“飯搭子離職了，比我自己離職還難過。”“我可以單身，但不能沒有搭子”

近日，“搭子”逐漸成為一種在年輕人中盛行的新的社交方式。搭子的業務領域十分廣泛，吃飯有飯搭子，學習有學習搭子，游戲有游戲搭子……“搭子”種類繁多，只有你想不到的，沒有“搭子”做不到的。

所謂“搭子”，主要是指因某一興趣愛好或需求結成的社交關系。這種社交模式的特點是雖然不是朋友關系，卻能在細分領域提供精準陪伴，是親密關系的一種“平替”。搭子們的存在既滿足了特定領域的社交需求，但又不需要過度維系，彼此在情感上保持獨立。

causal relationship

這種關系類似于英文中的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. 

這種友誼是當遇到有共同興趣的人時，你覺得你們在同一個頻道上，喜歡與他們共度時光。但通常這種友誼不會太過深入，并不會談論太多個人生活的內容。人們通常為了一個目的而形成友誼，而不是為了多層次情感關系。

#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是偶爾出去玩的朋友，偶爾聯系交流但不能太過頻繁。這種關系并不是點頭之交，點頭之交只不過是偶然遇見。而casual friend還會經常一起出去。但這種友情是一種表層的、淺淺的關系。

他們的特點是：

互動不頻繁。兩個人之間是一種比較弱的關系，他們友好地會出現在你身邊，但通常不會在你生活中扮演重要的角色。

單一的目的。兩個人之間的連接關系比較弱。在職業生活中，這個角色通常與業務商業有關，了例如隔壁公司的公司客戶或您的同事各自負責一項職能。

那相較之下，什么是親密的友誼呢？

#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.

親密的友誼是大多數人們關心的友誼。密友會經常見面，如果有需要會毫不猶豫地給他們打電話。但是當談到casual friend時，通常在需要幫助和情感支持的時候，你并不會想到打擾他們。

友誼之間的區別是什么呢？

#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. 出去玩的頻率

所有友誼級別之間最大的區別是你想和他們出去玩的頻率。當然，環境會對此產生影響，但通常情況下，你會更頻繁地與親密朋友一起出去玩，而不是與casual friend一起出去玩。除了被認為是casual friend的普通工作同事，你們經常出去玩，但你們并非親密朋友。

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. 談話的私密性

說到親密的朋友，你會覺得他們很在乎你的生活，和他們敞開心扉比causal friend容易。

所以談論對你來說真正重要的事情，比如你未來規劃、目標、人際關系等，這種情況通常不會發生在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.需要幫助時的求助對象

當你需要幫助搬家、修理東西或類似的事情時，你會先打電話給你的家人和最好的朋友，如果他們不在，你會打電話給你的親密朋友。

大多數時候，當你需要幫助時，你不會想到causal friend，除非其他人都沒有空，他們會是最后選擇。即便如此，你可能還是想等到一些最親密的朋友有空再說。

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. 你會邀請他們參加你組織的派對

當你組織派對時，無論是生日派對、萬圣節派對、圣誕派對還是其他類型的派對，你都會毫不猶豫地邀請你的好朋友，但我們通常不會邀請普通朋友causal friend參加我們的派對。

所以這很好地表明了你是什么類型的朋友，你可以看到誰邀請你參加他們的聚會，以及你會邀請誰參加你的聚會。

The Surprising Power of 

Weak Ties

這種causal relationship被認為是一種比較弱的關系weak tie。弱關系理論是社會學中的一個概念，是由馬克·格蘭諾維特 (Mark Granovetter) 在 1973 年的論文“弱關系的力量”中首次介紹使用的。他指出弱關系在提供新信息和機會方面更有價值。

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.

越來越多的研究表明，與偶然相識的人建立聯系有著驚人的強大好處——社會學家稱之為“弱關系”的關系。

可以肯定的是，我們的朋友和家人——我們的牢固紐帶——在我們情緒低落時支持我們，讓我們感到被欣賞。但弱關系也可以做這些事情。事實上，我們與弱關系的互動往往進行得特別順利，因為我們經常在與我們不熟悉的人相處時表現得最好。弱關系為我們提供了短期、低成本、非正式的互動，這通常會提供新的信息和社會多樣性。因此，我們常常對這些時刻感到驚喜。

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，強關系，例如為人父母似乎是無休止的磨合，并且不斷反復，你的生活可能會感到受限。費斯勒說，你會在同樣的時間去同樣的地方，見到同樣的人，這是建立casual friendship的基本要素，也是這種友誼的優勢所在。

其次是這些關系不需要投資或責任。沒有要制定的計劃，所以永遠不會有失敗的計劃。它們只是發生了，當你遇到某人時，談話會保持輕松。“這是一種解脫，”Grief 說，因為在這種情況下，你所討論的內容通常可以很好地分散你通常處理的事情的注意力。

Atomist

“搭子”關系背后是個體的原子化，個人之間聯系的弱化和疏離。漢娜·阿倫特認為，現代社會中的人是“原子化的個體”，他們是孤獨的、埋頭于物質享受的、完全“私人化”的，且個體之間沒有強有力的聯系。私有制和精細化分工讓共同體轉向了個體發展，同時虛擬社交和網絡強化了個體自我，讓人們對身邊附近的實體性失去了關注。個體變成了原子化、純粹自我的個人，他們不希望占用太多時間來維系關系，他們之間邊界感強，默契地在一起做事情，然后默契地消失。

但他們又需要一定的情感維系來緩解原子化帶來的孤獨感，滿足彼此在需要時彼此陪伴的需求，通過搭子關系獲得現實世界的融入感和認同感，“搭子”情誼構成了這樣一種門檻低卻不失溫度的“實用性”情誼。

#原子化社會是什么？

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.

個人主義，即原子主義理論強調人的自給自足和道德自主。他們談論自由、權利和例外；很少或從來沒有互惠、義務和聯系。個人主義支配著我們的自我認知。它鼓勵我們否認我們社交生活延申等。它將每個社會視為一個整體，它攻擊或削弱了實現個人身份、安全和滿足感的系統。在原子論者看來，每一個這樣的系統都和公共汽車上的乘客一樣是一個集合體。