Sublime

Since we knew from our earlier studies that asking people to list out their entire network was frustrating and boring, we asked them to provide just the number of friends and family they had contacted in the last month.

That way the processes of maintaining the relationship over time are made easier. This probably helps to impose some stability on the size and structure of our social networks as well as our communities,

They just happen to be accessible (and presumably willing to give us some of their time), or they are people whose value to us in other contexts besides the purely social makes it worth our while investing in them.

Network size increased up to the age of about thirty, stabilised, and then began to decline again from the age of about sixty.

In both cases, there is a tendency for the partner’s half of the network to disappear quite quickly, especially the more casual friendships, thereby exacerbating the effects of loneliness and social isolation.

Given that someone’s willingness to support you is directly related to the time you spend socialising with them (and hence their perceived emotional closeness to you),

probably where you draw most of your everyday social companions from

Instead of being a single large community in which favours are exchanged and mutual support given to all, the village becomes subdivided into small factions who don’t trust each other, don’t talk to each other, won’t go to the same parties, and certainly won’t go out of their way to help each other.

When you first meet someone new you invest a lot of time in them (in effect, catapult them into one of the innermost circles) so that you can evaluate where they lie on the Seven Pillars.