A Ruthless Take On Friendship
The utilitarian approach to social connection.
I was at a birthday party on Saturday night. I saw 12 people I wanted to talk to and 35 people I didn’t.
I’ve become less social in recent years. A consequence of 2 things:
My wife is my best friend and I enjoy spending time with her above other people.
I’m more protective of my time now while trying to work a full time job, launch a podcast business, make time for my relationship and family, maintain some fitness and continue my learning goals.
You can categorize friends in many different ways but boiling it down they look something like this:
Convenience Friends: This is the friendship from grade school or work that you continue the friendship with because of circumstance. Parks and Recreation calls these “Workplace Proximity Associates”.
Self-Image Friends: These friends are helpful for you because they reinforce an aspect of your personality that you like. This is the guy that’s always less funny than you or has the more boring job.
Utility Friends: These are people you are friends with because they are useful to you in some way. A high value network friend or the kid in 5th grade who had the Nintendo 64.
It’s important to note that some friends can belong to multiple categories at once. I also can’t take credit for this framework.
Here’s the crux of the argument:
You can’t spend your time doing 2 things simultaneously.
You should spend your time in 2 ways.
Enjoying it. Socializing, nature, video games, cuddling your dog.
Doing things that will allow you to enjoy it more in the future. Your job, working out, learning.
If you enjoy socializing with friends in the first two categories, that’s wonderful and you should absolutely keep those friends (unless they’re detrimental to your health or life). But, I’m sure you have a significant amount of friends in your life that suck the energy out of you.
George Mack calls these “Sofa friends,” because you need to lie on the sofa to recharge after being around them.
If you’re spending time with these types of friends as we’ve already stated, you’re not enjoying it. And, there isn’t any enjoyment in the future as a consequence of spending time with these friends.
Just in case no one has ever told you this before…
You can 100% gracefully and tactfully exit friendships that aren’t making your life better.
This comes back to one of my favourite quotes from Alan Watts: "You're under no obligation to be the same person you were 5 minutes ago."
In fact, you may be doing some of those friends a favour. Maybe that waning friendship is the excuse they need to level up their social skills or kick their life in gear.
Stop making your own life worse because you’re too afraid of other people’s feelings.