Episode 29: The One Where We Wonder if We Have Enough Friends

How many close friends do you actually have — and is that normal?

In this episode of Unfiltered-ish, the one where we talk about friendship circles, Natali, Carina, and Nicki unpack what adult friendships really look like in midlife — from inner circles to casual connections.

They start by sharing how many people they each consider “close friends,” and quickly realize they define friendship very differently. From having 3 deeply intimate relationships to managing multiple “pods” of friends, the conversation explores what closeness actually means.

They dive into:

•  How many close friends people can realistically maintain 
•  Inner circle vs outer circle friendships 
•  Deep friendships vs social or convenience friendships 
•  Why friendships change in your 30s and 40s 
•  The difference between family relationships and chosen friendships 
•  How time, energy, and life stages impact connection 

They also discuss a popular social theory that suggests most people can only maintain about five truly close relationships at once — and what happens when someone new enters your life.

The conversation gets deeper as they explore:

•  Honesty as the foundation of strong friendships 
•  Outgrowing certain relationships 
•  Why shared interests (like business or lifestyle) strengthen connection 
•  How friendships evolve over time — and why some naturally fade 

If you’ve ever wondered how many close friends you’re “supposed” to have, questioned your inner circle, or felt your friendships shifting in midlife, this episode offers a thoughtful, honest, and relatable perspective.

Unfiltered-ish is a women’s podcast about friendship, midlife, personal growth, and the conversations we don’t always say out loud.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hi, I'm Natalie, and I have an inner circle of three really amazing close relationships.

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Exciting. Um, hi, I'm Nikki. I think I have like three or four little pods, like two or three-person pods of really like close go-to friends.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Hi, I'm Karina, and I would say that based on Natalie's original definition, I would say I probably have about 18. But they're also groups. They're groups, but when we're talking about like intimate, very, very deep relationships, I would say there are really only four people in that. And that would be my exact family unit. But I would say like there are 18 people. Like, if I were in a bind, things were tough that really do know me very well. I think I could call any one of these 18 people. And I would feel very close, very open. And like they know me. I feel like very heartfelt.

SPEAKER_02 1:02

I have three, I would say. I think I would like short circuit if I had 18.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

Yeah, I can't think in those terms. It's too much.

SPEAKER_02 1:10

I I couldn't even name 18 people I would freely call. Even though I have numbers. Like for me to pick up the phone and call somebody, like I feel like I have both of you and I have my sister that I could pick up the phone and call and talk about anything. If I was having a hard time, if I was super excited about something, if I had nothing to say, but just wanted to stay on the phone or just like say nothing of meaning at all, those are the three people that I could just call and pick up, text, whatever. And I don't feel like I have to have a reason or have something in particular to sh to say. And I feel that's great. You two I would actually go to if it was like something I was really struggling with and wanted feedback on. I'm not even sure my sister makes the cut there because she doesn't really I don't know. We're more like fun, talk about anything. We talk about deep emotional things too, but I just think maybe it's because of the business aspect or you know, kind of that kind of thing. I don't feel like I get as much out of her if I'm really struggling with business. Um, so I go to her mostly for personal relationship stuff. But for you guys, I feel like I can do both. So yeah, three. I'd say three very, very close relationships.

SPEAKER_00 2:19

Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah, I think I mean I've got Melody and I've got you guys, and then I would say, like, I have my friend Stephanie and Erin are kind of like in a little pod. And then Erin does overlap into like Erin and Kate and Cam. And I think that I would call that like the close ones. And then you know, we talk about the next layer. Then I would say maybe kind of like my book club friends and like beyond that into more the friends that I've made through masterminds. Um, oh no, I guess maybe Megan would be in the it's tricky. It is, I guess, as you kind of think about the the clusters of friends, which I think is kind of cool actually to have different clusters and it's so funny to me. I don't know if you guys feel the same way, but I it's funny to me that I have close friends in that I know from the like, oh, I met this person 20 years ago when I worked at this company, I met this person 10 years ago and I met this person last year, and it's in my head I I have a hard time remembering that not everyone knows everyone. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

Oh, I feel that way all the time. I make the assumption everybody knows all the people I know.

SPEAKER_02 3:23

I think when you grow up moving every three to four years, that is never an assumption you make. Oh, yeah. Which state did I know this person from? Which country did I meet this person? Like, I don't expect anybody to have the overlap. How do you keep that straight in your head? What do you mean? Well, first of all, I don't have I don't keep in touch with a lot of people, right? So I would say like um from Germany and then we into college, like my best friend Margie. And she is somebody I could pick up and call and talk about anything, and she would be there for me, and she's lovely and amazing. But I just don't like when we're talking it's hard to maintain all those friendships, right?

SPEAKER_00 4:02

Yes, but then I would also add Kate and Caitlin, as even though they work on my team, they're also still close friends. Yeah, I have a mushroom pods. I'm so sorry I didn't. No, no, no, you're good.

SPEAKER_02 4:09

So let's talk about this. So this uh anthropologist, Robin Dunbar, studied social networks across cultures, and he proposed that there are layered friendship circles. So I'm curious if you guys agree with this. But basically, the key finding is that most people maintain only about five deeply intimate friendships at one time. This is like your inner circle, the closest emotional support, about five. For me, this tracks. I have about three, maybe four, although the fourth is in and out.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

I think I I think um because friendships do require time, yeah, this makes a lot of sense to me. It's also very difficult because as I kind of technology has changed it for me because I would have said before Marco Polo, which like I keep pretty great relationships on a lot of levels with all my different friends in their groups. I have the same thing as Nikki. Like I could be like, here are my 13 college girlfriends, here's my group with Nick and Nat, uh, here's my sister group, right? Uh here's my family group. Like Josh and I have our own Marco Polo feed, and then we have one with our college girl girlfriends, my college daughters, hello, my my my children. Um, and that's why I feel like mine's a little bit bigger because I think I actually am able to keep pretty deep relationships with a lot of people. Like, and I feel very strongly if at this moment I needed something from someone, I could call them right now and just say, hey, this is what's going on. Like, not only can you help me or can I help you? Like, it's like if something I figured out something was going on, I would immediately be able to pick up the phone and be like, what can I do? Like, do I need to fly there? Could I mean like I think that's the level of deepness, but maybe I'm mixing up how deep everything should be. Because if I'm being honest, I mean, who would I drop everything for? Just four people, right? Right.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

Six people. Six people. Say it.

SPEAKER_02 6:15

I'm just interesting though, because I would drop everything for my brother, but he doesn't make it into my inner circle. Oh, that's interesting. Because, you know, he's family, and so I love him. I would drop everything for him, but am I going to tell him my emotional struggles? No, because he'd be like, oh girl, what are you wasting your time on that loser? What are you doing here? That girl, like, let's go get a cocktail. Like, nothing's really serious. You know what I mean? It's like, life is short, let's go out, let's live. It's not like the type of emotional support that works for me. Um, plus, if he drinks too much, he's gonna blurt out any of my emotional support to whoever's around, right? Yeah. And so, like, he is somebody I would drop everything for and I love with all my heart. I would not trust him with my deepest, darkest things.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

Well, that brings another interesting issue, which I just put into my deep for my three children. So, of course, I'm more of the support uh system for them and not the other way around, clearly, right? So, if we're really talking about friendship circles, I think Josh makes it in, but maybe my kids do not. Maybe as they get older, but even then, it's still a very different relationship than friends.

SPEAKER_02 7:23

It's a little bit different. It's like love versus intimate emotional support that goes both ways.

SPEAKER_01 7:29

Also, choices, right? Like we choose our friends. I didn't choose my children. I had my children. Right. So I that's an interesting, I don't know, I think that's something we need to think about or talk about.

SPEAKER_02 7:40

Yeah, so there's different layers to these friendships that this, you know, anthropologist put together. So there's the inner circle, which is about five people that you can have. Um, it's the closest emotional support. Then the next is close friends. And close friends, the number somebody can maintain, is about 15. And these are considered strong friendships.

SPEAKER_01 8:03

I think that's actually what's going on. Because when I put my hand up, I really am like, it's Josh, Nikki, and Natalie, Yanny and Sweeney have been elevated, right? Like those, like if I'm like, okay, I can only choose five, I'm like, oh, that actually becomes very clear. It's my two sisters, you guys, and my husband, right? Right? Because those, like those are all choices that I've made. But then that very close, intimate set of relationships, I'd still say there's at least 18 in there.

SPEAKER_02 8:32

So maybe that's the close friends, where it's like the strong friendships. Then the third layer is good friends for about 50, a number of 50 people, and the relationship type there is social group, which is hard because I'm like really hard. I would consider my main social group pickleball people, but I'm never picking up the phone to say, Hey, did you watch this on Netflix? Or like, hey, I'm like, it's basically, can you play pickleball at this time of day? Like that's my I wouldn't consider them good friends, but that's my social group.

SPEAKER_01 9:05

I would say that's interesting. I would say, especially when I had small children, I had that. Because what happens is you are a part of all these mom friends. Mom friends. So it's like you are picking up the phone to be like, hey, can you pick up so and so at this time? I'll pick up there's like a kind of cordality. I don't know how to like you're friends and you do talk about stuff because you guys are in the same case in life, right? That kind of goes away when they become teenagers, though. So I don't know. Maybe maybe they're saying 50 because as you get older, you've just met with so many people at that point.

SPEAKER_00 9:44

I guess so. I actually don't like this, like, because they call it outer layers, but he also still says friends. Like, I don't think of like these are my friends, and they're in the outer layers.

SPEAKER_02 9:54

We might need to like ask for more details on these layers and and how to- I just don't like the term outer layers.

SPEAKER_00 9:59

It seems like you're far away from me. Good, but I would say I think technically then like my book club friends would be in the in that approximately 50 friend friends, but I wouldn't be like, they're my friends in the outer layers. I just don't like that term.

SPEAKER_01 10:15

But I do like the idea of there must be a word between friend and acquaintance, because I do have a lot of people like that in my life.

SPEAKER_02 10:23

Well, so the last layer here is meaningful contacts, and they say the number you can maintain there is about 150, which sounds like enormous. I think the relationship type there is the extended network.

SPEAKER_01 10:35

Okay, I would say yes, especially in religious communities. Because if you consider my congregation or ward is what we call it, has 150 to 250 people in it. I would call all of them meaningful relationships. I see them every Sunday, they're a part of my belief system. That makes a lot of sense to me.

SPEAKER_03 10:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:58

So overall, the key finding, the most people maintain only about five deeply intimate relationships at once, and this appears to be constrained by cognitive capacity and time investment.

SPEAKER_01 11:09

That makes sense. Also, have you guys seen the timeline where it shows that you have the most relationships in your 20s, 30s, and it starts to diminish like a lot in your 40s, 50s, and 60s. By the time you're 60s and 70s, you have very small intimate groups that you even consider. Like it goes down significantly. I plan for mine to be going up as we move into the retirement communities.

SPEAKER_02 11:34

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

And we go to compound. Yes. I don't know what to say about that. I think mine's going to reduce. I see mine reducing. It does the LDS community have a lot of old people, older folks that are in the Yeah, but you're really you stop paying attention to the needs and serving of the ward and more on your own family. So I can see my grouping becomes just my good friends and my family and my grandchildren and so forth. Like you become more family-centric, I think, as you get older, versus like I have to serve this wider community.

SPEAKER_00 12:09

I also think just it takes time and energy to maintain friendships. And I think the older you get, you just have less time. Well, not time, but you just have less energy to because I there even like I can I could lit give you a list of people that I think, oh my god, I love that person. I really need to catch up with that person. How did I let that friendship or not even friendship what's the word I'm looking for? How did I let that getting in touch with them get away from me? You know, I could list at least, you know, God, friends from high school. I have the most amazing friends from high school, and I haven't talked to any of them in so long. And even like friends from not even, but friends from college, awesome friends from college, and I haven't talked to them in so long. It just it gets away from you so easily. I can imagine that as you get older that it's and you have less energy that it would get away from you even easier.

SPEAKER_01 12:59

I also but you have more time. I would think maybe friends of convenience. I think there's a lot of that in your earlier years. Like you just happen to play pickleball with them all the time, right? Or you have children the same age and they're all in the same kindergarten class and the same classroom. I think there's convenience. I also think as you get older, you become more aware of what you like and you dislike, right? And so it becomes easier to kind of pick out what you enjoy and what you don't enjoy in people, and also like if there are things that kind of bother you, you're like, I just don't want to deal with that anymore. I'm done with that, right? Um, so I think there's some of that. I also think, and I was thinking about this about our friendship, um, there's a lot of power in shared interest. And what I mean by that is we all own businesses, and so there's literally something to talk about all the time because we're kind of in the same networks, we hear of the same things, like we were just talking about ads earlier today, and it's like, oh, that affects all of us. Like, there's gonna be now fees, you know? I'm like, oh, that's interesting. Um that's not something I would ever talk about in my other groups, right? And so I do think shared interests help bring people together, makes it easier for them to connect.

SPEAKER_00 14:21

Makes sense. Well, I mean, what are we gonna talk about? I mean, granted, we talk about other stuff as well, but I like you're like, what are we talking about in the old? Let's listen to all the other podcast episodes. What are we talking about? For being a business podcast, and not it's not a business podcast, but for being business podcasts. Three women who first came together because we were in business when we met through a mastermind.

SPEAKER_02 14:42

But hey, we this podcast is accurately categorized as personal journals. Personal journal. That is what it is. Okay, I have an interesting finding about this friendship study, and I'm curious, we don't have to name it names, but like, is it true for you? So because about people maintain about five really intimate, close relationships, that's all we can really handle. When people add a new very close friend, someone else often moves slightly outward in the social layers. So the total number of deep relationships stays relatively stable, but who those people are changes over time. So, like, can you in your mind think of like I'm trying to think of who really who did I drop when I picked you guys? Exactly. The answer is yes, you know, 100%.

SPEAKER_01 15:29

I can like see in my head. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 15:31

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

You're welcome. You guys better keep that if you want to stay in the inner circle.

SPEAKER_00 15:38

I want to know who it is.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

But there's not a lot, like, because think about like some of I mean, you named your sister, and not two of my sisters are in, and then clearly my husband, you know. And so I'm like, it doesn't change that much, right? Because there's some people that no matter what are probably gonna just stay in that inner circle. Right.

SPEAKER_00 15:59

I feel like some I feel like it's not necessarily that I quote unquote drop people. I guess I'm not quoting because you didn't say drop, but but I I guess some sometimes it's not that I drop people because I've picked other people up. Sometimes I'm dropping people first, and then there's not a vacuum, but an opportunity for other people to, you know, as you just they move further away, or you just talk to them last, or your life circumstances change. So I feel like I don't think that I got rid of people for you guys, but I think that there was a place for you guys to slot in. Yeah. I mean, so the reason we're talking about that you deliberately dropped people for Natalie and I. See, this is back against Carina saying, yeah, you're out. These are in this turn on probation, but their performance review is coming up.

SPEAKER_02 16:52

So if we're not exceeding expectations, we might be eyes were better than yours.

SPEAKER_01 17:01

Um, I uh this so this all started because last night when all of a sudden we were gonna go to bed and we were all just scrolling social media, um, I sent a uh a thing about friendship. And I don't know if this guy was right or wrong, but he he basically said that the one thing that was tracking for really good red uh friendships, like deep friendships, was really just a single word, which is honesty. Like you're really honest with each other. And I was just thinking that is absolutely true of my top five. Like there is a certain amount of honesty and love and desire for growth. I think that's an interesting thing, a desire for growth that I cannot say about all my friends.

SPEAKER_00 17:44

And I think that the honesty has to be part of that too, right? Because I think with my with you guys and with Melody and and my other um like close friends, that that it's I think it probably especially with you guys and Melody that you will tell me something without necessarily me having to come to you and be like, hey, what do you think? If it's something that's significant, you guys will will be like, well, Nick, you'll just tell me the truth. And that's because you know that I care about growth and I respect your I respect you know me and you want the best for me, and you respect like the fact that you not give me shit's not the the right to gently give me shit. But the fact that you're like, well, Nick, you say that you want to you want a relationship and you say that that will make for a well-rounded life. Well, guess what? Then you have to put yourself out there and you have to get over this and just do it, you know. And I I think you we I think all of us offer that up because we want the best for each other, and we all also know that when we offer that up, it comes from a place of love and wanting each of us to live the best lives that we can be, and not from a like, I know better than you do, right? But from a like, here's what we're seeing.

SPEAKER_01 19:04

And I think that's the difference between friendships in my 40s versus friendships in my 20s. I do think that you kept some friends that you were kind of like, uh I don't know, she like can't seem to get it together, you know, like they're a little bit toxic or they're a big gossip. You almost keep them around for the fun of it, or there's like some of that. I feel like, especially with people I connect with now, I would say not just like my five, but I would say like my two or three deep circles. I would say uh you keep them around because there is a certain amount of just love and you want the best for them, and you hope that you can be full there for them in whatever capacity you can. So I do think it it feels a little different. I think the honesty thing, oh, and the other thing he said in that reel, which also I don't know if it's true or not, but he said, like the best friendships don't come from a matter of time, like you're friends forever, right? It doesn't come from um uh because you're all so similar, because I I think the three of us are actually not very similar. I think we're very different. Um and it doesn't come from I can't remember what else he said, but I I just thought it was really interesting. Part of the reason I like the relationship with you two is that we're so different.

SPEAKER_00 20:34

We're different, but we accept and even enjoy each other's differences.

SPEAKER_01 20:40

I agree with that. Well, just I was thinking the other night when we went to the Bosnian restaurant and the cultural piece of it, and I forced you guys to watch Demon Hunters. Like everyone's like cool with a little bit of madness. I just ate more Bosnian food, so I feel pretty good about that.

SPEAKER_03 20:57

Rugged. Rugun.

SPEAKER_01 21:00

Yeah. Interesting. Anything else?

SPEAKER_00 21:04

I don't know if they give us an A plus on friendship. Good job, us.

SPEAKER_01 21:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:08

We're winning. We are winning.