you have way too many "medium" friends
what are medium friends and what to do with them
LA in Common has soft launched as a membership-driven incubator for creatives and entrepreneurs - we’ll have monthly and quarterly dinners, fireside chats, neighborhood groups, and coworking sessions, all for the purpose of building connection and collaboration.
We have our next members-only dinner this Sunday. If you’re interested in hearing more, come to our upcoming Chef Dinner later today and join the waitlist.
Upcoming Events
Neighborhood Dinners
Koreatown (today!!) - Chef Dinner @ Red Room, Thursday 7/25 at 7:30pm [menu + tickets here]
Community-Exclusive Pop Up
One of our members, Federico, is throwing an empanada and cocktail event in South Central on August 10th at 6:30pm. Tickets include food/drink and are free but they’re going fast. [details here]
Back to the action…
The NYT recently came out with a piece on the idea of a medium friend: Someone with whom you lack reciprocity. In other words, “you may like your medium friend less (or more) than they like you” (The Vexing Problem of the ‘Medium Friend’, NYT).
To this I would say, I’m pretty sure you and I have way too many of these medium friends (more on this below).
There are several ways one might approach the presence of too many medium friends. One might axe a bunch of them out of their lives (pls don’t do that). Another person might reshuffle their medium friends lower on their priority list (feasible). But I like option three: set expectations.
But IMO, medium friends are one of the best gifts of friendship ever - and we should keep them if we can. If you can properly identify the lack of reciprocity, you can set expectations and adjust your commitment level. Once you reach that equilibrium, you achieve reciprocity. And when you achieve reciprocity, you can achieve satisfaction in the friendship.
All this sounds so clinical and heady, so let me provide an example from my own life for you.
I remember a couple years ago I had this friend I wanted to hang out with, ideally every couple weeks. But when I would text him, his responses would arrive later and later and I became disappointed and maybe even a bit angry. I finally brought it up to him and he explained that he only had so much time to spend with people outside of his close friends and that he would prefer meeting every two months to catch up.
At first I was disappointed and salty. But the more I thought about it, I realized this was a perfect situation. While I would have enjoyed more frequent hang outs, I now had the freedom to find that in a different friend or set of friendships. In other words, my friend and I could both get what we wanted out of the friendship.
I genuinely wanted to stay in the loop in his life and he felt the same way, just in a more spaced out format. And I was good with that. Win-win.
On a broader level, I reached reciprocity with my friend and we gained clarity on what we wanted from our friendship.
In this world of making friends as adults, I think we could all use a little more clarity. And I’ve heard many of you say this - making friends in this stage of life is tough.
We meet so many people, get so many IG handles and numbers, and then hope it all pans out. I’d love an easier way to get on the same page about how often to meet and how much to invest in a friendship. But for now, all we have is talking things out and figuring it out from there.
I think another article about how to navigate medium friendships and having those conversations could be helpful. For now, I’ll end with the question of the week:
Question of the Week
“Where are you most engaged in life and why? What keeps you going?”
I’ll read every response and reply!
sincerely,
Daniel