re: Do you ever wonder why you don’t have many friends?

Many of my closest friends are all over the country...almost none of them in the same city. DC, Austin, New Orleans, Dubai, Memphis, and Winston Salem to name a handful. As people have moved all over the place, it becomes more difficult to build brand new relationships of the same caliber. So, I have fewer “best” friends today but I’m also okay with being more insulated than college.

quote:

---

No that’s not it

---

You can be smarter than all your friends, but don’t act smarter than all your friends. No one wants to be around someone that acts like they are superior because of a wealth of trivia.

If you have a talent, be generous with it. Don’t spare what you have in spades or expect anything in return for it’s use, and you’ll find decent people want to be around you.

Be a good an generous host, and a gracious guest. Never take advantage of your friends. Instead, offer all you can when you are able, and you’ll find that when you are in need, true friends will be there to lend a hand.

LINK

quote:

---

According to interviews with 1,254 adult Americans, 30 percent of millennials have no best friends, 27 percent have no close friends and 22 percent have no friends at all. Not surprisingly, the report named them “the loneliest generation.” But loneliness is all around and perhaps nowhere more profoundly than in Hollywood.

Here’s what surprised me: that the statistics weren’t worse, for older people as well as millennials.

Look around and you’ll see whole armies of workers engulfed in their professional concerns, scurrying in and out of buildings, manning computers and phones, earbuds jammed in their lobes, too busy and overwhelmed by the pressures of their lives to have time to reach out, let alone form deep and lasting bonds.

Social media, as we know, has made this worse. A University of Pennsylvania study published in December in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology found that symptoms of loneliness and depression went down when social media was used less

---

quote:

---

You run into an a-hole in the morning you ran into an a-hole. You run into assholes all day, you’re the a-hole.

---

What I try to instill in the younger men I deal with is that your reputation is everything. The most valuable trait you possess. It takes a lifetime to build and a moment to turn to mud.



What you’ll build in your life is your own, internal code. Your principles. And principle is everything. It’s an inexorable drive that creates the backbone of your character.

No one wants to be around liars. Welchers. Those that take and never give. Those that are unreliable.

It’s simple: I’m a judgmental a-hole with no patience. I jump to conclusions, hold grudges and have a problem with jealousy and forgiveness. What’s worse is that I always “sweat the small stuff”.

quote:

---

Social media, as we know, has made this worse. A University of Pennsylvania study published in December in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology found that symptoms of loneliness and depression went down when social media was used less

---

A very valid point.

There’s a thing called the monkeysphere.

quote:

---

Dunbar's number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships—relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person.[1][2] This number was first proposed in the 1990s by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, who found a correlation between primate brain size and average social group size.[3] By using the average human brain size and extrapolating from the results of primates, he proposed that humans can comfortably maintain 150 stable relationships.[4] Dunbar explained it informally as "the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in a bar".[5]

---

So basically, while social media may artificially inflate the numbers of people we think care, they don’t actually.

For instance, if I was hit by a truck tomorrow, you people who “know” me from on here might be...sad. Ish. Maybe some might enjoy my comeuppance. But i’ll Swiftly fade into memory and be forgotten.

Now those in my monkeysphere, the ones who I regularly interact with, Share drinks and meals with, they might feel that actual loss much harder. Feel the pain of that ripping away, the emptiness, much longer.

But very few will feel that empty chair, year after year. Christmas after Christmas.

They’ll forget. We’ll become a memory, then a wisp, and eventually we’ll be gone.

Only the most lasting bonds remain. Family and those dearest friends whom you form those lifelongs bonds with.

Those are the only ones who will weep at your grave when the grey hairs creep in and the rest of the world has all but forgotten you ever existed.

I get along with most people that I associate with, but I don’t go out of my way to make friends. I have a pretty tight circle that I’ve had for the better part of 12 or so years. If I make new friends, great. If not, I don’t really care. Also, I’m pretty solitary. I can go weeks without seeing anyone. I’m okay with that.

I know some people that just have to be everyone’s best friend. Always want to invite or get invited to everything. Get upset whenever you don’t want to do stuff after work. I don’t get it.

I don’t know but I’m pretty sure someone has a Doc Holliday meme on Facebook for it....

No. It’s because I’m an a-hole and don’t like many people.