Single-serving friends – Ricky Yean

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Ricky Yean

Uncategorized

November 1, 2019May 19, 2026

7 Minutes

Whenever people talk about the loneliness epidemic, I can’t help but nod my head in agreement. For people who know me, that may seem odd because I’m constantly surrounded by friends and loved ones. But loneliness is felt in the soul rather than in physical space. I guess that’s why there’s the idea of soulmates. In fact, sometimes I feel even more lonely when I have friends but no one I feel like I can really talk to.

I’ve been exploring ways to build safe spaces online where we can be vulnerable when a friend shared this:

I’ve been looking for someone else to be vulnerable to because it’s not been helping my relationship with my girlfriend. The problem is that people form an impression of you with every interaction . If you have a lot of these vulnerable, messy, incoherent interactions, then they will look at you in a way you may not want. Even my girlfriend who has seen me as a sharp communicator gets too much of the rambling thoughts when I have to work out something big, and I can feel her perspective of me shift .

What a powerful observation. Most of the time it feels like all I have is “vulnerable, messy, incoherent” thoughts, and I want to work them out without repercussions.

Most people would assume that this is the job of our strongest relationships — our close friends and loved ones. After all, we always talk about “unconditional love.” However, the sad reality is that love is more conditional than we’d like to believe. Even when we truly love someone, we can’t help but adjust our picture of that person if we are on the receiving end of too much vulnerability. We all know how capable our brains are at betraying us.

I used to think that the longer you’ve known someone and the more time you spend together, the stronger the relationship is. But I find myself opening up more to new friends than I am able to with some of my best friends. I think the reason is that as relationships age, we start to find the right level of vulnerable we can be with each other because we know more about each other and the stakes are high.

If we think a loved one will be too affected emotionally, we may choose to protect him from hearing what we have to say, even if that’s just us being presumptuous. If we think a best friend will change how she perceives us or just won’t “get it,” we may not reveal what we are really thinking, even if that’s just our insecurities talking. If we’ve known each other since we were kids, but we’ve never shared career-related problems with each other, then it’s risky to introduce that topic now for fear of changing the nature of the relationship. The point is that relationships become brittle over time, and the context more or less becomes fixed.

Your ability to be vulnerable in a relationship increases over time until you discover a natural limit and settle into the level of vulnerable that is accepted to maintain a particular relationship

Vulnerability and relationships

Let’s take a step back and think about how relationships are formed in the first place. Vulnerability is how we build relationships because sharing is cathartic. When we put our true selves out there, we are violating our survival instincts. We could easily be exposed as weak or a fraud or a bad person. But when instead of punishment or ostracism, we receive love and validation, that feels like we just got away with something. That’s when a bond is formed with the person. You’re both on the inside of a thing called a relationship.

We had an easier time making friends when we were younger because young people are vulnerable by default. We were not expected to always know what we were doing, and when we made mistakes, so did our friends. Seeing each other mess up brings us together because we validate each other’s vulnerabilities just by existing.

But as soon as we begin the process of “adulting,” society stops giving us breaks for messing up. We have to put on our grown-up clothes because the stakes are higher, and the same grown-up clothes make us afraid of laying ourselves bare like before. We start to judge others more harshly because it’s only fair that no one else catches a break if we don’t catch one ourselves. Making friends is hard as a grown-up because we can’t let anyone see our messed up selves.

What we need may not even be “friends,” at least not in the conventional sense of the word, but just opportunities to work ourselves out.

“Single-serving friends” and safe spaces

If what we’re looking for is not necessarily “friends,” then what is it? I think our ability to address this basic human need hinges on articulating the answer to this question. My answer is something like — we need opportunities to feel the catharsis when we expose our messy selves and walk away with no repercussions.

The movie Fight Club’s idea of a “single-serving friend” that you meet on the airplane is...