Maximize wired relationships, minimize wi-fi relationships
"One must always maintain one's connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it." – Gaston Bachelard
I think about my relationships with people in terms of the degree of connectivity: they’re either wi-fi or wired. Similar to how a wired connection works and can travel long distances, some relationships will stand the test of time and distance and not weaken. On the flip side, some relationships are like wi-fi, they weaken with time and distance to the point where the connection gets lost entirely.
Recently I spent time whittling down my Facebook friends list to only those that I had wired relationships with. We live in an age where it’s easy to consume things that don’t matter to us to no end. I’d much rather strengthen already strong ties.
Last week, I grabbed a drink with a friend that I hadn’t talked to in over two years. Yet it felt as if no time had passed at all! We didn’t have to exchange pleasantries and if you had seen us at the bar you would have thought that we hang out daily. We spoke about work, careers, jobs, memories from when we used to work together more than a decade ago, and deeply personal topics. Wired relationship.
I moved to the United States 20+ years ago and whenever I go back to India, I still meet my childhood friends with whom I grew up, spent a lot of time, and because of whom I became the person I am today. Guess how those relationships are? Yep, wired relationships
Just today a friend, Alice (name changed) told me about her friend Mary (name changed) who recently passed away from cancer. Alice and Mary grew up together and Mary moved to California decades ago, but they always stayed in contact. Alice and Mary didn’t meet for a couple of years as the cancer wore Mary out. Alice and Mary stayed in touch over the years even though time and distance can ruin a relationship, always reliving memories. While they stayed in touch, Alice regrets not going back and having one last memory of their special bond. Wired relationship.
To recap, wired relationships are those that survive time and distance. These are deep, familiar, and persistent. You will recognize that you’re in one if you’ve ever had the experience of seeing someone after having not talked for a long time and pick up exactly where you left off.
Wi-fi relationships are those that don’t survive time and distance. These are weaker ties, they feel less familiar, and you have to do some heavy lifting when you meet.
Our relationships exist on a spectrum - recognized, acquainted, work with, friend, family. These relationships also change with time. Just because someone is a family member they would not automatically become a wired relationship. This is also not to say that every colleague would by default become a wi-fi relationship.
Anthropology has a concept called the Dunbar Number which correlates the size of a primate’s brain to its average social group and states that humans can typically maintain only 150 stable relationships.
Let that sink in. 150 relationships.
I don’t know how far that is true but if you think about all the years you have lived, gone to school, college, worked you sure have met way over 150 people, and while you can maintain 150 relationships you definitely can’t maintain 150 wired relationships. You will have to pick and choose. In my own experience, I think I have a wired relationship with less than 20 friends, family, and co-workers.
Why does all this even matter?
Well, we have limited time on earth and we all want deeper relationships with people. Loneliness is a huge problem in America with 61% of young adults and 51% of mothers with young children feeling “serious loneliness”. Loneliness is also linked to various health risks. Consider for example:
Social isolation increases a person’s risk of death that could rival smoking and obesity!
Social isolation has been associated with a 50% increase in risk of dementia
Poor social relationships were associated with a 29% increased risk of heart disease
Poor social relationships were associated with a 32% increased risk of stroke
Loneliness was associated with higher rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide.
Loneliness among heart failure patients increases risk of death by 4x
This primarily happens because we try to do it all. Make every relationship great. Most end up as Wi-fi relationships. We do this unconsciously. What if, instead, when you meet a person, you think deeper about if you see a strong possibility of building a wired relationship with that person?
Human beings do this with dating. When we meet a prospective match or right swipe on a potential match we believe this could be a wired relationship from the get go. Why don’t we do this with every relationship?
I urge you to sit back and think about all your relationships, both ones from the past as well as ones that are being formed. Think about where this relationship might end up. Will it become a wired relationship or will it fade out like a Wi-fi relationship? Invest in relationships that you truly believe will become wired relationships. In the long run, you will end up being happier, less lonely, and have more brain space to invest in relationships that truly matter.
I have the absolute pleasure of taking Write Of Passage with a bunch of amazing people. Thank you so much to Matt Tillotson, John Absher, Ben Weiss, Adi Verma, Shelby Smith, Lyssa Menard, and Charlie Becker for feedback on early drafts and making this more understandable and relatable. You beautiful people!
