The Friendship Ecosystem: Who are your real friends, and why you need some fake ones too.

the battle against loneliness

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Welcome to the Friendship Ecosystem! It’s a wonderful land filled with laughter, inside jokes, drinks at the bar, and movies on the couch.

And look! There you are right in the center of it all.

Doesn’t seem like there’s much going on right now, but wait… Your Family is here to join you. They’re really your first, and closest friends when you think about it.

They were there in the beginning, and watched you grow and become the person you are today!

Awe snap! Your Best Friends just joined! Let’s get this party started.

Your Best Friends are the people you can count on for ANYTHING! Need someone to watch your dog while you go on vacation, they got it. Rough breakup, they’ll clear their schedule.

Best Friends will stand both, the test of distance, and time!

Aye! Some Close Friends showed up too.

They’re not exactly Best Friends, but they’re still pretty good. They’ll help you move, and they’re always there for your birthday. They’re like Best Friends minus the intimacy.

Okay, cool cool. Some Good Company joined you as well.

They’re not quite Close Friends. I mean—you wouldn’t exactly invite them to your wedding—but they’re not bad people either. They’re always fun, and have hilarious stories to tell.

But wait… wtf is that?

Your Co-Workers are here too? Ahh yikes. This is awkward.

I guess you could say they’re friends? You do have inside jokes, so that’s something, right?

It’s just that, you spend so much time with them already! There will always be a distance between you and them—preventing any level of intimacy or real friendship.

Professionalism, am I right??

And, now there all here.

The Acquaintances, the Randos and your Old Friends. They all made it, everyone in the Friendship Ecosystem is here.

But wait, everything’s all jumbled.

You should probably reorganize a bit. Obviously there are people you want to catch up with. Circle up with your crew!

Nice! This is how we all want our Friendship Ecosystem to look.

We want to be surrounded by the people who care about us. The people who provide emotional support in our times of need, and the ones we share a common bond with.

The Best Friends, Close Friends, and Family should be right by our side.

We also want to make sure to keep the Randos and Co-Workers at bay—who invited them anyways?!

Unfortunately, that’s not what real life looks like at all. Our day to day is a lot more like this.

For most of us, 8 hours a day is spent at work. When we arrive, we sublimate the parts of ourself that are creative, or wacky, or emotional, and become cheerless parrots. Squawking the same soulless tune.

“Ah yes yes, I’m reaching out for the mission critical task of drilling down on our core values…I hope to share best practices moving forward.”

While we may spend time with other people at work, they’re only one-dimensional cutouts. We don’t get to know the real them, and they don’t get to know the real us. Our co-workers are probably actually pretty cool, but we’ll never know.

After work, we finally have the opportunity to be ourselves. Our whole selves, not just the work version.

The problem is, we spend that time with those who are closest to us…by proximity. These folks are increasingly Randos, Acquaintances, and Good Company.

So very often, we choose to just stay home.

And staying home is a big problem (more on this later).

We’re defining friends all wrong.

I hate to break it to you—and to go back on what I said before—but your Family aren’t really your friends.

They exist on a higher plane. While they share some similarities to friends, they also have attributes that are completely unique. Therefore, they need their own category.

Additionally Romantic Relationships—while sharing nearly every attribute with deep friendships—differ in one very important way. It’s tempting to call them friendships, but they’re of a unique realm.

So everybody else, everyone in our lives that’s not Family or a Romantic Relationship is a Friend! Right?

Wrong.

The reality is, there’s a 4th category, the Sudo-Friend.

These are the people who look like friends, and might even occasionally act like friends, but they are in fact not friends.

For example:

Have you ever thought to yourself?

“Ugh! This girl is so annoying! Sometimes she’s just so rude to me, and just thinks she’s so much smarter than everyone.”

Or tell me if this sounds familiar.

You invite your friend to your birthday party, but…. “Ahh I can’t make it, work is crazy!”

You rent a beach house with some friends, and ask him if he wants to join. “Sure thing, I’ll be there!….”

Until the day before, when “Something comes up” and he asks if you can refund him the deposit since he won’t be able to make it.

Although these people may be fun to be around….they’re not your friends.

They’re your Sudo-Friends.

Okay, so we have Friends, Sudo-Friends, Family, and Romantic Relationships.

But that isn’t quite the whole story either.

The way we spend our time within these groups has a massive impact on our quality of life. For most of us, this picture isn’t quite so balanced.

It actually looks a lot more like this.

Research shows that as we age, we spend less time with our Family, less time with our Close Friends, and exceedingly more time with our Romantic Partners, our Co-Workers, and alone.

So with time, the Friendship Ecosystem skews hard.

Why you need Sudo-Friends

Instead of looking at Sudo-Friends as inferior, we should instead see them for what they are.

They’re the adventure and exploration in our lives. They’re the unknown, and untapped. They’re what our lives could be.

The raucous nights out. Chatting up a stranger at the bar, meeting someone new at your run club, or even a random coffee date.

These interactions are imperative because you can’t make new friends, without them first starting out as Sudo-Friends.

Investing heavily in our existing friendships goes without saying. These relationships are the bedrock of our lives. They’re the ones we derive meaning from.

Although far more fleeting, we shouldn’t discount the real, in-person interaction Sudo-Friends provide. They imbue our days with energy. And stave off the deadliness of being alone.¹

We need people.

As we age, we increasingly isolate. The true enemy transforms from a battle between Friends and Sudo-Friends, to Everyone vs. Loneliness. An epic fight between complacency and exploration.

This is the ultimate enemy.

The majority of our deep interactions will take place over the phone or online. Yet, we’re acutely aware of the distance that is felt while face-timing with someone you love. Bytes will never be able to replace real, in-person interaction.

As a result, we need people. We need the physicality of people, we need the energy of crowds, we need to feel like we belong to a group. These are all things that Sudo-Friends are great at.

While we’re not going to share our deepest feelings, or years of history with them, Sudo-Friends provide a richness to our day to day lives—and us to theirs.

Both have their place in the battle against loneliness.

Close Friends, Old Friends, and Best Friends, act as a mental exhaust valve. When the pressures of the world become too much. They’re our emotional support, and our deepest empathizers.

Acquaintances, Randos, and Good Company, fill our days with unique experiences, and richness of new perspectives. They imbue our lives with a sense of community and belonging.

That leaves but one group out, our Co-Workers, who can kick rocks.²

—Zac

1. Loneliness is literally as detrimental to your health as smoking 15 cigarettes each day. It’s a bigger predictor of a shortened life than diet and exercise.

2. It’s a joke. Co-workers can be a great source of sudo-friendship and shared interest. Many, after departure from a collegial role, can go on to become true, full fledged friends.

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