What is a good number of friends?

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I have thousands of acquaintances. About a hundred casual friends. True friends? Not sure if I have any. Possibly 3?

Casual friends, around 50. But close friends, only 3 or 4 at the most.

wow! some people have a lot fo casual friends.

Lol casual friends, they're people who I say hi to like once every few months or so, people who I don't maintain close contact with.

Tbh I like talking to casual friends, coz they require less maintenance. I understand that they probably don't care about you deeply, but they're better than nothing.

I don't know if I should be proud or ashamed.

I sense we're not all using the same definitions for "acquaintance," "casual friend," "friend", etc. There's not really a strong, official, established definition for these words because NTs generally don't feel the need to define them. So each of us has devised our own, personal, definitions for the words and instances where people are surprised at the numbers may (or may not - I've been known to be wrong plenty in the past so it's always a present possibility) be due to holding a different definition of what a "casual friend" is.

For me an acquaintance is simply someone who I know who I don't consider an enemy. We may have briefly met once or twice and occasionally chat online but we don't know each other beyond a surface level. It only takes one meeting to make a new acquaintance. A casual friend is someone whose company I enjoy that I've hung out with at least a few times and maintain contact with. We know each other on more than a surface level. A true friend is someone who will stick by me no matter what. Someone who I can tell absolutely anything to.

I grew up without any friends whatsoever. Then I found the counterculture and decided to make a name for myself... but I somehow feel lonelier than ever. Having a thousand acquaintances you start to feel a loss of humanity.

Those sound like my definitions with the exception that there is no one (other than God) I can tell absolutely anything to. Even my husband of 11 years doesn't get to hear everything (although he'd probably swear I bend his ear so much there couldn't be anything left unsaid.)



I grew up without any friends, then had a couple of casual in-school friends for 5th grade, then bussing happened and I had no friends again until I got a computer and a modem when I was in 9th grade (1982) and I developed lots of acquaintances and casual friends online. In my late teens and twenties, I lost my online friends because I was often homeless, without cmoputer, phone line, or both. I joined the counterculture and, with the help of copious amounts of drugs, developed quite the circle of friends (or "friends"? I'm not sure). Later, when I quit doing drugs, I lost all my circle of "friends" (or friends. I don't know which they were.) but was able to get back online and now I have a very active social life online and am slo-o-o-o-o-o-owly learning how to connect with people in meatspace while stone cold sober.

I figure I might get about half of this stuff figured out before I die.

One or two close friends, several easy to hanging out with, and a soulmate.