if you don’t have a lot of friends in the top tier, it’s easy to treat level 4 or 5 friends like they are level 9 or 10 friends—because they are your “best” friends, even if they aren’t actually your best friends. It’s truly a bummer not to have someone who feels like Your Person, but trying to fast-track friendship in this way tends to backfire. So before you unload on your friends, it can be worthwhile to take an honest look at the relationship. Does the sharing go both ways? Are you Their Person, too? Or are you vaunting them to a higher level of friendship when it’s not really appropriate
...more
