Cultivate some ‘2am friends’, it’s better than having an army of followers
Having a handful of close friends you can call even past midnight is more meaningful than having lots of acquaintances.
Jeffery Tan
In a world where social media often masquerades as connection between persons, it may be timely to rethink our approach to relationships and human connections. Meaningful friendships can enrich our lives and help us grow into our best selves.
One valuable lesson I learnt during the Covid-19 pandemic was the necessity of having a community of people, who will journey with us through life and its many challenges: What is often called “doing life together”.
But it is not easy to build and nourish such close friendships. You will need to invest a lot of effort into nurturing them. Here’s how you can go about it.
Make the time
The element of time plays a fundamental role in the development of friendships.
A friend who has a passion for gardening shared how relatively easy it is to germinate seedlings but far harder to progress to the stage of having fully grown plants, that produce quality vegetables and fruits. He learnt first-hand the importance of investing time in his plants for the results he craved. Deep friendships also require the key ingredient of time.
Many of us live busy lives with schedules that are probably more packed than they should be.
But trust, which is a cornerstone of any solid friendship, cannot be built up overnight. It stems from people demonstrating their honesty and reliability over time.
A study conducted by the University of Kansas in 2018 found that it takes about 50 hours of interaction to move from being mere acquaintances to casual friends, about 90 hours to transition from casual friends to friends, and more than 200 hours to become close friends.
Being there for each other
Shared experiences lay the foundation for deep, lasting friendships.
A former colleague told me about the personal disorientation he felt when his wife of many years passed on after an illness. That is when an old classmate started inviting him to weekly dim sum lunches, just to feed and interact with him. The meet-ups were often quiet sessions, as my colleague’s classmate had little to offer on overcoming widowhood. But just by being there, he provided my colleague support and it solidified their friendship.
I have experienced this personally. When I was retrenched more than a decade ago, I took weekly walks with a friend who was home for a season to spend time with his ailing mother. Although this friend has since moved back to Edinburgh, I feel a deep sense of connection with him whenever he returns to Singapore. This was born out of those walks in which we shared our struggles with each other and also spoke of things of a more mundane nature.
We sometimes simulate “being there” through leveraging technology. While Zoom and Facetime calls can go some way in enabling personal interaction, the default connection these days is via apps like WhatsApp and Telegram.
I wonder if this is just a checking of the “friendship box” – acting as if one has “reached out” to others but have not actually connected with them.
I would submit that texting modes lack the essential emotional connection that allows individuals to share their thoughts, feelings, and personal stories with each other. The digital messaging format is a poor substitute for actual human interaction.
The obvious conundrum of “being there” is how to do all this with the limited time that we have. Perhaps the answer lies in prioritising what is critical and important, using the same approach in seeking to have work-life balance.
Being authentic
Cultivating good friends and relationships is an art that requires patience and a genuine interest in others, but their importance cannot be overstated. According to a study by the Mayo Clinic, healthy relationships not only contribute to one’s happiness but also to our longevity.
But one must be authentic when interacting with others, as genuine people attract like-minded individuals. This means being genuine about who one is, expressing one’s feelings openly, and demonstrating candour and honesty with one’s friends.
A study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology revealed that when people perceived others as authentic, they were more likely to trust them. This observation is validated by a separate study published in the Journal Of Social And Personal Relationships that found authenticity was a significant predictor of friendship quality among college students. The students who rated high on authenticity reported having better quality friendships.
But you need to be disciplined about sharing your life gradually – not sharing everything about yourself immediately – practising a paced and progressive revelation of your thoughts, feelings, and experiences with discernment, respect and reciprocity, even as trust is built over time.
There is no magic formula, and one must learn to trust one’s instincts. Often, if something doesn’t feel right in a relationship or friendship, listen to these personal instincts. In some sense, navigating the investment of time, effort and authenticity in relationships is like financial investing: In this case, it’s about investing our life, emotions, feelings in a relationship and friendship.
Sometimes, it may require us to “cut our losses” and move on with regard to certain relationships – a form of “capital recycling” of our time and life – if the relationships and friendships lack reciprocity, or worse, become negative or toxic. A sad but hard truth. I have been there.
Those 2 am friends
It was recently suggested to me that I should consider joining or forming a group of close confidants comprising men – fathers and/or grandfathers – who could be part of a support community, sharing personal struggles and triumphs.
Part of this programme is the 3-2-1 initiative: Meeting in groups of three for two hours, once a month. Among the objectives of doing so is to listen to one another’s struggles (under a code of confidentiality) in an unvarnished form – warts and all – and being an encouragement to others in the small group. This may seem counter-intuitive in today’s culture of independence, self-sufficiency and an unwillingness to show any “chinks” in one’s armour.
The goal is to cultivate a circle of “2am friends” – a small, special group that will go beyond the usual friendships. These are individuals one can call upon for help and a listening ear at the most inconvenient hours. Hence the moniker “2am friends”.
Interestingly, the American Sociological Review highlights that having confidants and a strong social network improves mental health and helps individuals manage stress, anxiety, and depression.
American television personality Oprah Winfrey has spoken often about her close relationship with Gayle King, who she considers a confidante who has added much to her life. However, not all relationships of this nature turn out well. Mr Mark Zuckerberg and Mr Eduardo Saverin, co-founders of Facebook, were friends and confidants in the early days of their start-up, although their relationship soured in later years.
I have not decided to join or start this “2am friends” effort, but I do know there’s a need to move beyond the surface level of social interactions and cultivate friendships that truly matter.
Should I embark on this journey, I am told that the number of such friends one will cultivate, can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
The challenge is to identify a few like-minded individuals to begin this journey with.
When I find such friends, I am sure the returns will be infinitely more valuable and fulfilling than the thousands of social media followers one can ever have.
- Jeffery Tan is the group general counsel and chief sustainability officer of Jardine Cycle & Carriage, a member of the Jardine Matheson Group. He sits on several boards, including the charity Jardines Mindset, which focuses on mental health.
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