True Friends Can Be Counted On One Hand
True friends can be counted on one hand. This is not surprising to most of us when we have come to a certain point in our life and have had a lot of experience.
We usually try to build good relationships and bond with people on a permanent basis. We look for people we can rely on, who we can count on. We want friendships that embrace the soul, that offer us a range of positive feelings.
However, we often fail to achieve this, and most of our friendships end up as simple acquaintances, or at least aren’t as close as we’d like them to be. In other words, we don’t have as many soulmates as we think we need.
Only half of the friends we consider soulmates actually are
Think of the special friends you have, give them an honorable title in your heart, and count them. Then divide that number by two and that is the number of your real friends.
This was confirmed in a study by Tel Aviv University (Israel) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Massachusetts, USA): Only half of the friends we consider soulmates are actually.
A team of scientists from the two institutes has created something like a “ friendship machine ” that can use an algorithm to evaluate the mutuality of our social relationships.
In other words, the algorithm aims to find out if people we consider true friends feel the same about us.
The result of the friendship machine showed that only half of the friends we consider soulmates feel the same about us.
The study was conducted with 84 participants and was later supplemented by surveys among students from Israel, the United States, and Europe. The head of the study, Erez Shmueli, said:
“We found that 95% of participants believed their relationships were mutual. If you think someone is your friend, you expect them to feel the same way. But this is actually not the case – only 50% of all friendships evaluated met this criterion. “
True friendships are rare
True friendships are rare. That doesn’t surprise anyone, does it? However, that’s also a little worrying. We really can’t generalize and say that the same thing happens to everyone, but it is true that most of us have few real friends. Maybe it’s just that certain circumstances bring us together and remove others from the people we consider friends today (or who we considered friends yesterday).
Friendship is definitely not a question of quantity, but of quality. As time goes by and we gain experience, we learn to love our companions even more, but their number has already decreased noticeably. That is not bad or strange in itself; it is quite simply the law of life. Over time, our feelings towards the people we trust most and with whom we are comfortable become more intense.
When it comes to making friends, instinct and the willingness to approach someone also play a role. If you think someone is good for you, then you will trust them and feel good at first. This brings you closer to the people you like. But only time creates healthy, honest and “true” friendships.
Images courtesy of Kristina Webb
