Hey friend,
Lately, group friendship dynamics have been on my mind
After my mum passed, I started spending a lot of time with my late godmother, Aunty Molara. We could talk for hours and the first time it happened, Mr Williams, my mum’s driver, looked at me and said, “That is exactly how mummy was with her.”
I was like, hmmm. Do our parents influence our own friendship styles?
Because thinking back, I knew my mum had this superpower with people. She was just great with friends, in group settings and in individual ones.
The groups never took away from the individual friendships. And the individual friendships did not steal from the group.
She taught me something powerful without ever sitting me down for a lesson.
Group friendships and one-on-one friendships are like sisters. They exist side by side. But they are two different rooms.
Inside the group, there is laughter, inside jokes and that warm, easy feeling of belonging. But when you step out of that room and hang out with just one person, something changes. Conversations go to new places and you discover sides of your friends that the group setting does not necessarily create space for. Not because anyone is hiding but because intimacy has its own terms.
What I am also learning is that not every friendship inside the group will grow at the same pace. Some deepen quickly. Others take years. Some may stay at a similar wavelength for a long time, and that is okay too.
The mistake I used to make was treating the group as one unit. As if being close to the circle meant I was close to each person in it. It did not quite work that way.
The group is one thing. The individual is another. Both deserve attention, just different kinds.
Question:
Is there someone in your group you could be more intentional with?