Arthur C. Brooks says younger people have many casual friendships while older adults get selective. The formula: a spouse or partner plus at least one close friend. Go below that and happiness drops, no matter how introverted you are.
People, they change when they talk about their friendships. Their selectivity tends to change as they age, but the number always has to be more than zero. Now, a lot of people will actually downselect. So people in their 20s, they tend to have more friends. It's kind of more fresh friendship meat in their lives. They're looking for more experiences. And when you get to be my age, it's a little bit less so. You tend to be more selective about the people that you're going to spend your time with, but it's got to be more than zero. And the happiest people, by the way, even among introverts, they're very close friends with their spouse if they're married or have a permanent romantic partnership, but they have more than one friend beyond that is what it comes down to. In other words, spouse plus 1, that's sort of the magic formula. Spouse plus N, where N equals 1 or greater. Let's put it that way. And the size of N has very much to do with the extroversion-introversion continuum that you experience in your personality. But the bottom line is, even if you get more selective, you don't downselect to zero if you want to be happy.
