Round up of the research on what makes friendship work and what you need to do to improve your friendships and make more friends.

Strong start:

And the problem is growing. In 1985 most people said they had 3 close friends. In 2004 the most common number was zero.

Via Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect:

In a survey given in 1985, people were asked to list their friends in response to the question “Over the last six months, who are the people with whom you discussed matters important to you?” The most common number of friends listed was three; 59 percent of respondents listed three or more friends fitting this description. The same survey was given again in 2004. This time the most common number of friends was zero. And only 37 percent of respondents listed three or more friends. Back in 1985, only 10 percent indicated that they had zero confidants. In 2004, this number skyrocketed to 25 percent. One out of every four of us is walking around with no one to share our lives with. 

This is sad, and for more reasons than you might expect. We need friends to keep us healthy. Lack of social support predicts all causes of death.

Having few friends is more dangerous than obesity and is the equivalent health risk of smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

Read more: http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2013/11/how-to-make-friends-easily/

On average, we lose half of our close network members every seven years.

What to do about it? Most importantly, make the time.

What are the most common friendship fights about? Time commitments.

The part of friendship that makes us happiest is doing things together.

Read more: http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2013/11/how-to-make-friends-easily/

Sometimes close friends are a real pain in the ass and so what if we sometimes go through periods without them--or move on and are in the process of changing them out for better ones.  

Maybe periods without close friends are even better for us than having them around, and better for them in regards to what we need to do and become.  How many close friends is enough for us, how many is too many?  Who knows... I can think of few things in life we shouldn't explore and try to get right-sized on our own first, before we research other's opinions on what to do and what's ideal, for the following two reasons:

1. The wisdom of the crowd and sample populations where n=10+ observations is often right... on aggregate--but not always right for individuals who can easily deviate from false norms defined by sampling opinions and the damn lies that are statistics when applied to explain or predict individual occurrences; and,

2. If we meet the Buddha on the road, then kill him--no master, no mentor, no guru will live our lives and die our deaths for us.  It's on us: best to get up with that program in mind and start pulling our own weight each day, every day, instead of expecting others to do it for us and picking people out to be the prophylactic to our daily well-being.

Haha, I mean what would Goldilocks do...?

Find a house and eat some porridge?