One-on-One vs Groups

How quantities and qualities intersect to make all the difference

Having spent years contemplating one-on-one friendship, I woke up one morning with the strange sense that the increasing incredulity with which my insistence that friendship is really an intimate bond shared by two has been met may just be the result of a generational shift. Friendships between two, marked by often lifelong loyalties, may have been overtaken by the scattered orientation of the many towards the many.

Which is to say, it may just be that I’m getting old, because amongst other things, getting old means being left behind by the flow of social time.

But I want to begin somewhere else, with a set of naive questions: What's in a number? How does the number of friends affect actual encounters? And resonating in the back of such questions is another: Is the small world built by two likely to become historical ephemera? The history of friendship is the history of twosomes. Jonathan and David, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, Mary McCarthy and Hannah Arendt, Robert Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein, Thelma and Louise - all are part of a long, long list of real or imagined famous friendly pairs. Some of these friends have become so inextricable in the imagination that one is barely mentioned without the other (Marx and Engels, most obviously). Especially in psychology, the very word "friendship" refers to a one-on-one, or dyadic, relationship. Not the triad, the tetrad, or pentad, but the dyad constitutes the ideal model of friendship in purely numeric terms.

Twosomes are a thing, groups—not so much

The history of friendship is the history of twosomes. Jonathan and David, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, Mary McCarthy and Hannah Arendt, Robert Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein, Thelma and Louise — all are part of a long, long list of real or imagined famous friendly pairs. Some of these friends have become so inextricable in the imagination that one is barely mentioned without the other (Marx and Engels, most obviously). Especially in psychology, the very word "friendship" refers to a one-on-one, or dyadic, relationship. Not the triad, the tetrad, or pentad, but the dyad constitutes the ideal model of friendship in purely numeric terms..

Slim pickings though when it comes to more than two friends. Sure, there is the eponymous "Friends," which graced the screens 10 seasons long from 1994; there is Enid Blyton's "Famous Five"; there are Harry, Ron, and Hermione, and let's not forget "Sex and the City." When all else fails, there are always "The Three Stooges" or "Tom, Dick, and Harry." But comparatively, there is not much to choose from when it comes to role-model groups of friends.

That's quite astounding considering the fact that people do not only hang out in pairs. We do not only frequently conglomerate in groups, but the power of numbers really makes itself felt when you arrive at a dinner party and find out you are the only guest who bothered to turn up. And let's face it: a birthday bash, a frat party, or a Greek wedding whose sole attendees are a trio of free-food-and-drinks-enthusiasts isn't exactly going to bring the house down.

Why then groups’ PR problems? Perhaps it has to do with the fact that they are not easily identified as distinct entities. There is my friendship with Dorothy, but then there are also my friendships—singularly and together—with Dorothy, Olive, and Lee; with Olive, Lee, and Albert; and with Lee, Albert, Mary, and Lawrence. All of whom I may meet with in different combinations, though not all of whom know each other equally well or get on with each other equally well.¹

So we’re faced with a labeling problem. It’s simply easier to identify, describe, and talk about my individual friendships with Dorothy, Lee, Olive, and Albert than it is to navigate the constantly shifting makeup of relationships within various groups.

The labelling problem disappears when a group is defined by its purposes. Examples would be book clubs, gaming communities, and your average terrorist cell. If they happen to gain some notoriety—which is unlikely for book clubs but relatively more likely for terrorist groups—they become identifiable, but that says little about the stability of their membership, which is precarious for different reasons according to group objectives. Mentioning your club won’t conjure names and faces, but only a kind of collective blob.

Another issue that is related to the problem of labelling groups is the uneven quality of relationships within them. If not all the people I hang out with at once are on friendly terms with each other, can we still refer to them as a group of friends that is recognizable to all members, or is it simply a convenient label that I use to avoid the awkwardness of having to clarify my plans with Lawrence, Mary, and Albert by saying, “I'll be meeting with my friends Mary and Albert this afternoon, and Lawrence will also be joining us”?

This just goes to show that the semantic broadening of the word friend—the fact that the word has become ever more inclusive over time (see First Up is The Word)—has the positive side effect of signalling inclusiveness even when there is none, as in: We can all be friends now!

The issue of numbers is far more intricate than one may initially assume. The relationship between quantities and qualities has implications that extend beyond mere arithmetic. To delve deeper into this complex dynamic, let us consider the unique characteristics of the social construct that is the dyad - the formation consisting of two individuals.²

Numbers and feel

Luckily, the German philosopher Georg Simmel (1858-1918)—who never called himself a sociologist but is consistently claimed by sociologists as one of their discipline’s founding fathers, which is only fair enough since he wrote a tome called Sociology—has done a lot of the thinking for us. I'll fold some of that thinking into my own so that together we can unfold it again as a sense-making exercise.

Georg Simmel, amiably

The dyad, first and foremost, is defined by its fragility. With the departure of just one member, it ceases to exist altogether. This simple fact serves to highlight a crucial distinction between dyads and groups; the latter remain intact even if an individual chooses to absent themselves. A trio reduced to a duo remains a dyad, a group of four minus one reduces to three, and a baker’s dozen minus one still numbers twelve.

From this banal fact not so banal things follow. For one, the dyad is marked by an uncompromising immediacy, which extends to obligations and accountability. There is no third or fourth or fifth person to hide behind, and you can’t go along for a free ride and take advantage of the achievements of others if those others are really just one other. You can hide in a multitude, but hardly in a twosome.

That irreducible immediacy also makes viscerally obvious each friend’s uniqueness, a uniqueness that translates into their irreplaceability. Their dreams and desires, their anxieties and preferences, their hates, their talents as well as insufficiencies, their worldviews and plans, interests and relationships, their experiences—what in summary terms is their whole particularity, their individuality—can’t be replaced. If you send your friend to the bench, no umpire will usher in a substitute of equal idiosyncrasies.

None of this means that a person cannot have more than one intimate relationship, of course. It merely indicates that no two relationships are identical. And that goes for polyamorous relationships—which, interestingly, often include one primary couple—as much as for the standard pair issue.

Here is a perhaps more controversial idea: the dyad’s numerical absolutism and uncompromising immediacy are the very conditions for intimacy, because intimacy turns, among other things, on the fairly unselfconscious disclosure of private, and even very private, information about ourselves. The dyadic structure provides the greatest possible privacy outside the solitary individual with their entitlement to secrecy. So, the mere quantitative fact of duality provides the very potential for intimate communication; for communication of that which one “only gives or shows to that particular other and no one else”, as Simmel puts it.

But what happens in the transition from dyad to triad, from twosome to group?

2 + 1 = ?

Picture the following situation.

Two close friends chat one-on-one, in real time, offline. A third friend joins them. All three are similarly close to each other and aware of that fact. This is important. If the third was to be a stranger to both or either one of our friends, the possibilities for intimate disclosure would be curtailed from the outset. So, all things being equal …

Two immediate changes result from this expansion of the dyad to a triad, from adding 1 to 2. The first change concerns the interaction’s chances of survival. Adding one person guarantees that the interaction is no longer dependent on the presence of all three. Any one person can in principle come and go as they please (‘in principle’, because this could obviously get pretty annoying). At minimum, a dyad always remains. The trio dissolves only if each disperses and goes their separate ways.

Secondly, the addition of one results in the multiplication of dyads. The group of three (ABC) contains six possible combinations, each consisting of three pairs (AB, AC, BA, BC, CA, CB). Here’s the formula for the math nerds amongst you:

Solving the Combinations problem

Imagine what now happens to the possibilities for communication. Not only is there an increase of interactional possibilities, because rather than only A and B being able to address each other, the same goes for B-C and C-A. But, unless we are talking Chinese Whispers, there’s more: A is faced by BC, B by AC and C faces AB, and each can be selected as conversation partner by one or both of their friends.

So, the addition of the third person leads to an exponential increase in communicative complexities, and that on at least two levels.

First on the level of turn-taking, or who speaks and who listens, when. Those of you who have ever had the dubious pleasure of watching a political discussion group on Italian TV can take that experience as a case study concerning what happens when there is no turn-taking whatsoever to speak of. It’s an all-in situation. Capito?

But these new complexities require coordination also because the transition from dyad to triad affects the quality of communication. How we talk to each other about whom and what also changes. When Tom and Dick talk about Harry in Harry’s presence, they are likely to do so differently when compared to the times when Harry isn’t around. Their conversation about him could be more or less flattering, right?

Why? Because when the dyad is negated, so is privacy. Writes Dan Miller:

“When a third person enters a dyad’s copresence the dyad’s behavior becomes public. The special character of the dyad is lost. Intimacy is compromised.“

Miller draws a direct connection here between privacy and intimacy. Now I can almost hear you think: “Wtf? Me and my 14 friends talk about all sorts of things when we hang out.”

Although I’m not sure whether to congratulate you on the great number of your intimate friends, advise you to exercise your right to privacy, or admonish you for your unbridled accosting of others with way too much information, the point is really another. It has to do with the fact that whenever three people meet, and irrespective of how much love they might share, something trivial with significant consequences happens: interaction between two is observed by one other.

Unless you are totally immune to observation, do as you please and what you please in the company of others, act as if you were alone when you are not—and I hear there are people older than 6 that do so habitually—the fact of being perceived and observed matters. On that matter, and as part of his discussion of the dyad/triad issue, Simmel has this to say:

“There is no relationship between three, however close, in which each occasionally is not thought of as an intruder by others; every sensitive bond between two is irritated by the fact that it has an audience.”

Witnessed by another, the unique relationship between two people is, to various degrees of obviousness, perturbed and to that very degree co-determined by the intruder, even if they are a welcome intruder. Their witnessing affects what can be said about whom (e.g. them) and how, in what tone, accompanied by what kind of facial expression, vocal tics, etc.

And so—crucially—an additional need for reflexivity, for thinking about what we say and how we act, an extra grain of self-consciousness, comes into play. And it’s precisely that kind of self-consciousness that militates against that which makes intimacy intimate and friendship friendship: the freedom to be yourself, the freedom to be yourself unselfconsciously to the greatest degree possible according to the unique character of a given friendship.

The freedom to be yourself in intimate relationships cannot be divorced from the freedom to communicate things about yourself. What distinguishes intimate communication from (merely) personal communication is the degree to which we feel at liberty—or are required—to disclose our private selves, to talk about past and future actions, express opinions and attitudes, in short: present ourselves in a way we wouldn’t typically present ourselves to barely known others.

It seems odd, I know, to use the word require in the context of intimacy. How can someone be required to disclose personal information as part and parcel of an intimate relationship? The key is in distinguishing types of intimate relationship. While there is no requirement to spill the beans no-holds-barred with your friends, even your close friends, withholding information lacks legitimacy in love relationships or between parents and children.

If your friend were to ask, “Where were you last night?”, you might answer, “I’d rather not say.” Depending on your friend’s need to know, their response might range from raised eyebrows, a quizzical look and an invitation to disclose on a need-to-spill basis; but it’s unlikely that your friendship suddenly begins to head for the apocalypse.

Try the same with your spouse, and you’re likely to find out that “I’d rather not say” is not a good answer, because in the cultural repertoire of western love, at least until the emergence of polyamory/consensual non-monogamy into the woke mainstream, exclusivity was—and mostly still is—the norm, take it or leave it.

And by the by: this is also a reminder that intimacy isn’t simply an idyllic pastoral qua background to mutual admiration, tolerance and respect, but, though not itself obligatory, attains a good measure of stability from obligations.

Intimacy and discretion

What divides intimate from personal communication is a distinguishing sense, a sensibility, a parsing prejudice that is exercised as if there were a set of rules when there really is none. Something like a constant balancing of the scales, scales that tip on the fulcrum of mutual knowledge in favour of intimacy here and discretion there.

What happened when the third friend, the loved unwitting intruder, the witness to our relaxed, unselfconscious interaction entered the scene, was a slight, almost automatic tipping of the scale towards discretion. The gloss of carefreeness was dulled by a barely noted carefulness carried into the interaction on the back of an added presence.

When Simmel ponders discretion, he assigns to it central place in what he calls the “most superficial relationship”—acquaintanceship. He gets to that insight by way of another, which he writes is of such “banal self-evidence” that its nuances are easily missed: namely, “that all relationships between human beings rest on the knowledge which each has of the other.”

As the term itself indicates, we cannot assume any kind of deep knowledge of our acquaintances, but simply expect that we are—well— merely acquainted with each other. That we know something about the other, possibly even have some personal information about them. But to be acquainted is not to know, least of all to know anything based on intimate disclosure.

That is not to say that once the third friend has joined the original twosome the scales have sunk to the bottom on the side of discretion; that our group of friends has suddenly devolved to a group of acquaintances. Far from it. It’s merely to note—and I am keenly aware that I am beginning to belabour the point and the metaphor—that the new presence adds weight to the plate on which discretion rests, with the effect that communicative freedom is curtailed. Subtly, imperceptibly perhaps, but still.

Discretion raised to greater prominence curtails communicative freedom because what was essentially a private relationship has become an essentially public relationship.

Here, in the everyday experience of balancing the demands of intimacy and discretion—pursued just so, often unawareness, as if by reflex—may just live the original meaning of the adage, two’s company, three’s a crowd (and four don’t make a party).³

All this may not be much more than a hunch, but I do think it’s a significant hunch. Considering that adding only one person to a dyad suffices to change the qualities of communication—and what are relationships besides communications verbal and non-verbal?—imagine quartets, quintets, sextets, septets, whole gaggles of friends!

Imagine the ever more complex crosscutting of quantities and qualities, keeping in mind that we have only glimpsed a tiny area of the wide expanse of human emotions that make our relationships what they are.

Twosomes provide us with the conditions for intimacy, with the nourishing grounds of privacy. Groups of friends have no equivalent quality or function.

I could now go on and bemoan the coming end of one-on-one friendship amid the rise and rise of groups and teams, of more and evermore more-somes, or the power of numbers to annihilate the small worlds of intimacy. How all this is predicated on the disintegration of all that is solid in love and work, the drowning of strong bonds in the liquidity of social relations, driven by the precariousness imposed on generations that have never known the virtues and shackles of anchored lives.

But no. Because intimacy is no stranger to the group. Every group, as we know, offers combinations of pairs, so that the structural possibilities for intimacy remain, even here in the flow of social time.

1. Don’t worry, I have chosen these names judiciously. To the best of my knowledge none of my actual friends call themselves Dorothy, Mary, Lee, Lawrence or Albert, and I only know one Olive. But she’s a newborn, and we are unlikely to become friends.

2. For me, the group starts at 3, not 2, persons. I could have regaled you with a justification—I have it on hand, but this ‘ere piece is already long enough. If you’d like me to indulge feel free. I shall cave in to (unlikely) poplur demand.

3. The proverb Two's company, three's a crowd‘ is said to originate in the Spanish Compañía de tres no vale res. Stevens translates it as follows: “A company consisting of three is worth nothing“—and notes: “It is the Spanish opinion who say that to keep a secret three are too many, and to be merry they are too few.“