Yes, I think you can have too many friends.
But you can never have too many acquaintances.
You see, acquaintances are happy just to keep the friendship at surface level. Catch-ups with acquaintances are often in a group situation, revolve around some kind of fun activity, and generally die when you or they move away. The acquaintance meets the companionship need, but not the deep, emotional connection need. I wrote about this in my post, The Inner Circle back in 2008.
But true friendship revolves around more than entertainment (although it certainly does include having fun together). True friendship assumes an emotional connection, support, and openness. Such friendships require trust, time and support. True friendship involves getting your hands dirty in sharing each other's ups and downs. Therefore, such relationships can involve much more time than acquaintance-level friendships. On top of other life responsibilities, there is only so much we can give.
Having said that, problems can arise when there are differing expectations between friends.
That's a topic for another post.
1 comment:
Great post.
This is some of what I've been discussing with Rob Furlong each fortnight on radio.
Some people expect each friendship to work on the same level as each other when it's simply not possible to share deep connection with more than a handful of people.
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