Photo: Tim Pannell / Corbis
- Big clique or twosome - all type thing!
- The childhood and the circle of friends in these days shape our preferences
- The best friend
- Can men be as close to us as women?
- The colorful friendship mix
Big clique or twosome - all type thing!
Great clique or twosome: Hardly any relationship reveals so much about us as it does about the people we feel most comfortable with. What it means if we have one or three best friends.
Who we are friends with is not a coincidence. Even though we sometimes wonder why people are so enthusiastic about us that they are so different from us. But they all have in common that we feel secure and authentic in their proximity.
Basically, "We value friendships on a kind of quality scale, " says Dr. med. Wolfgang Krüger, psychologist and author of the book "How to win friends for life" (order now at amazon.de ). The principle is simple: people whom we would not hesitate to put the badges "trustingly" and "reliably" on the chest are among our closest friends. This can be someone whom we have known for a very long time, for example, who has already comforted us over the first heartache . But we also call friends new acquaintances if they make our hearts ring and have already helped us in an emergency. But how does it explain which friendship constellation is our favorite?
The childhood and the circle of friends in these days shape our preferences
Reasons for whether we like to surround ourselves today with a friend or with many are already found in childhood. If you used to be a loner or "quiet little mouse", you will still feel comfortable in a four-eye relationship . In a larger circle of friends, however, find people better cope, who grew up with (multiple) siblings and learned early on, durchzuboxen.
However, being part of a large circle of friends does not mean that you enjoy being able to enforce your ego - on the contrary. "Especially types of cliques must finally be able to accept compromises again and again, " explains the friendship expert.
Similar interests and the same life circumstances let us move together with many people. "But at the latest with their own family startup, the clique often loses importance, " says Krüger. Then most of the time we concentrate on one or two good friends - just for time reasons.
The best friend
To be honest, even in a larger circle of friends there is often a person who mentally touches the gold crown. This then gets the title "best friend" awarded. Nearly 70 percent of women belong to this "only you and me" type. Men, on the other hand, prefer looser friendships: only 32 percent explicitly have a friend who is particularly close to them.
The best friend enjoys with us a kind of special emotional status. We often like her so much that we do not mind clarifying or even accepting conflicts with her . True to the motto: "She always comes too late, well, that's the way she is."
Nevertheless, it is important to stay open for new friendships as well. For a single friend can never satisfy all needs - because, like every human being, they have only a limited number of qualities that can enrich us. The fact that we often focus on one person, is due to a leap of faith: Has the friend several times as the first port of call for problems, it becomes the cornerstone in our lives.
Can men be as close to us as women?
Why one loves being with women, the other with men, that's not easy to explain. What you do know: "After puberty, the gender issue usually only plays a subordinate role in a friendship, " says Krüger.
Nevertheless, it turns out that there is a lot on some clichés. Women who used to like to climb trees or ride their bikes down the mountain are more likely to have "male friends". They appreciate their mates that they are less emotional. "This can be very relieving for a close friendship, " says the expert. "In addition, men are more tolerant in conflicts, and a woman who is integrated into a male circle of friends enjoys a bonus: they let her go through a lot more than a female clique would."
Which also explains why some women feel even better with many best friends than with just one. In a clique her female special status comes even more to bear.
The colorful friendship mix
"You can actually gauge the size of the personality by how many different people you're friends with, " says Krüger. If we count an academic as much to our friends as a craftsman or artist, that means that we are also open and communicative in other areas of life. Predominantly the same temperaments, interests or jobs in the circle of friends indicate that we are very balanced and resting within ourselves. So we do not like to be stirred up by unfamiliar properties.
Whatever we "put together" our circle of friends, what matters is only one thing: that we feel well in the circle of our loved ones.
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