If we think of ‘keeping in touch’ with friends and family members as knowing with regularity the events and emotions of their lives, it’s easy to see how that translates into a tacit and peculiarly gendered pressure. Researchers offer a lot of theories as to why that is, but most boil down to variations on the following theme: girls are conditioned far more than boys to be more caring, more aware of how their behavior affects others’ well-being, to prioritize maintaining relationships. Which means the fact that I can only stay on top of the intimate details of only a handful of people’s lives is totally okay.įirst, women are more prone to feeling guilt than men and for women, guilty feelings are a predictor of helping behavior and empathy. If you garner connections with more people, you end up distributing your fixed amount of social capital more thinly so the average capital per person is lower.” The thing is, “the amount of social capital you have is pretty fixed,” Dunbar told Konnikova. Meanwhile, casual acquaintances can extend up to around 500, and people whose names and faces we can match tops out around three times more than that, at 1,500 (or fewer, if you’re anything like me). On average, only five people form our closest support network: our ride-or-dies, our emergency contacts, our trusted advisors - who often double as our family members. From this social group of 150, the average person will have roughly 50-some close friends with whom they socialize with any kind of regularity, and about 15 intimates in whom they confide. It’s an average, so more outgoing, social people might have as many 200, while others might have closer to 100, reported Maria Konnikova for The New Yorker in 2014.įurther analysis led Dunbar to develop the “rule of three,” which defines increasingly inner or outer circles. The result - Dunbar’s number - concludes that the average individual can only maintain a social group of 150. He then conducted experiments, historical reviews, and surveys, all of which seemed to validate it. Working from an anthropological theory that suggests a link between brain size and size of an individuals’ social network, Dunbar conducted brain scans of humans and came up with a predicted number of possible social connections. According to an anthropologist and psychologist from the University of Oxford, Robin Dunbar, there’s a limit to how much effort we can put into maintaining relationships. We simply can’t be in touch as closely as we desire with everyone we might desire to be closely in touch with. But when enough weeks go by, and my good intentions never manifest into reaching out, it starts to feel like a series of excuses.Įxcuses they may be - but such excuses may also be inescapable. Sometimes, when I do remember, it’s a matter of energy - I’ll call them when I’ll be more upbeat, I think. Every time I forget to call someone it feels like a choice, like I’ve prioritized something else that is more important to me than the people I care about - work, TV, zombie scrolling on my phone, chores, exercise. The guilt though - that stays the same regardless. Some variation of this internal monologue runs through my head almost constantly, the only alteration found in the names of the individuals I’m failing by not keeping regularly abreast of their lives. last night to check in - when we texted a couple of weeks ago, they were having trouble…” Shit - when will I call the grandmothers, then? Oh, damn it, I meant to call C. I should call my dad I’ve only talked to my mom the last few times I’ve called home. Oh god, has she already had the baby? Shit! Let me make a calendar reminder so I don’t forget. I should call my oldest friend, we’ve really only emailed here and there in the past year.
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