What’s Your Friendship Style?
It’s important to know yourself and what you need in a friendship, as well as what kind of friend you’re capable of being for others. Having a clear view into your own friendship DNA can be a valuable source of knowledge when you’re cultivating new friendships, or when you’re trying to diagnose why a certain friendship doesn’t feel right.
Friendship Style Identifiers
Friendship Attachment Style Quiz
A short 3-minute quiz sourced from the book Attached : The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find - And Keep - Love by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller, can help you identify your attachment style within friendship. Attachment styles are based on your personal needs, desires, and where you're at with your current friendships.
Your friendship style according to Meyers Briggs
Frequently, the Meyers Briggs type indicators are only thought of as useful tools for learning how to work with your colleagues in a professional setting, but these personality types can also impact how you view friendship and how you determine what being a good friend should look and feel like. Journalist Jenna Birch compiled a list of friendship styles based on her obsession with Meyers Briggs type indicators. This would make a great conversation starter within a friend group, and can even be a great discussion prompt at a Meetup about friendship in adulthood.
Tight-knitters, Compartmentalizers, and Samplers
In the very cheekily-named “Friends with Academic Benefits” 2016 study at Midwestern University, researchers identified three friendship styles which they call tight-knitters, compartmentalizers, and samplers. Describing each: “Tight-knitters have one densely woven friendship group in which nearly all their friends are friends with one another. Compartmentalizers’ friends form two to four clusters, where friends know each other within clusters but rarely across them. Samplers make a friend or two from a variety of places, but the friends remain unconnected to each other.”
Discerning, Independent, Selectively Acquisitive, Unconditionally Acquisitive
In a 2013 study, a group of German psychologists studied 2,000 adults and found four friendship styles. In their study they describe them as, “discerning style, which focuses on few close relationships, an independent style, which refrains from close engagements, and two acquisitive styles that both acquire new friends across their whole life course but differ regarding the emotional closeness of their friendships.” This quick overview on Psychology Today briefly describes each. Read them over and see which one sounds like who you are today and who you’d like to be tomorrow.
Compatibility Assessment
Download the free compatibility assessment worksheets (it’s a 3-page PDF). There are no right or wrong answers. Filling it out will help you know yourself better, and help you and your friends understand each other more.
Just for fun…
“I’m a Cactus Friend. I don’t need a lot of attention. Whenever you get around to splashing some water or care my way, I’m grateful for it. Our friendship can withstand long droughts. In some cases, drought is the natural state of our connection. Get in touch, or don’t, I’m cool either way.” (Credit to Angelica for suggesting this concept during our book interviews.)
“I’m a Lil Birdie Friend. You know the one that’s constantly singing in the tree outside your window? I’m always within earshot: chirping out how-are-you texts, and telling you everything about my day! I don’t want you to forget how special you are to me, so I’m singing it to you all the time. Ok, maybe, it’s a bit much. But how can I tone it down when you’re such an awesome friend?
“I’m a Mirror Friend. Whatever you give me, I’ll reflect back to you in equal measure. If you come at me with a lot of energy and excitement, I’ll match it. Same for when you’re super mellow and just wanna kick back. I don’t pull my friends in any particular direction—I’m the real meaning of a follower. Wherever and however my friends are, I just chameleon myself to match them.”
“I’m a New iPhone Friend. I’m shiny and mesmerizing. You feel drawn to spending more and more time with me. Even though I’m rarely the best use of your time, you’re addicted to me. I easily dominate your attention. You don’t know how you ever lived without me. But as soon as a new one comes around, we’ll probably go our separate ways.”