Should we be surprised that friendship isn’t always mutual? That is one of the findings of a team of researchers at Tel Aviv University who’ve just published a paper in an academic journal. They asked several hundred students to identify which members of their peer group they considered to be ‘friends’. On average, half the people included in this category by each respondent did not feel the same way about them.
According to the researchers, this news would come as a shock to most people. The students in the survey thought that 95 per cent of the people they regarded as ‘friends’ would identify them as ‘friends’ too. But I can’t say I’m surprised. In fact, a 50 per cent reciprocity score strikes me as suspiciously high. The researchers cite another friendship survey in which the score was only 34 per cent. That seems about right to me.
I haven’t always been so cynical. Before I got married, I was a fully signed-up member of the friendship cult. Like many young men, I regarded my close friends as a kind of substitute family, with all the accompanying ties and responsibilities. If one of them was in trouble, you did everything in your power to help them and if you were in trouble you could expect the same of them. As far as I was concerned, we had a lot in common with the Mafia, save for the need to do something unspeakable before you were admitted. Loyalty was the supreme virtue, with any other quality coming a distant second.
It was on my stag weekend 15 years ago that the scales fell from my eyes. There were about ten people I placed in the innermost circle — my own personal Cosa Nostra — and I invited them all to Malaga a week before I got married.
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