The Vexing Problem of the ‘Medium Friend’ - The New York Times

They’re not our besties, but they’re more than just acquaintances. How much of ourselves do we owe them? Credit... Photo illustration by Lauren Peters-Collaer Supported by By Lisa Miller Most of us maintain an informal mental inventory of our friendships, sorting those closest to us, our intimates, from our acquaintances. My friend R. once went a step further. He ranked his friends on a document on his computer. (R. asked that I use his first initial here out of a sense of propriety, knowing it’s taboo to acknowledge even the existence of such a list, let alone to disclose to friends their positions on it.) As a younger man, R. found himself dissatisfied with his social life, which kept him busy yet unfulfilled, and he built his friend hierarchy to diagnose why. He found that he had a small group of first-tier friends, with whom he was happy to spend time under any circumstances. And he had a huge number of acquaintances. But the friends who caused him the most strife — as well as the

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