I read an interesting article about a survey into how many friends people have.

Do you believe that their is an optimum number of friends to have, or are more friends better?

It is claimed that a typical person has around 150 friends, with 5 close friends:

They also claim that the more friends that you have, the more you could earn. Each extra friend is worth 2% on salary. This is related to social skills and teamwork.

Article

I found one of the comments after the article to be an accurate summing up:

This is inevitably going to degenerate into a Facebook thread.

a friend will help u move.

a really good friend will help u move bodies.

Facebook friends should really be limited to 50.

Good question. My ex father in law always used to say "if on your deathbed, you can count the number of good friends on one hand, then you are a lucky man."

In this day of social and company related networking, it seems that you should collect as many psuedo friends as possible.

Nowadays I seem to spend half my time trying to upset as many people as possible - just to get a quiet life. Virtual friends are hard to get rid of - they seem to latch on.

Sometimes I wish that Mobile phones and emails did not exist - keeps life simple.

But I am getting older now

I will go for five really good friends - probably as difficult to find as my ex father in law said. "really good" being the operative words. Would cover for you if you killed someone.

A friend in need is a friend indeed ?

Those who have *enormous* family networks, seem to have less 'need' for friends... hmmm...

An Aussie one - he's my mate, because he has a trailer/ute/truck! (or he's the non-drinker that can drive us all home after a hard night out on the town)...

I wonder if you accumulate more friends as you get older, or lose them over petty and not-so-petty life events ?

I agree that the 'virtual friends' through social networking sites etc., and EF to some extent, are not really true friends.

I have some true friends who I haven't met up with for several years who I know I could turn to in a moment of need. Some of these are people who I have known all of my life.

i spent my entire teenage years with the same group of fellows whom i called friends. when i turned 20, i looked around and realised how we've drifted apart, and how we were related by a common history and similar interests, but not much more. there were only a couple i would trust, but i remember thinking, having kept company with the same people for so long, i haven't made any new friends, and perhaps i've made all the friends i could, but not all i need.

eventually we parted company, due to army, work, relocation etc, but i've been lucky to meet people i could trust, who didn't share my interests, but found me alrite enough to hang with. i sometimes think it gets harder to make friends as one grows older, but am glad to be proven wrong.

There is no ideal number. Just the extremes are bad. Solitude and giving in to some kind of pressure to make as many acquaintances as possible are both sad. I have more than five best friends but maybe a bit less than 150 "friends". Going out, the workplace, forums or social networking websites - It doesn't matter much where you meet friends. Somebody of whom you think first as a person you met on X is not a friend.

indeed, some people just have more real/true/good friends than others, and its not necessarily because they are more friend-worthy. there's a chinese concept of affinity, that says some people simply get along, others not.

how often (or, probability) affinity (regardless of gender) occurs is a matter of luck or fate. the chinese use a metaphor to describe how precious it is, when such affinity occurs.

This is a bit like trying to decide if you see the colour red the same way as I do..

for sure its completely personal, and the only thing that is certain, is the answer will be different for you than it is for me, from day to day too.

D

I treasure a good friendship like nothing else in the world.

Maybe I just have been lucky to have found some I truly good count on when needed or just simply felt damn good in their company.
I don't have life time friends, probably comes from having moved around too much.

I make a deep and good friendship with a woman who has a certain dignity in her feminity. Who is quite cheeky, can be silly and yet is smart, feels good in her skin and isn't stupid or below a certain level of female behavior. That just puts me so off. The way she expresses herself matters a lot to me as well as her attitude towards men.

With a man I can have an extremely deep and good friendship too. It is usually me who spots one first. I then keep an eye on him and chase him down because I can sense quite well whether someone is made of the stuff I just so like in a man or not. I won't give up until he knows I mean business. Works quite nicely for me.

So yes, I would say good friendships help develop good social skills be it at work, sports etc. etc., where as people with no or bad friendships usually are also quite catastrophic in any other social setting.

A good friendship might even help to get over some bad family experiences.

Does the number of friends matter ? I don't know. Start with one and add as many as you can handle ?! Why not !!!

Ha, ha!

I have 2-3 friends, then another 5 tops, maybe, whom I could also rely upon. Isn't that what a friend is?

Outside of that, it's just people I know. Decent as they are.

Let the Facebook argument continue. But what really irritates me is the mail I get asking to join new sites professionally. I'll do Linked-in for pro-contacts and facebook for chit-chat. But that's it.

I've never bothered to count my friends and acquaintances, although I've noticed that the number of available drinking partners has increased significantly since I moved to Switzerland. I don't think it matters how you meet someone - I've met people via the internet who have become extremely good friends in real life, been formally introduced to 'like-minded' people with whom there was never a spark, former flings have become 'fancy a pint?' companions... human relations are complex, and certainly can't be reduced to 'facebook friends are not real friends' or 'you're my friend for life'. People come, people go, and some people just kind of stick to you...


What interests me most, though, are those acquaintances who turn out to be good friends completely unexpectedly: The person from another department at work who is the only one of your colleagues to call you when you are in hospital; the old mate from Athens who's there for you when you find yourself alone and bereft in a foreign country; the drinking partner who steps up and lends you a significant wodge of cash to pay off a debt...

Friends appear in all sorts of situations that you'd never expect. It's one of the real treats of life...

Serendipity!

I have lots of good friends met a few from the EF (going for lunch with some today) i lost contact with some good friends after moving here (i lost my address book at the airport when i moved here well that is another story) thanks to facebook i am now in contact with them and planning on meeting them next week.

My best friend in the whole world is my husband (i have other best friends, but he his my no 1 best friend)

lucky you, it seems lovers/husbands rarely make good lovers and good friends in one !!!

Thanks he gets top marks for all, i can talk to him about everything and nothing, been like that for the last 13 years. All i can say is that i feel very lucky to have him, and my other friends aswell, i blame my personality, and being blond lol

Where as in reality it's more like the more you earn the more (shallow) friends you have. Most of which run off in search of other new friends when the money dries up..

Indeed!

I don't know if it counts as 'friendship' as such, but a wonderful example of serendipity occured when I first arrived in Greece as a slightly dim, innocent 23 year old many years ago.

I was travelling alone, setting off to begin my new life abroad with a rucksack on my back, a shiny new Greek/English dictionary clutched in my hand, and a packet of ignorance concerning the local transport system stuffed in my back pocket.

After saying goodbye to my family at the airport, I waddled through passport control and sat myself down in the departure lounge, desperately trying not to look as terrified as I felt.

Suddenly, a young woman appeared, not much older than me, and plonked herself down in the chair next to mine. "Lone traveller?" she asked. I nodded. "We should stick together, then! I hate travelling alone..."

And so it was that I acquired a travelling companion for the flight - it turned out, by strange coincidence, that she had booked the seat next to mine on the aeroplane and, even more coincidentally, she was going to the same island that I was. The fact that she already lived in Greece, knew where the bus station was, knew enough Greek to direct the taxi driver there, buy two tickets when we arrived and find the right bus - well, all this was really too good to be true, surely?

In the dusty light of dawn, we travelled on a sweaty, malodorous bus to the main town of the island, from where we shared a taxi to the town in which I was hoping to live, the phone number and address of my new boss lying crumpled and well rehearsed in the pocket of my trousers. She dropped me off, directed the taxi driver to the north of the island, and I never saw or heard from her again.

After half an hour of getting lost on the main street of a dreary, dusty town in the heart of Greece, followed by an entertaining mimed conversation with the owner of a kiosk that had just opened up for the day, I found my boss' house, sat down for gritty coffee and cake, and my new life began.

It continued for three long, eventful years (cf. all my previous tedious posts on life abroad, nationalism, the Balkans and reverse culture shock).

Then I went back to England, to my old, ordinary life, and, little by little, became convinced that serendipity would never touch me again.

A year later I returned to Greece to see my old friends, visiting as a tourist, with a rucksack full of 'Gardens of England' calendars, proper beer and a much more grubby Greek/English dictionary than the one I'd carried with me four years before.

I arrived at the main train station in Athens, on my way to visit my former boss and her family back in the town in which I'd spent so many wine-soaked days, to find a young English woman at the ticket counter, struggling to explain to the clerk where she wanted to go, the phone number and address of her new boss clutched crumpled and well-rehearsed in her nervous, shaking hand.

I stepped forward, asked where she was headed, established that it was the same town to which I was going, bought the ticket for her, and accompanied her by train and taxi all the way to her new boss' front door, where, presumably, her new life began.

I never saw or heard from her again.

I didn't become friends with either woman - in both cases, it was simply a chance encounter that resulted in the opportunity to show kindness to a stranger. But, in other circumstances, isn't it situations like these that are often the foundations of long and intimate friendships?

I'd like to think so, even if experience tells me otherwise...