I want to preface this by saying that this overarching concept isn’t my own.
I’m not sure where I read about this idea or who I heard it from. If you know, by all means let me know! However, over the last few years it’s something that I’ve put a lot of my own thoughts into and developed into my own theory on friendship.
I do want to acknowledge something similar that I found online called the Four Circles of Friends created by two British psychologists, Colin Newton and Derek Wilson. There’s a lot of overlap between their concept and mine, but theirs is geared toward teaching children that may have a disability or behavioral problem when it comes to socializing.
Now with all the boring, legal stuff out of the way, let's talk about why the heck making friends is so gosh darn hard!
When we’re children, there’s a lot more opportunities to meet kids our own age. We invite a kid on the playground to play tag and suddenly we’re friends. We share a quick inside joke with someone we sit next to in school and BAM! we’re friends. We have sports teams and academic clubs to join. We go to youth groups and audition for musicals. We have so many avenues for meeting people, that very few of us have ever really had to learn how to make friends. Friends were always just there. Maybe you grew up with the same people in your life from diapers to college.
So it’s no wonder when we’re in our 20s and are thrust into the workforce, we often struggle to find our people. I would say that the age range between 23-45 is just about the strangest time period in our lives because life is happening so differently for everyone in this age group. You can be single, dating, married, married with kids, single with kids; your kids can be newborns, toddlers, or even high school students; you may be working or may be staying at home or you and your spouse are both working; your kids may be in school or maybe they’re homeschooled… you get the point.
At the same time, this is an age group that commonly works together in many careers and often remember similar childhoods. Yet because life has pulled us along in so many different directions, connecting with people on a friendship level is hard. You can like someone as your coworker, but to hang out with them beyond the walls of your office building would be weird because you’re single who likes to stay out till 2 a.m. on Friday nights and they’ve got a husband and two kids at home. Your priorities are different.
Other times you meet people at the bar while you’re on a week long cruise and you hit it off with them right away. For the rest of the week, you see shows together and eat dinner together and tour the Bahamas together. You find out that you only live three hours away from each other on the mainland and vow that you’ll keep in touch and plan to get together again as soon as possible. Then a month, two months, a year goes by and you look back at all your photos from your cruise and can’t remember the names of the couple in all of them with you. And you wonder why they didn’t become your best friends after the ship docked because you guys had such an amazing time together.
This is where I think knowing the three circles of friendship will come in handy. It’ll help give you a better gage of who are really your friends and who are just people you share experiences with.
The three circles are situational, relational, and inspirational.
They are arranged like a target. The closer each ring is to the center, the more important those people are in your life.
Situational Friends
These are your summer camp, cruise ship, college class of 2014 type of friends. This is the circle of friends where the biggest thing you’ve shared or had in common was a similar situation you found yourselves in.
You met at sleep away camp and for a week you did everything together, but as soon as you both went home communication pretty much stopped and no one really cared.
Or you took Dr. Smith’s 8am philosophy class with thirty other people and the class was so horrible that you all felt personally bonded for having survived it together.
Another type of situational friend might be someone you volunteer with at church every Sunday where the biggest thing you share is singing “Jesus Loves the Little Children” forty times every single week.
Relational Friends
Getting closer to the center of the circle, the middle ring is the people-oriented friend group. As you can tell this circle is a little bit smaller than situational friends. This is the circle where the common ground is based on the same people you know and have shared memories with them.
It’s sometimes hard to differentiate a situational friend from a people friend, and sometimes there is overlap, but people-friends are usually the type of friends who you do things together with in groups.
They are the group of girls you met on your hall freshman year and all started doing Tuesday night family dinners with.
They’re the study group that you owe passing calculus to because if it wasn’t for those Wednesday night study sessions you’d never have graduated college.
They’re the people you work with everyday at a TV station or dentist office.
Relational friends have just a little bit more shared life experience than situational friends who were more or less just at the same place at the same time as you.
Inspirational Friends
The smallest circle is reserved for your inspirational friends. Other people call this your core group of friends or your best friends. It’s small because very few people come into your life who meet the requirements of becoming one of your core friends.
Inspirational friends are the ones who get together no matter how much time has passed and pick up right where they left off. They share their hopes, dreams, fears, worries, and secrets with each other. They’re the deepest level of friendship because you could reveal the most shocking truth about yourself to this person and they would still love, accept, and encourage you in the most genuine of ways.
It’s easy to identify who is in your innermost circle of friendship. I myself only have about five people (and my mom!) who fit into this sacred part of my life.
Identifying Who's in Each Friendship
I find that a really easy way to figure out where each friend in your life goes is to ask yourself what you two talk about when you see each other for the first time in a while.
Situational friends might say, “Hey! Do you remember that time at Camp Mosquito Bite when that frog got into our cabin and it took us forever to catch it and all the other girls were screaming and jumping on the bed?!”
Meanwhile, relational friends might say, “Hey! It’s so good to see you again. It’s been forever! How are you doing? Did you hear that Kim and Nick finally got married? Yeah, we all thought they’d never last. Especially when she almost broke up with him for Chris. But hey, it all worked out right? Tell me what Becky is up to.”
And inspirational friends play catch up on the facts of life of course, but it quickly segways into, “I’ve been having a really hard time battling my depression and anxiety. Work has been stressful and I don’t know what to do. I want so badly to be able to keep singing, but I’ve had so much bad luck that I’m losing confidence every time I play a gig at an empty bar. I’m afraid I’ll never be able to make this my full time career.”
Building Deeper Friendships
The circles of friends is also a bit of a road map to building deeper, more meaningful relationships.
To go from strangers to friends you both have to be at the same place at the same time. You have to a common situation whether it’s school, work, or a mom’s group. You may have different reasons for being at that same place at the same time, but you’re there and you automatically have that one thing in common.
To move from situational to relational, one must have consistency. You both have to keep showing up and taking an interest in each other. Sometimes this leads to several people forming a group within the group that recognize even more similarities or enjoy each others' differences. And soon mom’s group turns into mom’s night out because you all need a break and a glass of wine.
Soon people in this group might start to stand out to you. You realize there’s a deeper understanding that this person has of you or you two have a very similar passion or dream you want to pursue. So you still like doing things as a group, but you also enjoy asking that one person to go to coffee with you so you can talk. Then you do it again. Then again. Then it’s a weekly thing and then you’re also getting your families together on the weekends and then occasionally taking day trips together. All the while, you know that you can call this person without having to text them first. They’re your person.
Accepting the Each Level of Friendship
I think really understanding that there are different types of friends helps you be okay with the fact that not everyone is going to be your bestest best friend in the whole wide world.
It takes the pressure off when you meet your co-workers for the first time because you no longer have to scour and scheme for ways to make the person you bump into at the copier your 6 o’clock margarita buddy. Or when you meet that really cool person at an Old Dominion concert, you can acknowledge the fact that you’ll probably never see this person again in your life and that’s totally okay. The three hours of beer, dancing and country music is all you have in common anyways.
I think a lot of people try to force friendships to become more than they were ever supposed to be. I believe that God puts people in our lives when we need them and then takes them away when we don’t. And just because a friendship changes or goes away, it doesn’t meant that's a bad thing.
Now, severed friendships because of hurt or broken trust is different. But friends that just naturally drift apart is okay. A change in the friendship doesn’t devalue what that person meant to you.
Knowing where your friends fit in your life is just as important as realizing where you rank in theirs. It’s okay that sometimes two people don’t share the circle in each other’s lives. Sometimes you have friends whom you're more open and vulnerable with, but they don't reciprocate the same way. However, there could be another girl to whom you’re her confidant. You hear her struggles and are sympathetic and genuinely caring, but when she asks you have you’ve been, you don’t really lament about your scary doctor’s appointment coming up or the weight of the bills that are piling up because your husband lost his job.
It’s okay to be in different circles. It’s okay for friendships to ebb and flow, change, evolve, and digress. You decide where people fit in your life. You decide how much time, energy, and effort goes into growing and preserving a friendship. You get to be as intentional with inviting people into your life as you want.
Making Slow Friendships
Making friends will always be hard and the older we get, I think the more challenging it is to figure out how to cultivate stronger friendships. But recognizing where people fit in your life and determining if that’s where you want them to stay, helps you decide if it’s time to invite that really cool chick from yoga class to go get a smoothie with you after one particularly sweaty session. It opens the door for natural growth so you don’t try to force someone to be your best friend because you overshare about your ex-boyfriend to the woman sitting across from you at the coffee shop.
Give yourself permission to slowly seek out and build lasting friendships and remind yourself that it’s okay not to be everyone’s best friend.
You also need all three types of friends in your life. You need friends you can share your heartbreak with and the friends you can just grab a beer with. Sometimes you just need to have fun and so inviting that big group of friends to go hiking is perfect because they’re not going to pressure you into talking about your parents’ divorce. Other times you need to call your best friend and talk it out over the phone. You need balance.
I’ve always liked the quote, “You are who you hang out with.” A lot of people say that you become like the five people you spend the most time with. I 100% agree. When it comes to a full, well-rounded life though you need more than just 5 super close friends. Don’t close yourself off from people just because you’ve already established your inner circle of friends. Say yes to grabbing coffee with one of your coworkers even though you’ve never hung out with them before. The people in your life have been put there for a reason. Figure out that reason and be blessed by whatever level of friendship they offer.
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