as a friend that I just haven’t gotten to know. And the more people I meet, the more I’m convinced that we’re just all the same: we are all created for relationship and need other people, and no man (or woman) is an island.

The hardest one is probably #2. Who wants to have a vulnerable and potentially awkward conversation with your friend? Yeah, no one. I address this in my next blog post since this one is getting too long…

To be continued…

Caption: We all met at the same church many years ago, and have somehow managed to stay in touch throughout the years since I’m Type 1.