Friendships of all shapes and sizes

"Friends are like stars. You don't need to see them to know they are there."

I've been thinking a lot lately about friendships. This is partly due to my decision to remain in Edinburgh following graduation and not returning 'home'.

My experience of Edinburgh is that it is quite a transient place, and being a 'mature' student, many of my friends have already moved on to new lives and adventures in other places around the globe. I do have some very lovely friends close by but many of them are considering making changes in their lives at the moment also.

My friend A. gave me this sign for Christmas and I think it represents not only our friendship, but the majority of my friendships. I think a strong friendship can stand the test of distance and frequency of time spent together - quality over quantitiy. Don't get me wrong. I'd love to be able to just pop round for a cuppy rather than a three hour train & bus journey or arranging a convenient skype conversation, but I know that in my hour of need my friends will be there and vice versa.

This also got me to thinking about the types of friendships there are and the value we place upon them. Some people are friends through circumstance, family friends, work collegues, friends of friends, people you meet through common interests... I have 400+ 'friends' on facebook who are a mixture of all of the above. But I recently had a discussion at work regarding strong networks of support and that when you really think about it the answer is about three.

I felt a little unsettled by this idea in the beginning and thought about my own friendships. Due to my current situation of having very little social life and spending all my time in work, currently there is perhaps a higher value on work collegues and my good friends are more in the background which is why I feel particulary comforted by my christmas gift.

I recently read a Guardian article 'Social networking aside, how many close friends do you have?' by Zoe Williams (Nov 2011) who discussed Dunbar's Number which details 'the theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain social relationships. He defined these as relationships in which an individual knows who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person.' He suggests a pyrimid with five at the top who you are closest to; followed by another 10 with whom you exchange with weekly; after this within the top 50 are people who you see on a monthly basis; and so on ...

It's an interesting concept.