Love and Acceptance! These are the two core pursuits of the human heart. We all want to be accepted for who we are and loved in spite of who we are. So we pack our lives with loads of social networks, in search of people who will love us and accept us. The problem for many people is that even with increased numerical associations, the quality of our relationships is actually shrinking.

Social media has created a unique phenomenon. Never before have we been “known” by so many, while at the same time feeling so empty of actual love and acceptance.

Think of how surface-thin most social media relationships are. People post only the “best-of” pictures–the amazing vacations, the recent promotion, the selfies that make themselves look skinny or gorgeous. And all of it is intended to portray the best version of oneself. Why? So people will love them and accept them.

Yet, as one news article recently described, with all the social media posts that people scroll through, posting about oneself can simply feel like “pouring an Evian into the ocean.” In other words, with all of our positioning and posturing, we still feel lost in a sea of faces, unloved and unaccepted.

What if the secret to better relationships was…fewer friends?

A recent WSJ news article explored this idea as it analyzed the culture of social media. Author David Pierce examined all the pseudo-friendships most of us have on outlets like Facebook and stated simply, “Most of my ‘friends’ aren’t friends…Staying ‘friends’ with people who are no longer my real friends always seemed harmless, but it’s actually ruining my social life.” Interesting, isn’t it? Even with hundreds, or thousands of networked social “friends”, the average person still feels unloved and unaccepted.

Pierce’s solution to better relationships was to do a spring cleaning on your “friends” list. The average Facebook user has 338 “friends,” most of whom are not really friends at all. They don’t know you and you don’t know them. “Skimming your news feed does not a friendship make,” Pierce wrote. Citing a study done on human relationships, Pierce wrote that the “maximum number of people you can maintain a relationship with at any given time is 150 people.”

So, here was Pierce’s suggestion for social media users. Go to your “friends” list and prune it! The nerve! Imagine going through your list of “friends” and clicking “unfriend” on hundreds of people. Pierce admitted, “at first, clicking unfriend felt like a breakup” but as he refined the list down to its most basic, he wrote, “almost immediately I cared about the contents of my social-media again.” Remarkable, isn’t it!? With fewer friends, Pierce discovered the beauty of key relationships that he actually cared about!

For the Christian, we know that the key to love and acceptance is first found in relationship with Jesus Christ. He loves us in spite of our darkest moments and accepts us where we are. No human relationship can rival this type of Love that God has for us. This is key to our identity as a people and will help keep us from pursuing love in the wrong places.

As for human relationships, I think Pierce is onto something here. The search for love and acceptance is discovered not by being widely networked among the masses, but in finding quality relationships with a few.

Here are some actionable steps to consider in pursuing quality relationships:

• Reduce expectations. Most people will simply be acquaintances. Accepting that fact lowers the pressure of expectations of how well people should know you.
• Small group. Look for 1 environment where you can get to know a small group of 10-15 people at the heart level. Not all these people will be close buddies, but it will be a place where you can be real and honest.
• Spring clean your social media friend/follow lists. “Unfriending” people may be the single hardest thing for you to do. You will feel like a “bad friend” for doing so. But, by reducing your ‘friends’ list by hundreds, you may rediscover the joy of key relationships!
• Invest in 1 or 2 key friends. Nobody will have deep, heart-level relationships with a lot of people. If you have just a couple close friends who love you and accept you, you are a wealthy person.

Perhaps this is the secret to better relationships: Fewer friends!

You are loved and accepted,
Craig Trierweiler