June 17, 2026
Friendship Carry Weight and the Path to More Close Friends
Friends are not equal in terms of how easy they are to stay friends with and manage.
By Erik Newton
Sociologist Robin Dunbar argued that we can only maintain about five close friendships. I think the number is too low in some cases because not all friendships have the same carry weight.
Carry Weight
Some friends are easy and light. Some are weightless. Some are, well, a burden. The light ones have little friction, you enjoy seeing them, they call sometimes, you call sometimes, they host, you host, they bring something, you bring something. Months can go by and everything still works. You don't spend much time thinking about and talking about "the relationship". You just enjoy life together.
Other friendships feel heavier. You wonder if they're upset. You have to discuss and work on the relationship. They require a lot of empathy and consoling. You end up talking about them with other friends to reconcile stressors that build up. You pre-play scenarios before you see them to avoid problems and walk on eggshells and choose your words carefully to keep the peace. You replay conversations in your head to figure out if you navigated a situation correctlty. Sometimes these heavier friends occupy your mind more when they are absent than when they are present.
You just have to carry more emotional weight than you do with easier friends.
Over the years I have noticed something surprising. The people I enjoy the most are rarely the people I spend the most time talking about. I don't have to ruminate or "work on" those friendships. I don't have to manage them. I don't have to explain them and why I am friends to others. I don't have to repair us. Those friendships seems to mostly take care of themselves.
Maybe that is because both people carry each other. Both people contribute. Both people maintain and repair. Both people make invitations. It is reciprocal and balanced. A feeling like the friendship rests mostly on one person's shoulders. Maybe friendship capacity is not really about how many friends we can have, but how much relational weight we can carry.
How to Find Low Carry Weight Friends
Look for people who contribute and fit you in multiple areas: time available, communication style and responsiveness, people who initiate and don't exaggerate problems but help shrink problems and move back to having fun. They don't generate unnecessary drama. Look for people who have a healthy number of friends; that is a sign that other people stick with them because they are easy to stay friends with.
One difficult friendship can occupy the same amount of emotional space as three easy ones. And maybe that is why some retired people can maintain ten or fifteen close friendships in defiance of Dunbar's prediction of five close and ten peripheral friends.
Perhaps Dunbar's number was never really about how many friends we can maintain. It was about how many average friends of average weight we can manage--how much total carry weight.
Healthy reciprocal friendships are so light that we can have more of them than Dunbar predicted.
Maybe the secret to having more friends isn't finding more people or time. It's finding more people light enough that the relationships fit better and carry themselves.
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