Growing up, I played with an essentially feral pack of boys. Individuals came and went from the pack and it was no big deal. The pack usually hovered at about 8 individuals, enough to play pickup street hockey or a baseball-ish looking game. Today each of my daughters tends to maintain one intense friendship at a time rather than a loose collection of friendships. Maybe that is great but my observation is the fewer and more intense these friendships are, the sooner they self destruct and the more intense the emotions are when they do.

Is one way better than the other? I can't say from a clinical perspective but having lived one myself it seems clear to me that my lived experience was better and more healthy than the other. I'm guessing when you live the other you feel it was better. Here is where, I believe, lives the disconnect. People who value intense shared one on one connections dismiss loose connections as somehow inferior.

For me personally, my intense close connections are with my immediate family and I don't feel a need or pull to create connections like this with someone outside my family be they man or woman. After that, when I socialize, I do so in the context of shared enjoyed experiences and yes they are typically sports related.

I'm just not interested in some mate's struggles with their boss at work or their struggles with their aging parents or that great book they just read. The friends I have are (presumably) also not interested in those things from me or in sharing their experiences with me. My friends tend to be the cliché "listen with an ear to solve problems" not "listen with an ear to provide empathy" types. I'm sure at some level those who listen to provide empathy see my inclination as shallow. I just see it as different.

I have a larger group of life long friends than my wife. We don't send birthday cards or holiday cards to each other. We don't call once a month to check in on each other but when we do get together we will socialize as if we were still those same feral kids. My wife on the other hand not infrequently agonizes over deciding to actively unfriend someone who is not doing their part to maintain the required intimacy and intensity of the friendship. For her, these people are just too much work to maintain and are social/emotional vampires.

So I guess, my ultimate question is am I a bad friend, is my wife a bad friend or do we just maintain different types of friendships with neither being inherently bad or inferior. For what it is worth, I never feel "lonely" and I am certain that neither does my wife.