Friendly and Close Archives - understand-culture

An Epidemic of Loneliness

On May 3, 2023, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory titled “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation.” Even before COVID-19, “about half of adults in the country reported measurable levels of loneliness.” For people aged 15 to 24, time spent in person with friends fell “from about 150 minutes per day in 2003 to 40 minutes per day in 2020.”

The advisory compared the mortality risk of social disconnection to smoking “up to 15 cigarettes a day.” Murthy also spoke of “making sure our workplaces cultivate connections.”

We’re Friendly

American English grades closeness with care, from a name in a contact list to a best friend.

We’re friendly. We get along well, but we are not friends.

We’re not close. We know each other, but we share little that is personal.

We know each other professionally. We know each other only through work.

An acquaintance. Someone you know by name and face.

A contact. A connection. Someone in your professional network.

A friend of a friend. Someone you know through a person you both know.

A close friend. A good friend. A real friend, not just a friendly contact.

A fair-weather friend. Someone who is friendly only while things go well.

I Love You, Man

In the comedy I Love You, Man (2009), Peter Klaven is a Los Angeles real estate agent. He proposes to his girlfriend Zooey, and she accepts. But “he does not have any close male friends to share the news with, only family and female acquaintances.”

Peter overhears Zooey’s friends talk about his lack of guy friends. So he makes “a series of overtures toward various men.” They go badly. Then he finds a friend through work. At an open house at Lou Ferrigno’s mansion, which Peter is trying to sell, he meets Sydney Fife.

Fewer Confidants

In June 2006 the American Sociological Review published a study of the people Americans confide in. In 1985 Americans named on average 2.94 close confidants. By 2004 the number had fallen to 2.08. A quarter of Americans had no close confidants at all.

The finding was disputed. The sociologist Claude Fischer said the data “seem internally inconsistent or simply implausible” and “shouldn’t be relied upon.” A software error was later found that had miscoded 41 responses. One of the authors said the corrected results still showed a significant decline.

One Friend in a Lifetime

In the 1907 edition of The Education of Henry Adams, Adams writes: “One friend in a life-time is much; two are many; three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.”

The linguist Anna Wierzbicka quotes Adams to show that “The meaning of the English word friend has changed over the centuries”. In what she calls Anglo societies, “the number of ‘friends’ that a person can be expected to have has increased over time.” To get the old force back, “it is now necessary to use the expression close friend.” That expression, she writes, “is definitely modern.”

Where Americans Make Friends

In May 2021 the Survey Center on American Life asked 2,019 adults about their friendships. Twelve percent said they had no close friends. In a 1990 Gallup poll, only 3 percent had said so. The survey also asked where friendships begin. “Americans are now more likely to make friends at work than any other way.” Of people with close friends, 54 percent had met one at their own or their spouse’s workplace.

A Pew Research Center survey in July 2023 used different questions. In it, 8 percent said they had no close friends, and 38 percent said they had five or more.

Friendly to the Potentially Useful

In 1985 Robert N. Bellah and his co-authors published Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. The book describes an older idea of friendship with several parts. “Today we tend to define friendship most in terms of the first component: friends are those we take pleasure in being with.”

Usefulness is a different matter. The authors write: “we are quite aware of the importance of being ‘friendly’ to those who are potentially useful to us.”

Nobody Came

In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, crowds come to Gatsby’s parties. The narrator, Nick, describes them: “People were not invited—they went there.” He adds: “Sometimes they came and went without having met Gatsby at all.”

After Gatsby dies, Nick waits for people to come to the funeral. “But it wasn’t any use. Nobody came.” One former party guest, the man Nick calls Owl-eyes, is amazed: “Why, my God! they used to go there by the hundreds.”

Gatsby’s associate Meyer Wolfshiem also stays away. “I can’t do it—I can’t get mixed up in it,” he tells Nick. Then he offers advice: “Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.”

Well Liked

In Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, which opened in New York in 1949, Willy Loman believes that being liked is the key to success. “Be liked and you will never want,” he says. He admires an old salesman, Dave Singleman, and recalls that “hundreds of salesmen and buyers were at his funeral.”

Willy has spent his life making friendly contacts on the road. At the end of the play, only his family, his neighbor Charley and Charley’s son Bernard come to his funeral. His wife Linda asks why nobody else came.