Five intimate friendships is the optimal amount – I scrape two | Emma Beddington

Research tells us living near our loved ones makes us happier and strengthens our relationships. But is that possible, and how can we be better friends if not?

I had a little spasm of unease recently, listening to Elizabeth Day talking on the radio about her new book Friendaholic and the problems that having too many friends has caused her. It's the same twitch I get reading psychologist Robin Dunbar's famous research on how many relationships we can maintain. Five intimate friendships is the optimal amount - I scrape two - and Dunbar posited that we can maintain a network of 150 people close enough that it wouldn't be awkward to have a drink with them. That's Dunbar's number: 150! I'd have to include everyone who walks their dog on my route, my whole pilates class and half the street to get there, and not knowing most of their names would surely push it over the awkwardness barrier. I mean, I can be awkward with my two intimate friends on bad days.

It's easy to feel inadequate about friendships, and I haven't, historically, been a good friend. I don't mean I steal boyfriends or betray confidences, but I'm chaotic, bad at prioritising and time slips through my fingers like water. I lived for a long time in a transient city - Brussels - where friendships seemed to be easily formed then easily forgotten and it gave me bad habits, I think, which make me seem thoughtless and careless. I suppose I have been thoughtless and careless.

Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist