Chapter 7 - Circles

What you do is relational.

Your phone rings, and it’s a sibling letting you know that your parent is in the hospital. Unless your relationship with your family is strained, it’s likely that you know exactly what to do. Instinct kicks in and tells you to get involved and help out.

When my mother reports to me on my father’s deteriorating health, or my brother attends a funeral for a friend gone far too soon, I know I need to keep myself in close contact in case there’s any way I can support them. We only get one immediate family as long as we’re able. Their problems are my problems.

It’s stepping out of this “inner circle” where responsibilities and expectations shift, and things aren’t so black and white.

“We create our buildings and then they create us. Likewise, we construct our circle of friends and our communities and then they construct us.” Frank Lloyd Wright

Every suggestion I include in this Substack is conditional based on how close you are to the person you want to help. I don’t know the history of the relationship, so my advice is likewise broad. I don’t want to reignite old arguments or violate restraining orders by telling people to reconnect with someone they care about who might not want that contact. So here’s a guide to help you figure out how close you are to a horrible thing and what you can do about it.

Anthropologist Robin Dunbar proposed that the cognitive limit of each person’s friend pool is around 150 people. She described these as friends “you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in a bar.” Many people cannot claim to know half that number, and I’m sure a lot of you would boast a collection far greater. That’s certainly a paltry amount of Facebook friends by popular standards.

However many you can manage, they’re colloquially sorted into three circles: inner, middle, and outer. This can affect myriad things in our lives, like who we go see new movies with, who we chat with at school drop-off, who we send annual holiday cards, and who we turn to when something awful happens.

Figuring out who is in which circle is not an exact science, and to add another wrinkle, you might not put someone in the same circle that they’d put you in. So these represent a rough outline of reality, something to help you make smart, empathetic decisions.

Inner Circle

This is your “crew.” Your ride or die, best buds. This could be anywhere between two and 20 people depending on what a social butterfly you are, and how comfortable you are with intimacy. They’re most likely family members (those you’re born with and those you choose), and long-time friends (from school or your old neighborhood). This group could also include professionals dealing with your immediate circumstances (doctors, caregivers, or teachers). They communicate with you frequently, and stay in your thoughts on a regular basis. The friends that would show up when called; they are at the hospital or packing the suitcases or filling up sandbags. They will drop things in their lives to help you out.

You’ve probably already thought of a few inner-circle-candidates immediately, but finishing a concrete list is tougher than you’d expect. You may wish to be that close to someone, but find out they’re not as reliable as you’d hoped when times get tough. This list is constantly evolving. One day you’re telling your life story to an unconditional friend, and the next you’re promoting someone in your middle circle because that first friend moved to another country. Or maybe you learn something new about a person in your outer circle that throws your relationship into a whole new light, and now you talk to them all the time.

Friends in your inner circle share a specific “language” with you, a short hand communication, based on shared memories. Any comments I’ve made about minding your manners when you record a video or send a text don’t apply here. You’re free to be honest in a way that would feel strange in your middle or outer circle. Your updates can be short, and when you ask for help, you don’t need to give them a warning ahead of time or provide a lot of backstory.

It pays to know who’s in your inner circle, but it works both ways. Being a part of their inner circle means you answer when they call. Fair weather friends are for the other circles.

Middle Circle

These can be people you see frequently, but only because you’re both socially engaged. This includes school parents, classmates, colleagues, co-workers, churchgoers, teammates, and others you see simply because it’s that time of the week. While you might not know much about these friends, some of your interests are so aligned that they may be willing to help if your problems are interconnected.

Lots of moms and dads at my son’s school have shown up in a big way, even if we’ve never socialized outside of school activities. Our kids are about the same age, so they get what we’re going through, and they’d want me to do the same for them. While they’re more acquaintances than close friends, I owe them a debt I can likely never repay. If “it takes a village,” these people are your village. These are the folks organizing a meal-train, sharing updates with the social network, or dropping off missed assignments at school.

Middle circle friends aren’t second-class friends. It’s not that these people are any less important to you than those in your inner circle, emotionally. But no one can let everyone in as their closest friend. We simply don’t have the emotional bandwidth to be socially intimate with every person in our lives.

Outer Circle

I’d argue this group makes up more than half of your pool of friends and family members. You may not be in a position to give your time or money should you hear that they’ve fallen on hard times, but you still want to get in touch, even if it’s a brief comment or emoji hug on social media. If you’re in the outer circle, don’t try to send something to your friend’s house or hospital room. Look for specific calls-to-action (such as a GoFundMe) to know when you can do something more than sending good energy and encouragement.

While you wouldn’t anticipate regular correspondence or face-to-face time from people in this circle, that only makes it more special when it arrives. If you see an old neighbor, or elementary school teacher, or your kid’s baseball coach post some bad news, you may surprise and uplift them by saying hello and offering to help. They may only be in touch with their inner circle, and might not respond, but seeing how far their message can reach may give them the courage to post again.

How do you know what circle you’re in?

Even if you have all your friends neatly organized within circles one, two, and three, there’s no way to be certain how much your actions and opinions are valued. It’s difficult to assume you’re in a friend’s closer circle, and then find out you’re not. Helping people can be hard, but it can be equally as taxing to sit and watch someone suffer that doesn’t want your help. Think of the circles as both concentric, when it comes to closeness of relationship, and as a Venn diagram, where it concerns who can best help when.

Unless someone needs immediate medical attention or a couch to crash on, there’s not much you can do. There is such a thing as “too much help,” and when people hit their limit, it’s common to shut everyone out, regardless of how much they could make a difference. This is why I frequently remind you (and myself) to release expectations when you try and lend a hand. You wouldn’t want others to resent who you choose to be friends with, and it’s up to you to return that courtesy. Like Lori Johnson said in our interview, it’s not her job to “make you feel better” about her situation.

All of these dynamics evolve over time as well. Our parents occupy so much of our lives when we’re young, then we leave the nest and go our separate ways. Our friends become our chosen family. We start families of our own. And down the road we may renew our relationship with our parents over babysitting needs, or they may need our help to retire, or seek assisted living.

When the rug gets pulled out from under us, we find out pretty quickly which friends are in which circles. It can be informative to make a physical list of your three (or more) circles, especially if you do it off the top of your head (this is not the place to let your social media history decide it for you). This way you don’t have to stress about it when your brain should be focused on more pressing matters, and you get a better understanding of where you’re located in regards to your nearest and dearest.

Let’s talk it out.

How many circles of friends do you think each person has? If you were in an emergency, who is the first person you’d call? Have you ever received help from someone you hadn’t heard from in years? Let me know in the comments.

An audio version of this post is available below (for paid subscribers).