[ENFP] ENFPs how long do you keep your friend circle?

[Malkavia]

How often does your friend circle change? Acquaintances and friends may change all the time but how often do your FRIENDS change. The ones who are close to you. How long does your best friend stay with you?

Why do they change? Do you get bored? Does it happen naturally?

Do you grow apart naturally? or is it from conflict?

EDIT: I will talk about myself later but I want to get other people's experience first. I dont with this to just focus on my situation.

Oh and new question: If you find someone who you connect with and you two become extremely close. Do they move up on a "list"? (Which means everyone else moves down?) Be honest no judging here I promise

 

[Lady_X]

the people i consider my closest friends have been for years and i expect they always will be. i have never had a falling out with a friend but have lost touch with some for a long time but i still consider them close friends and feel either of us could call the other anytime about anything and that bond will always be there.

tho...i have and do make new friends.

 

[garbage]

My close friendships are pretty inconsistent. We'll go for months without talking, then start talking again. And they and I are (mostly) cool with that.

But, in the end, we're (mostly) always there for each other.


Acquaintances? I cycle through them like .. chewing gum.

Or a better analogy. Something that doesn't stick around for long.

 

[Laurie]

I keep my friends for-freaking-ever. If I stop talking to people because circumstances change then I probably still consider them my friends. It makes me sad to think of anyone I was close friends with that I'm not good friends with anymore, even if I'm still friends with them.

The list would be people I talk to more, maybe? Yeah I could say I have a list. The people who I'm close to don't even "get" the idea of it because I pay attention to them. But other people are used to not getting as much attention. Did that answer the question?

 

[kyuuei]

I'm going with Eyebrows on this one.

 

[Malkavia]

Enough people have shared so I will.

I am at the end of my third year in college, I only have one more. This was the first year I became part of an extremely close friend circle. Before this I would move around tons. I had a new group of friends every couple of months. However with this circle I stayed with them all year and it looked like a permanent home to me.

I also met my best friend (and now roommate) through this circle.

I have noticed lately I have become increasingly annoyed with them. Ive been spending less time with them, been more irritable towards them and I want more "breaks" away from them. I am afraid this is my P coming out and me constantly wanting to change. I enjoy their company and am afraid that I am somehow unconsciously moving myself away from them.

 

[Nomorenames]

I'll answer as someone from the outside!

How often does your friend circle change? Acquaintances and friends may change all the time but how often do your FRIENDS change. The ones who are close to you.

They seem to change every time a major transition is made. From one level of education to the next (elementary to middle to high school to university) and along with that from job to job and even from relationship to relationship (new circle of acquaintances/ possible new friends)

How long does your best friend stay with you?

Three years apparently uch:

Why do they change?Do you get bored?

That's one possibility. I've observed ENFPs drop whatever is boring them and go find something that will hold their attention. This includes people. I haven't seen it done with malice (at least I don't think so...)

Does it happen naturally?

I'm curious- what would be an unnatural way for these things to happen?

Do you grow apart naturally? or is it from conflict?

Conflict is a natural part of life. People grow, sometimes apart from one another, sometimes with one another and even against one another (rivalry overtaking friendship, differing values, etc.)

Oh and new question: If you find someone who you connect with and you two become extremely close. Do they move up on a "list"? (Which means everyone else moves down?) Be honest no judging here I promise

From experience they definitely do. No reason to begrudge someone for valuing someone that fulfills their needs better over someone that only partially fulfills them, or only a few of them.

 

[CzeCze]

For me it's important to keep nurturing and developing meaningful friendships. My closest friends I have known for years or at longest, since highschool. I realize it's important not to 'turtle' as I get older and get hermitlike. As it's easy for an ENXP to give the appearance of knowing many people but not really "knowing" them or being "known" or really being "friends".

I would say if you look at it like concentric circles my small core remains the same but the strong middle circle remains active as I grow relationships and meet people and as those individual relationships get stronger they migrate to the inner circle. My peripheral circle is always abuzz with interactions but many fall away and are constantly changing. It's almost like an electrical field that repels friendships as it can be really hard to navigate acquaintanceships and new faces and break that barrier of passing anonymity to set the beginnings for an actual friendship with initial meetings and steps.

 

[Amargith]

Let's see...one circle of friends i left behind me after high school, one right before i left for Russia for a year. Then the other after I left college, and the one that got formed from some people out of college to play a game I still hang out with.

Usually I naturally move on after a new stage in life begins, I guess. Makes me wonder when/if I'll leave typology behind me. That group I hang out with now is starting to do the marriage and kids thing as well as the moving to the suburbs thing so I'm expecting that to fall apart in a couple of years as well...

 

[sculpting]

I tend to have just a few very close friends, then lots of people I care about. But as with Mr eyebrows, as I transition from one place to another I tend to start from scratch. The others are still there, I still care for them very much, I just forget to stay in touch.

 

[Laurie]

Yeah I very much forget to stay in touch.

 

[garbage]

Yeah I very much forget to stay in touch.

this too

it irks some of my friends, but, you know, that's the way I am.. and it doesn't irk everybody, so that makes it automatically okay!

I used to feel guilty about it, but, well, ain't no point to that



Also: all of my current friends (family excluded) are people I've met within the past 5 years, and most of those are people I've met within the past year and a half or so.

 

[BlueScreen]

Closest friends forever. When friendship gets to a certain point it seems to come above the things that could destroy it. You've known them long enough and been through enough that the volatility is gone. New friends can come and go before they reach this stage. I don't have many falling outs, with most we just drift apart. The long term friends go away but you just pick up where you left off when they come back.

So to make sense of that, I have a close circle of friends who will probably always be there and I have new friends who may or may not be around a long time. Like many other ENFPs I forget to stay in touch.

 

[phoenix13]

How often does your friend circle change? Acquaintances and friends may change all the time but how often do your FRIENDS change. The ones who are close to you. How long does your best friend stay with you?

Why do they change? Do you get bored? Does it happen naturally?

Do you grow apart naturally? or is it from conflict?

EDIT: I will talk about myself later but I want to get other people's experience first. I dont with this to just focus on my situation.

Oh and new question: If you find someone who you connect with and you two become extremely close. Do they move up on a "list"? (Which means everyone else moves down?) Be honest no judging here I promise

I hang out with the same 2 people I've hung out with since elementary school. Everyone else bores me fairly quickly. (and scares me a little...)

Now about my friends: one is ISTJ, the other INFP. I grew apart from the INFP sometime during high school because I saw her as weak in areas that she shouldn't have been. She currently lives 3000 miles away. While the ISTJ and I had been friends since elementary school, we only really got close my senior year of college, and she's really my prima bff.

 

[HotpinkHeatwave]

It's not so much how long I keep my friend CIRCLE, it's how long I keep my FRIENDS. If I really, really enjoy someone, and I care about them deeply, I may never want to get rid of them. However, if a friend betrays me and/or hurts me DEEPLY, I will get rid of them. How hard it is to do depends on how close they were. I've stopped talking to a friend of 9 years completely because she did something unthinkable to me. Yep. Also, things just happen. Sometimes you make 'friends' that are really just fun acquaintances, and they fade away after a while. Aand I'm really tired right now and I'd write a mini-conclusion, but mehh.