A Friendly Nemesis

One thing I can do a thesis on or write a book on is how to manage a lot of friends and friend circles. While it’s great to have a lot of friends and close ones at that, it gets very painful if they are scattered into different groups. The situation gets a lot worse if the different groups do not really gel with each other.
I am a firm believer in keeping the groups separate. Always! keep the groups separate. There are different things that we discuss with different people. No matter how close a friend is, there could be something that you would not feel comfortable sharing with him. Rather you have a different person to share different aspects of your life with.

Let me get to the pros and cons of having many friends
Cons first
Juggling between groups becomes the aspect of your life which takes most of your attention.
Satisfying everyone is never possible but becomes especially harder in this case.
Half the time when you are with a group, the conversation is about how you always ditch them. Even if that’s not the case, there is a bit of cold ice in the relations.
You fail to be the core or integral part of any group. This may not always be true. You will be the core part of a smaller or really close group. But then in the other groups you do miss out on a lot.
Money!.. yes it becomes very expensive since you have to satisfy everyone. Many times you end up having multiple meals and running off to movies or something and miss the fun in each of the things but are present everywhere just to please your friends.
Of course personally you may not be happy as very often you will be with a group but would feel like being with others at the same time.
Generally every group will have one person who will not understand and keep cribbing and crying and cribbing and screwing your happiness whenever you try to leave them.

Pros
Wonder after so many cons, are there really any pros?
There are. First there are so many people to care about you. As they say, you will never walk alone. Come on, I don’t think there is any need to discuss. How can having friends be bad?

This post was aimed to help people who have problems managing friends. But there isn’t any secret or formula to it. Just being open with all your friends should suffice. If people still get cranky, let them be. If they are friends, they will understand and adjust. If not, it’s good that you realized it. I guess just the knowledge that I am doing the right thing and being true is enough for me to face any bricks flung at me.