social cost of love is two friends

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they have now quantified what the social cost of love is and it appears to equal the loss of 2 friends. It makes you think is it worth the cost and if love doesn’t work out do you get those 2 friends back? A new study published this week has identified the numbers but not totally identified the reasons this happens.

“Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend — or a meaningful day.” Dalai Lama

The BBC published an article Falling in love costs you friendsby Jonathan Amos where this new study was discussed:

Oxford University researchers asked people about their inner core of friendships and how this number changed when romance entered the equation.
They found the core, which numbers about five people, dropped by two as a new lover came to dominate daily life.
“People who are in romantic relationships – instead of having the typical five [individuals] on average, they only have four in that circle,” explained Robin Dunbar, a professor of evolutionary anthropology at Oxford.
“And bearing in mind that one of those is the new person that’s come into your life, it means you’ve had to give up two others.”
In the latest study, the team questioned 540 participants, aged 18 and over, about their relationships and the strain those relationships came under when a new romantic engagement was started.
The results confirmed the widely held view that love can lead to a smaller support network, with typically one family member and one friend being pushed out to accommodate the new lover.
“The intimacy of a relationship – your emotional engagement with it – correlates very tightly with the frequency of your interactions with those individuals,” observed Professor Dunbar.
“If you don’t see people, the emotional engagement starts to drop off, and quickly.
“What I suspect happens is that your attention is so wholly focussed on your romantic partner that you just don’t get to see the other folks you have a lot to do with, and therefore some of those relationships just start to deteriorate and drop down into the layer below.”

“The imaginary friends I had as a kid dropped me because their friends thought I didn’t exist.” Aaron Machado

I really value my friendships and I have a lot of close friends, it supports all the complexity of who I am. I think its hard to find a match where you can be all of who you are so it is really helpful to have a few good friends who reflect all the multi facets for me. An Aussie site also mentions more detail from the study Falling in love costs you friends:

Love’s damaging impact on friendship, however, does not apply when somebody starts an affair while keeping up a long-term relationship.
“Some people in the study had formed a secondary relationship too, and we asked whether that also cuts your friends down but it doesn’t,” Professor Dunbar said.
“When we looked at the data, it turned out that the legal partner no longer belongs to the inner circle.”
Professor Dunbar told the British Science Festival in Birmingham that while he has yet to explain the results fully, he believes they reflect the way in which the all-consuming nature of a new romance leaves less time for other close friends and crowds them out.
“We have quite literally only just discovered that, and it was a bit of a surprise. Probably the reason is that intimacy correlates very tightly with frequency of interaction, and I think what’s happening is that is destabilised.
“If you don’t see someone, your emotional engagement with them drops off with time. What I suspect happens is your attention is so wholly focused on your romantic partner that you just don’t get to see friends you had a lot to do with before.”

“All things being equal, people will do business with a friend; all things being unequal, people will still do business with a friend.” Mark Mccormack

I guess if you found a great partner who was a brilliant match then you might be prepared to give up two friends????? The Star also featured the study & focused on the numbers Falling in love costs you friends:

Those in a relationship tended to average out around four, including their partner. Single people averaged five– an extra family member, plus an extra friend (minus a partner).
“Studies have shown that how many close friends you can have is constrained by various factors – including your time to invest in these relationships,” says Burton. “Single people simply have more time.
“So both groups are at their limit. It’s just that for people in relationships, that limit is lower.”
That number can also be affected by age – but only if you’re single.
The study casts friendship as an economic proposition. The more you put in, the more you get out. Hence the small number in the inner circle.
Previous work by Dunbar has identified a maximum on friendships – 150 is all most people can reasonably maintain. That figure has come to be known in anthropological circles as “Dunbar’s Number.”
Dunbar has also noted that friends occupy three concentric circles in our lives.
At the core are those four to six people we see at least once a week. Burton notes that there is no perfect number for this circle.
“The optimal number depends on what you want out of those relationships,” Burton says. “I believe that people are quite good at optimizing that number.”
So, some may concentrate their friendship resources on two very close friends. Others may choose to hold 10 people tightly, though they must more carefully portion out their attention.
One level outside the core includes acquaintances who we might see at least once a month.
At the outer level are those who we see infrequently but for whom we’d feel a sense of loss were they to die – the so-called “sympathy group.”

Thought I’d leave you with this hysterical video from The Onion ‘Obama Releases 500,000 Men from US Strategic Bachelor Reserve
Obama Releases 500,000 Men From U.S. Strategic Bachelor Reserve

social cost of love is two friends

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