Why it’s okay that you’re losing your friends
Just as daily routines have shape-shifted since the start of the pandemic, so too have social circles – a phenomenon researchers have dubbed ‘friendship funnelling’. Taking stock of life postlockdown, Gemma Askham asks if seeing some friendships fall by the wayside isn’t such a bad thing after all...
When excuses trickled in days before the RSVP deadline, Kate Parker felt hurt, but not entirely surprised. During the pandemic, the 37-year-old product manager from Lancashire noticed some friends no longer asked about her wedding plans and others went off the radar entirely in a seemingly strategic move to avoid having to explain that their yes was now a no. ‘I understood – everything had changed – but no one asked about my feelings,’ she shares.
‘It was the lack of empathy, rather than not making the wedding, that drove a wedge.’ Against the odds, Kate pulled off her wedding in September 2020 – with only three friends in attendance. ‘I’ll love those women forever,’ she says. And those who didn’t come? ‘The pandemic showed our friendship isn’t a priority for them.’
There’s nothing like a drastic, state-mandated change of circumstance to put relationships through the ringer. Some pals lost jobs while others faced the juggle of childcare with work. There were friends who vanished into a lockdown of passionate new love while their mates grew frustrated with long-term partners. Political differences flared on Zoom calls. Birthdays were missed, virtual quiz invites declined and, when restrictions did ease, the thought of a full social diary was just. Too. Much.
Little surprise then that when social scientists surveyed 16,000 French residents during
France’s first national lockdown in April and May 2020, they found, on average, participants only increased contact with – or grew closer to – three people beyond those they lived with. The team named the phenomenon ‘funnelling’ – where key connections are prioritised through care and communication, leaving the rest to fizzle out. The UK’S Life in Lockdown survey replicated the French study during the UK’S first lockdown and drew a similar conclusion – almost half of respondents had less contact with friends than they did before and one third experienced a friendship deteriorate. Meanwhile, Snapchat’s annual Friendship Report, which analyses the mate rituals of 30,000 people, summed up 2020 as a year of ‘endships’.
A NUMBERS GAME
To understand why, you need to look at the mechanics of friendship. Decades of research by Professor Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Oxford and author of Friends: Understanding The Power Of Our Most Important Relationships (£20, Little, Brown), shows that the social behaviours of humans follow a pattern regardless of age, location or class. You have a circle of around 150 friends, which consists of five know-all-your-dirty-laundry chums, 10 close pals you’d invite for dinner, then the rest fall into gradually less, well, essential tiers. Who earns a spot in the 150 and how they rank funnels according to circumstances – dynamics will shift if you move to a new area or start a new job, and finding a new partner (and inheriting their friends) will bump a few of your own, too. According to Professor Dunbar, funnelling tends to peter out in your thirties or if you have children – when, essentially, your wild social life does, too.
Unless a pandemic-shaped curveball enters the mix. Professor Dunbar
‘No one asked about my feelings – this lack of empathy drove a wedge’
explains that each tier of friendship relies on a specific type of interaction and, without it, the emotional strength of a connection can deteriorate within months. Such was the case for many when Covid’s social support bubbles came into play. Bethany*, 34, a medical student from Newcastle, felt shunned when the woman she’d describe as her best friend chose to bubble with a different pal. ‘She said she had no other options whereas I had my colleagues, but I live alone, so I felt isolated outside of work hours. As a healthcare worker, I appreciate there was a risk that I could have brought Covid into the bubble, but that didn’t stop it being bloody hard when she spent every day with “the other bestie” but went eight weeks without even meeting me outdoors.’
Elsewhere, friendships of convenience replaced once sure-things. ‘My support network shifted from my oldest friends to local contacts,’ says Sara Coyle, 36, a designer from London, who bubbled with a nearby mum to share the burden of childcare. ‘I have other friendships that have been badly affected by not being able to see each other in person.’
Therapist Jodie Cariss, founder and CEO of mental health service Self Space (theselfspace.com), also believes the combination of spiking stress levels and sanctioned isolation has led to many rethinking their own limits. ‘The pressure meant people were likely feeling more ruthless about what they did and didn’t want in their lives in that moment,’ she
explains. ‘Many of us now have a better understanding of where our energy is best spent, and the pandemic provided actual boundaries – “I can’t meet up”, “that’s not allowed”. It was empowering for people to have a solid and legitimate reason to lean on, like an arm around the shoulder that said it’s okay to say no.’
MIXED MESSAGES
The difficulty is, science confirms that good friendships are good for you. ‘The biggest single factor affecting health, wellbeing, happiness – even the ability to survive illness and surgery – is the number of high-quality friendships you have,’ explains Professor Dunbar. While scientists are still unravelling the complex physiological mechanisms that link loneliness, say, to biological markers like blood pressure, Professor Dunbar confirms that laughing, eating and drinking together all trigger the endophin system. The result is a greater feeling of relaxation, which improves resilience to stress. To see the effects of that in action, research shows people with stronger social support networks are more likely to recover after heart attacks or strokes. It puts a different spin on you calling that friend a life-saver, right?
Julianne Holt-lunstad, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University, has also researched the link between friendship and health.
Her findings show that ‘ambivalent’ connections – those that make you feel good and bad, like the friend who’s a hoot but disrespects your time by always running late – generate stress, raise blood pressure and increase ruminative thinking as you struggle to make sense of mixed feelings. To make funnelling work for your body and mind, focus on quality and don’t chase the lurkers doing you no good, even though you might feel obliged to.
Fortunately, identifying and prioritising your healthy alliances is easier when you know what to look for. There’s space for around 15 people in your innermost tiers and half of these are usually extended family members. For the rest, Professor Dunbar’s research identifies variables that determine whether a friendship is likely to be of good enough quality to make the grade and, in doing so, enhance your wellbeing. The first of these variables is ‘homophily’ – how much you have in common – as measured by Professor Dunbar’s Seven Pillars of Friendship: cultural dimensions that span language and dialect; where you’re from; education; hobbies and interests; religious/moral/political worldviews; taste in music; and sense of humour. The more of the seven you share, the stronger your bond.
The second variable is how much of the three hours a day that humans tend to spend socialising you can devote to any one individual. ‘You need to see each of your closest five friends once a week (broken down, that’s about 15 minutes a day each) and the next 10 once a month (3.5 minutes a day),’ says Professor Dunbar. A good measure of how likely that is to happen is how close by they live – 30 minutes or less and you’ll see them at the drop of a hat, beyond that, effort trails off and you can end up in the only-on-special-occasions zone. It’s one reason that favourite colleagues (read: work wives) are often upgraded to close friends, given that it’s easier to facilitate spending time with them.
Finally, the third determinant of a healthy friendship ecosystem is what’s known as your social fingerprint. Essentially, it’s how you reach out. An easy distinction is the difference between introverts, who spend more time with fewer people, and
‘People were feeling ruthless about what they did and didn’t want in their lives’
extroverts, who cast their net wide. But we each have a unique way in which we socialise, and when those social fingerprints don’t tally, resentment builds. ‘Two friends need to align, or one will become a burden (messaging every five minutes) and one will disappoint
(by not responding as often as they hoped),’ warns Professor Dunbar.
Essentially, it pays to use the pandemic as a positive friendship reset. Armed with the knowledge of what a quality connection looks like, build your social circle back up with these kind of relationships in mind. ‘Whether you’ve got five close friends or three, neither is inadequate,’ says Professor Dunbar. ‘Plus, the pandemic hasn’t changed your capacity to make new friends.’
One year on from Kate’s big day, her social circle remains smaller, but she’s no longer disappointed. ‘A few old friends made an effort to send a card and I’ve reciprocated. But most of them I felt so let down by that I don’t miss them. It’s quality over quantity,’ she shares. It can only be a good thing to have found more true social nourishment, to approach unhealthy contacts with a new frankness, if at all, and identify gaps in your social circle through a newly positive lens – excited about how you can fill them, and who with. As socialising becomes normal once more, it’s possible that the biggest friendship fallout in a generation has offered the perspective to take true friendships – those real high-quality ones – much more to heart.