Are your friends really your friends? | Oliver Burkeman

I knew lopsided friendships existed; I've got several, and I'm sure you have, too. But I'm not supposed to be the desperate one

I'm having a bit of an existential crisis. According to new research, if I'm anything like the average person, around half the people I consider my friends don't consider me theirs in return: that's how chronically bad we are at judging the reciprocity of friendship. Of course, I already knew lopsided friendships existed; I've got several, and I'm sure you have, too. But in every case I can think of, it's me who's not especially invested, and the other person who doesn't realise it. I'm not supposed to be the desperate one. Yet if studies such as this are correct, the phenomenon is so widespread that it's highly unlikely I'm an exception. As with the famous finding that almost everyone thinks they're in the top 50% of safe drivers, we can't all be the ones with an accurate sense of who really likes us.

And if we're stumbling through life with such a distorted understanding of our social circles, where does that leave all the other received wisdom about friendship's importance? It has been found that friends keep us physically healthy, alive for longer, less vulnerable to depression and more financially successful - but how much of that, especially when the research is based on self-reports, comes from actually having friends, versus believing that you do?