Latest / Black Box Theory Podcast / Friendships in Your 20s Don't Survive on Autopilot
Transcript
- Malcolm: And so Your 20s are when your social circle naturally starts to shrink and stratify. You start to make business decisions about who's really in that inner circle, who's in that outer circle, who are the type of people that you want really around you at all times. and the people that you keep close, how do you invest in those relationships and keep them like, you know, fruitful? How do you keep them active? How you keep them, you know, ongoing? Right. And so how do you manage the the the inevitable drift as you and your closest friends start to go down your own career paths? And your own lanes and you guys all just start to kind of like, you know, just naturally kind of like pull apart from each other. like that management is something that nobody really, I think, teaches you. There isn't really a formal way to go about it. And a lot of people kind of figure out when it's too late. so there are some facts that kind of go and through, right? It's interesting, right? So the average American, and I want you guys to think about yourself as you listen to this, but the average American has fewer than three close friends. That number has been declining for two decades. Ratio is consistently shows that social connection is one of the strongest predicators of long term health, career success, and happiness, stronger than income or status. Your 20s are one of the or the last period where friendships form organically. So we're talking about school, dorms, organizations, teams. After that, they all require active effort to build and maintain. Think about everyone that you have met after college, after grad school. Are you how many friends are you like actual friends are you really making? You may run into someone at a run club. You may have colleagues that you consider your friends, but are they really your friends? You may have people that you meet at networking events and organizations and parties and bars. Are they really your friends, though? The friendship recession is real. And also, there's another thing that me Thomas are more. They disproportionately affect men. Studies show that men are less likely to initiate or maintain emotional and intimate friendships. the geographic spread accelerates in your mid-20s. People move for jobs, grad school relationships, and most friendships don't survive passive distance. The difference between a friend and an inner circle friend. An inner circle friendship requires mutual investment, not just history and how long you've known someone. And this is something I can attest to. There are plenty of guys and people that I know that I've known for years. I'm talking about decades. But just because we've known each other for that period of time does not necessarily mean that we are close friends. We've just known each other for a while. But if we aren't actively talking and renewing that friendship, and you know, like I said, like my closest friends are friends I've known for forever, right? Like Thomas included, you know, Brendan and Brian, like all of our kind of like Like my main, like closest people. Yeah, we've known each other for for a long time. But the reason that we're still friends is because, dude, we we were college roommates for pretty much all all college and we still talk every day, like even now, like a year postgrad. Like we may not talk every day like how we did in college, but we still are constantly kind of like reaching out to each other, checking in, having conversations, and we're kind of like constantly renewing that that friendship that we always knew that we had. So we wanted to talk about like a couple things, right? So what does intentionality when it comes to friendships actually look like in practice? Is this schedule calls? Is this visiting people on purpose? Is this not waiting for the right time to reach out? And how do you identify who belongs in your inner circle versus who you've just kept out of habit or proximity? And then like, how do you handle that natural drift between friendships and relationships without making it dramatic? And people can grow in different directions. That not that's not necessarily a failure or indicative of your guys' relationship not being as strong. But I think it's just that's just how life goes. so yeah, curious to hear Thoughts.