The other day when I was scrolling through Facebook I came across something that made me feel sad inside. A friend from back home had invited me to his birthday party. He was a good friend, a close friend, a friend of many years. He promised cake, free alcohol, a small lake to swim in (the party was in a field somewhere), and a DJ. That all sounded great. Only thing was, as it turned out, I wasn’t invited to the real party. ‘Just to let you all know,’ it said at the bottom of the invite, ‘a few of us are going for a meal and drinks earlier that day. For reasons of space, only limited numbers invited.’ This, from the man who used to spread cream over my back all those years ago when I had scabies! Maybe that wasn’t the special bonding moment I thought it was after all.
Imagine my relief when I found that what happened to me isn’t actually that unusual at all. Apparently, many people who think of themselves as close friends with someone are really no more than ‘fringe friends’. As one study of undergrads shows, whereas most people think their friendships are reciprocal, only about half of them really are. At the same time, another study shows that while the majority of adults are happy with the overall number of friends they have, more than 40% feel those friendships aren’t as close as they’d like. Put these two things together, and things look bleak. We’d already like to have more close friendships, and yet even those apparently ‘close’ friendships might not be that close at all. Reflecting on this, I began to feel better. Gather any random sample of friends together for a party in a field and chances are that most of them don’t really like each other that much. It was reassuring to know that it wasn’t just me.
I joke, of course, because in reality, the idea that a number of supposedly close friends don’t like me as much as I thought is thoroughly depressing. We all want to be liked, or at least all the humans I’ve met in my life so far do. Just the thought that a certain number of my close friends think of me as merely a fringe friend is enough to wreak havoc in all my relationships. After all, how am I supposed to know who are the good eggs and who are the bad ones, unless they reveal themselves to me through the medium of Facebook invites? Without solid evidence to the contrary, I might just have to assume that everyone hates me.
On the other hand, though, is the idea of fringe friendship really as bad as it seems? As Miriam Kirmayer, a clinical psychologist and friendship expert points out, while close friendships are essential for our mental and even our physical health, they can also bring with them added pressure and expectation. Put simply, close friendships demand time and energy, and they can often leave us feeling guilty or ashamed when we aren’t measuring up to some idealised vision of what the perfect friend would be. We wouldn’t even have enough time for that many close friendships, even if everybody did find time in their own busy schedules. All of which is to say, how many non-fringe friends can any one person manage at one time?
The principle of the ‘Fringe Friend’ makes a lot of sense to me. The fact is, my first thought on reading the Facebook invite was less how happy I was to be invited to something back home, and more about how I could possibly find an excuse not to go without making myself seem a) boring or b) the person who goes to Oxford and then forgets all the people he used to know back home. Sometimes I feel like my life is a constant struggle of feeling guilty about just wanting to lie on my bed and eat large packets of fizzy Haribos. Now that I’ve found out I was no more than a fringe friend to this particular person, at least I can eat my sweets without feeling too bad about it.
In other words, there’s obviously a balance to strike. Nobody wants to be lonely, and the idea of getting invited to absolutely no pre-field party meals depresses me as much as the next person. But at the same time, imagine what the world would look like if every friendship was a close one. We’d all be so tired and stressed out, we wouldn’t have any time left just to eat Haribos alone in bed.
