年轻人的新型社交方式（causal relationship）：可以没对象，但不能没有搭子！

“饭搭子离职了，比我自己离职还难过。”“我可以单身，但不能没有搭子”

近日，“搭子”逐渐成为一种在年轻人中盛行的新的社交方式。搭子的业务领域十分广泛，吃饭有饭搭子，学习有学习搭子，游戏有游戏搭子……“搭子”种类繁多，只有你想不到的，没有“搭子”做不到的。

所谓“搭子”，主要是指因某一兴趣爱好或需求结成的社交关系。这种社交模式的特点是虽然不是朋友关系，却能在细分领域提供精准陪伴，是亲密关系的一种“平替”。搭子们的存在既满足了特定领域的社交需求，但又不需要过度维系，彼此在情感上保持独立。

causal relationship

这种关系类似于英文中的causal relationship：

#What is a casual friendship?

A casual friendship is when meeting someone with a common interest, you feel like you are on the same page and like spending time with them, but it doesn’t go deeper than that, and you don’t talk too much about your personal life with them.

They are generally only formed for a certain purpose, instead of being a multi-layered emotional relationship’s part. 

这种友谊是当遇到有共同兴趣的人时，你觉得你们在同一个频道上，喜欢与他们共度时光。但通常这种友谊不会太过深入，并不会谈论太多个人生活的内容。人们通常为了一个目的而形成友谊，而不是为了多层次情感关系。

#casual friends

A casual friend is a friend you like hanging out with once in a while to check up with what’s new in your and theirs’ life but not too often. It is not like an acquaintance since with most of our acquaintances, we meet only accidentally or by circumstances, while with casual friends, we make an effort to hang out with them once in a while, every couple of months or so.

You can say that casual friendship is a surface-level friendship.

They are characterized by:

Infrequent interactions. Your weak connections are usually casual acquaintances. They’re nice to have around but don’t play as central of a role in your everyday life.

A singular purpose. A weak connection only plays a single role. In your professional life, this role is usually business-related. For example, a corporate client or your coworker in the next cubicle each serves one function.

casual friend是偶尔出去玩的朋友，偶尔联系交流但不能太过频繁。这种关系并不是点头之交，点头之交只不过是偶然遇见。而casual friend还会经常一起出去。但这种友情是一种表层的、浅浅的关系。

他们的特点是：

互动不频繁。两个人之间是一种比较弱的关系，他们友好地会出现在你身边，但通常不会在你生活中扮演重要的角色。

单一的目的。两个人之间的连接关系比较弱。在职业生活中，这个角色通常与业务商业有关，了例如隔壁公司的公司客户或您的同事各自负责一项职能。

那相较之下，什么是亲密的友谊呢？

#What is a close friendship?

A close friendship is the type of friendship that we have with most people we care about.

A close friend is a friend you want to see quite often, and you would not hesitate to call them if you need something. But when it comes to casual friends, you will most likely think that you don’t want to bother them to help you, only if it is something very specific and you know they are good at.

亲密的友谊是大多数人们关心的友谊。密友会经常见面，如果有需要会毫不犹豫地给他们打电话。但是当谈到casual friend时，通常在需要帮助和情感支持的时候，你并不会想到打扰他们。

友谊之间的区别是什么呢？

#Differences between close and casual friends

1. How often do you hang out with them

The biggest difference between all the friendship levels is how often you want to hang out with them. Of course, the circumstances can impact this, but usually, you will hang out more often with a close friend than a casual one.

Excluding work colleagues that you might consider casual friends because, in this case, you hang out with them quite often, but you might not consider them close friends.

1. 出去玩的频率

所有友谊级别之间最大的区别是你想和他们出去玩的频率。当然，环境会对此产生影响，但通常情况下，你会更频繁地与亲密朋友一起出去玩，而不是与casual friend一起出去玩。除了被认为是casual friend的普通工作同事，你们经常出去玩，但你们并非亲密朋友。

2. Talking much more personal

When it comes to close friends, you will feel like they care about your life, and you can open up with them easier than with casual friends and harder than with intimate friends.

So talking about what is really important for you, like your goals or your relationship with other people, and so doesn’t often happen with casual friends.

2. 谈话的私密性

说到亲密的朋友，你会觉得他们很在乎你的生活，和他们敞开心扉比causal friend容易。

所以谈论对你来说真正重要的事情，比如你未来规划、目标、人际关系等，这种情况通常不会发生在causal friend身上。

3. Who do you call when you need help

As I said before, when you need help with moving the furniture, repairing something, or things along this line, you will first call your family and best friends(intimate friends), then you will call your close friends if those are not available. 

Most of the time, casual friends will not come to your mind when you need help unless they are the last resource you have, and even then, you might want to wait until some of your closest friends are available.

3.需要帮助时的求助对象

当你需要帮助搬家、修理东西或类似的事情时，你会先打电话给你的家人和最好的朋友，如果他们不在，你会打电话给你的亲密朋友。

大多数时候，当你需要帮助时，你不会想到causal friend，除非其他人都没有空，他们会是最后选择。即便如此，你可能还是想等到一些最亲密的朋友有空再说。

4. You would invite them to a party you organize

When you organize a party, be it a birthday, Halloween, Christmas party, or another type of party, you would not hesitate to invite your close friends, but we don’t usually invite casual friends to our parties.

So this is a good indication of what type of friends you are, you can see who invites you to their party and who you would invite to your parties.

4. 你会邀请他们参加你组织的派对

当你组织派对时，无论是生日派对、万圣节派对、圣诞派对还是其他类型的派对，你都会毫不犹豫地邀请你的好朋友，但我们通常不会邀请普通朋友causal friend参加我们的派对。

所以这很好地表明了你是什么类型的朋友，你可以看到谁邀请你参加他们的聚会，以及你会邀请谁参加你的聚会。

The Surprising Power of 

Weak Ties

这种causal relationship被认为是一种比较弱的关系weak tie。弱关系理论是社会学中的一个概念，是由马克·格兰诺维特 (Mark Granovetter) 在 1973 年的论文“弱关系的力量”中首次介绍使用的。他指出弱关系在提供新信息和机会方面更有价值。

A growing body of research suggests that there are surprisingly powerful benefits to connecting with casual acquaintances — relationships that sociologists call “weak ties.”

To be sure, our friends and family — our strong ties — support us when we’re feeling down and make us feel appreciated. But weak ties can do these things too: It’s not just in the movies that people get social support from their hairdresser. We feel seen when a server smiles upon seeing us and knows what our “usual” is. In fact, our interactions with weak ties tend to go especially smoothly, since we are often on our best behavior with people we don’t know well. Weak-tie relationships give us short, low-cost, informal interactions, which often provide new information and social variety. As a result, we are often pleasantly surprised by these moments.

越来越多的研究表明，与偶然相识的人建立联系有着惊人的强大好处——社会学家称之为“弱关系”的关系。

可以肯定的是，我们的朋友和家人——我们的牢固纽带——在我们情绪低落时支持我们，让我们感到被欣赏。但弱关系也可以做这些事情。事实上，我们与弱关系的互动往往进行得特别顺利，因为我们经常在与我们不熟悉的人相处时表现得最好。弱关系为我们提供了短期、低成本、非正式的互动，这通常会提供新的信息和社会多样性。因此，我们常常对这些时刻感到惊喜。

Parenting can seem like an endless grind of drop-off, pick up, play date, soccer game, repeat. Your life can feel limited – and, well, it kind of is – but that’s also the advantage. You go to the same places and see the same people on the same schedule, the essential ingredients for casual friendships, Fessler says.

That’s upside number one. The next is that these relationships require no investment or responsibility. There are no plans to make so there are never broken plans. They just happen, and when you run into someone, conversations stay light. “It’s a relief,” says Grief, as what you’re discussing in these circumstances is often a nice distraction from what you’re normally dealing with.

然而，强关系，例如为人父母似乎是无休止的磨合，并且不断反复，你的生活可能会感到受限。费斯勒说，你会在同样的时间去同样的地方，见到同样的人，这是建立casual friendship的基本要素，也是这种友谊的优势所在。

其次是这些关系不需要投资或责任。没有要制定的计划，所以永远不会有失败的计划。它们只是发生了，当你遇到某人时，谈话会保持轻松。“这是一种解脱，”Grief 说，因为在这种情况下，你所讨论的内容通常可以很好地分散你通常处理的事情的注意力。

Atomist

“搭子”关系背后是个体的原子化，个人之间联系的弱化和疏离。汉娜·阿伦特认为，现代社会中的人是“原子化的个体”，他们是孤独的、埋头于物质享受的、完全“私人化”的，且个体之间没有强有力的联系。私有制和精细化分工让共同体转向了个体发展，同时虚拟社交和网络强化了个体自我，让人们对身边附近的实体性失去了关注。个体变成了原子化、纯粹自我的个人，他们不希望占用太多时间来维系关系，他们之间边界感强，默契地在一起做事情，然后默契地消失。

但他们又需要一定的情感维系来缓解原子化带来的孤独感，满足彼此在需要时彼此陪伴的需求，通过搭子关系获得现实世界的融入感和认同感，“搭子”情谊构成了这样一种门槛低却不失温度的“实用性”情谊。

#原子化社会是什么？

Weissman’s A Social Ontology which provides both a theoretical background and a good exposition of the implications:

Individualist – atomist – theories emphasize the self-sufficiency and moral autonomy of persons. They speak of freedoms, rights and exceptions; rarely or never of reciprocities, duties and connections. Individualism dominates our self perception. It encourages us to deny the ligaments and nerves of our social lives. Perceiving every society as an aggregate, it assaults or diminishes the systems – including families, schools, businesses, and states – where personal identity, security and satisfaction are achieved. Every such system is, in atomist eyes, no less an aggregate than the passengers in a bus.

个人主义，即原子主义理论强调人的自给自足和道德自主。他们谈论自由、权利和例外；很少或从来没有互惠、义务和联系。个人主义支配着我们的自我认知。它鼓励我们否认我们社交生活延申等。它将每个社会视为一个整体，它攻击或削弱了实现个人身份、安全和满足感的系统。在原子论者看来，每一个这样的系统都和公共汽车上的乘客一样是一个集合体。