CLC Models: Circles of Friendship

 

Circles of Friendship Model

Robin Dunbar's book, Friends: Understanding of Power of our Most Important Relationships, deals with relatives and coworkers as well as friends that we choose. 

Dunbar maintains that our number of meaningful relationships is limited both by our cognitive capacity and by time. Dunbar's limit is about 150 which turns up again and again: the average number of people at a wedding, on a holiday greeting list, or in early hunter-gather communities.

Meaningful relationships consist of an inner circle about 5 close friends (e.g. spouse, children) with whom we spend about 40% of our quality social time. We usually see them at least once a week. The total amount of time per month averages about 8.5 hours, the equivalent of a workday. These are the people we can depend upon.

The next circle consists of about ten best friends who are our sympathy group.  These are people whom we generally see at least once a month. We spend an average of 2.1 hours a month with each of these, e.g. a lunch, or an evening, or a small group meeting. These are people whom we expect will aid us if we need them.  Only 20% of our social time goes to this circle. However, when we add these people to our close friends, we have about 15 people with whom we spend the majority of our quality social time.

The next circle out consists of our Good Friends, another forty people, who are our extended "family" and affinity groups such as church, business, or hobby friends whom we see at least once a year They only get 20 minutes a month if we keep in contact monthly with them by phone or e-mail. Personal contact is likely in group events at holidays, etc. However, forty percent of our time goes to this circle. 

Beyond this is another circle of about a hundred friends. These are mostly people we have known from some past social interactions: childhood friends, college classmates, past coworkers, business relationship, etc. These are basically people we do not interact with on any regular basis but with whom we could resume our relationships. These with the fifty people with whom we regularly interact constitutional our social world.  

Where might members of a Commonweal Local Communities fit?  They would be in Friends category if we come to a CLC meeting once a year, and the meeting was small enough, e.g. about ten people so that we might have some quality time with a few people before, during and after the meeting. However, if we attend monthly meetings of the CLC some of the members could become our Good Friends. Depending upon the size of the monthly group meetings we might end up with one or more Best Friends. Becoming Good Friends or Best Friends would be greatly facilitated by regular phone and e-mail contact. In other words, a monthly meeting has the potential to make a significant impact upon the network of 50 people with whom we interact regularly.