How many Good Friends is normal?

Sorry for the second thread but this is an extension of my other thread. How many close friends do you think is normal? How many friends are normal?

I'm wondering if i need to adjust myself from total loner to just an introvert.

SophiaGrace said:

I'm wondering if i need to adjust myself from total loner to just an introvert.

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Being a total loner isn't good for you. Your social skills and confidence level will probably begin to atrophy if you're anything like me. And I am somebody who really honestly enjoys spending my time alone most of the time. It's the only way I feel like I can pursue my hobbies and interests without boring somebody else in the process.

It's hard to balance the competing needs....

2 or 3.

SophiaGrace said:

How many close friends do you think is normal? How many friends are normal?

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Oh yea, I forgot to answer your question. Well I always like to make a break the word "normal" into two categories: what is healthy and what is common

I think it's common for people to have 2-3 "friends" and maybe 1 real friend at best.
I think it would be healthy to not have fake "friends" and 2-3 real friends.

Who can really say what is normal ? Normal is what you feel like it , I have friends more than I can count on my fingers but I can say that out of all of them only 2 are real friends. What I find to be important is a best friend , because in my case he was the only person to understand and be there for me at all times be them good or bad and I could cope in darker days. And for that I thank God.

I think people with friends will find it strange if you have zero but beyond that I can't say I've seen someone look at the number of friends one has and try to gauge the normalcy of it according to that number.

As many as you want? lol

jjam said:

I think people with friends will find it strange if you have zero but beyond that I can't say I've seen someone look at the number of friends one has and try to gauge the normalcy of it according to that number.

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Well...maybe that's because they never feel a dearth of friends so its not an issue for them?

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Ghost Boy said:

As many as you want? lol

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Yes! O_O I will have 1 milliontybillion friends.

SophiaGrace said:

Ghost Boy said:

As many as you want? lol

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Yes! O_O I will have 1 milliontybillion friends.

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Can I be one of them? :shy:

SophiaGrace said:

Well...maybe that's because they never feel a dearth of friends so its not an issue for them?

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I think it's more that people grow to realize that not only can the quality and quantity of friendships vary immensely from person to person, people don't have factual insight into the lives of others to even say what's normal. I don't think there can even be an accurate study for a variety of reasons, including, but not limited to, the different standards people hold about what friendship entails. So all of this points to the idea I and others have been getting at - that there really is no such thing as normalcy when talking about the quantity and quality of friendships people possess. I think only at the extreme levels can people take a guess, at best, that some quantity of friends is abnormal. For example. When looking at people who are not poor, disabled, criminals, and rich, I think most people would say it is abnormal to have zero friends or some ridiculously large amount if we use some definition of friendship and assume "most" accept it as one that applies to their friendships.

Pezza said:

SophiaGrace said:

Ghost Boy said:

As many as you want? lol

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Yes! O_O I will have 1 milliontybillion friends.

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Can I be one of them? :shy:

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Yes

Oh and in response to jjam I guess what you are trying to say is "Normal is a setting on a washing machine?"

yep...

jjam said:

yep...

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Btw I am disabled.

I think 3 or 4 true friends

Or 8+ not so true friends that you can hang out with at least 1 true friend

...that's my estimated amunt to not feel lonley. This obviously depends of the person, and age...

SophiaGrace said:

jjam said:

yep...

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Btw I am disabled.

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I know

I think two good friends is a minimum. I think five good friends would be normal. And I think, I don't know, you should be able to call 30 people friends. Maybe they're not all there for you every single day but they're there, you should be able to count on them if you need their help, or for your birthday for instance, or like when my uncle died and my mother was surrounded by people every night for a week and I had nobody.

What sucks is even if you do find a close friend, you dont always connect emotionally, for example, I have a friend Ive known my whole life, I see him every day but we arent really close in the sense that we talk to each other about deep thoughts and emotions, likewise Ive had friends who I do talk about that sort of thing with, but we never see each other often

I got no true friend I guess, well i had but its impossible for us to meet like most of the time and we are busy so...

Someone wanna be a true virual friend ?

I have 1 good friend inreal life and a few from here that I talk to everyday.