[npodbielski]

That is awesome! I wish I had a friend like that in my twenties. Yes that kind of connections wearies you down. It is better to have contribution but people always were lazy and will be lazy.

I was organizing few parties here and there myself. I was organizing movie Thursdays for example. People were complaining but attending. We did watched few good movies like Nebraska. When I stopped organizing them they did not were organizing anything like that themselves. This is just how people are.

[onnimonni]

>This is just how people are.

This is just how most people are.

There are counter examples like I mentioned above but they are rare. These are the people I should have prioritised much more and way earlier. It took me way too long to realise that quality >>> quantity regarding relationships.

I hope you will still arrange movie Thursdays sometime in the future even if nobody else will :)!

Also I'm happy that you have the few good friends for 15+ years. Grass might always be greener on the other side but I would trade those immediately for the thousands of acquittances.

[closewith]

Okay, I think some significant self-reflection is in order here.

> There are counter examples like I mentioned above but they are rare.

Those counter examples you mention also behave this way (and you likely do too), it's just they enjoyed your company and were willing to reciprocate. Those who didn't aren't clueless or anti-social, they just weren't willing to reciprocate with you.

> It took me way too long to realise that quality >>> quantity regarding relationships.

That is true, but be careful in defining quality as equal effort. You will self-select for people for whom friendship is transactional rather than emergent, and those "friendships" (in quotes because many including me would consider those to be acquaintances rather than friends by definition) tend not to endure hardship, where friendship by definition becomes unbalanced in effort.

[onnimonni]

> Okay, I think some significant self-reflection is in order here.

This feels hurtful even though its hard to disagree. Self-reflection is of course useful and I’ve done it for countless of hours and been in therapy for years.

Your boxes for transactional or non-transactional relationships are too simplistic. You maybe feel like you can compare me to someone you know and try to fit this example to your own experiences. All relationships have at least 1 person who is doing some effort to keep it going. Good ones have 2 persons.

Its of course too early to say if my methods will form long-lasting ones or not but it feels like theres a chance and so far so good. Please link me long-term studies which prove this wrong ;)

I wish you all the best and I hope you can self-reflect on your own assumptions too :)