Attempting to Structure Friendship

It's not exactly a friendship tier-list, I promise

Spot the impostor manicure?

I am fond of structure. Or rather, I am reassured by it. Which is to say that when I am uncertain of what exactly to do I am terribly anxious, and when I know what to do, I feel much better. I think this is quite understandable.

I have made various attempts at ‘fixing internal problems’ before. Some of which are successful. Others manage to slip from my mind before I can fully enforce a solution. Recently I found myself in a moment of greater clarity, the kind where I suddenly remembered all of the problems I had forgotten to address. Evidently one of my problems is poor memory.

But also as of late, I have felt overwhelmed by friendship. I don’t mean this negatively towards my friends at all. I think I have just carelessly overextended myself. I can no longer keep track of what I owe people, and have been a worse friend to nearly everyone as a result. It feels a bit like trying to patch holes in a sinking boat with my hands. Every time I move to cover another leak, an old one is uncovered.

There is the important matter of apologies and relevant communications. There is also the matter of determining how to prevent the issue.

So, naturally, I decided to make several categories. I had previously done this for my concept of romantic love. But I think keeping track of people in my life is helpful. If the effect of assigning a ‘category’ comes across as cold, I apologize. I can only say that structure does not mean transactionality for me.

My categorization of friendship is as follows.

Category 1 - “Acquaintances”

This is the loosest definition of friendship. I think it’s easiest to characterize by “someone I’d wave to if I passed by them”. We can have a friendly conversation, and I’d probably be glad to run into them at an event where I don’t know anyone. I might do an activity with them, but I wouldn’t consider there to be any closeness in the relationship.

Category 2 - “Friends”
Here is where I start to call people friends. People I can hold a conversation with, not just about surface-level topics. I think this category still lacks a certain degree of emotional intimacy, but at this point I’m happy to summarize things going on in my personal life in great detail. Practically speaking, this probably looks like: we can make one-on-one plans, sustain a long conversation, and such. However, I would again say this type of friendship lacks closeness.

Category 3 - “Friend Circles”

This consists of people I have some clear group dynamic with. I think because I tend to dislike group interactions, this requires a greater degree of friendship for me to find it enjoyable. On a practical level, there is some kind of regular plans I make with people in this category, or I draw from the groups here for random plans (e.g. hotpot, Clocktower). Some loose degree of closeness starts to form here, I think because I need this in order to feel like the group can function.

I would split Category 3 into two sub-groups. ‘3a’ and ‘3b’ are distinguished by the state of the friendship. Type A here refers to ‘active’ friendships— people who are currently accessible frequently. School friends, mainly. Type B refers to ‘passive’ friendships— people I know from high-school, whom I don’t actively talk to as much, but whenever I see them, can easily ‘resume’ the friendship.

Category 4 - “Good Friends”

Here is where I classify people whom I have a distinct one-on-one relationship with. I would make plans with people here individually beyond ‘doing an activity’. I think the level of closeness also is increased here. While Category 2 is sufficient for me to talk about personal topics/details, I think Category 4 is where these don’t serve just as mere information or anecdotes, but rather I find myself looking for input. This is also a category which I would divide into Type A and Type B, again ‘active’ and ‘passive’.

Category 5 - “Close Friends”

The classification standard here is effectively: “do I consider this person close, by my definition of closeness”. I’ve been using the term a lot, so perhaps I owe the reader a definition.

Closeness - I think I’ve been defining closeness as a combination of ‘mutual care’ and ‘trust’. Mutual care is pretty loosely defined for me, I think in part because I have yet to concretely define care (a fact which continues to trouble me). The approximation I use here is just “does it seem like we both want to be around each other”.

Trust - I had dinner with a friend last night, and finally managed to articulate what I meant by trust. Some of it is straightforward— “you will keep your word”, usually in cases of me asking “don’t do this” or “don’t tell anyone about this”. But I also assume some default level of distrust. If someone judges that it makes more sense to break one of these, I won’t necessarily be upset. The less straightforward and more important part of trust, for me, is that I “know what I am getting from you”. This is a combination of “you are what you present yourself to me as” and “you will tell me when you disagree with me/I am doing something you perceive to be wrong”. It just comes down to: I feel uneasy around people unless I don’t have to worry about hidden meanings and motivations I can’t pick up on.

“Good judgement” is also a part of this. I guess this is something like ‘similar/applicable values’, or, the ability to critique me within reasonable bounds? The best analogy I can come up with is: I want the validity of arguments checked, not the premises? (This is a bad analogy because I in fact would like my premises checked, but also within reason. For example, if I say: “given that I care about doing well in my classes, x conclusion follows”, I might get annoyed if I get hit with “no, you don’t care about doing well in your classes”. This doesn’t apply to every premise, but also I think there are certain fundamental ones that, if they keep getting questioned and can’t really be proven one way or another, it just feels like the conversation won’t go anywhere. But also, open to disputing this view.)

I’d like to come up with more precise bounds and definitions of these terms at some point. Particularly the ‘good judgement’ one, since it would be pretty bad if that was just an arbitrary ‘whatever I feel like’. I think it also goes both ways, though. ‘I trust that they trust I mean well and am trying to move in a generally positive direction.’ I think it’s kind of impossible to go anywhere in a friendship if you lose the assumption of good intentions.

Anyways, close friends are basically ‘people I trust, whom I also trust care about me roughly as much as I care about them’.

There’s also vague sort of Category 6, which is more of an ideal than anything. I can really only describe it as follows, rather strangely:

My fundamental problem is an inescapable sense of loneliness. Category 6 consists of the kind of friendship where I no longer feel that inescapable loneliness.

There do exist instances of this, so it’s worth keeping the category. But it is rather empty at the moment, and I do not anticipate this changing. There is probably a second, internal reason for this.

So, those are the categories! I think this is helpful to me for two reasons. First, I just want to keep track of all the people in my life. Second, I think I can more clearly understand where I should be more attentive to people. As a point of clarification, I don’t mean out of obligation. If I do not want to be friends with someone to a certain degree that is different (and also probably a conversation I should have with them). But I truly am just absent-minded and lack object permanence when it comes to people.

I don’t think these categories are fixed; people can move between them. I guess I just want to keep track of the people in my life in some way. I am uncertain, and so I find myself craving structure.

Perhaps the ideal is that I should have more close friends. (Currently, Category 5 is sitting at a population of 2. Maybe even 1-and-1/2.) I think this system, gives me some idea of where to start, or at least, forces me to think about how I feel about people and why. If I know how I feel about people then I will, ideally, know how to act accordingly. The categorization is just a convenient shorthand.

I would like to end with a hint of optimism. There are a lot of things I want to fix about myself and how I interact with people. I guess I want to say… for some reason, I think I can. I want to give people more of a chance, maybe. I think I am capable of better expressing my care.

I hope I can be a better friend to people?