I Don't Make Friends Anymore

Two autumns ago, I sat in the middle of a long table. Two bottles of Cabernet had been opened. The ashtray was full. Someone was talking about a project he had no real stake in, his tone like he was reading a verdict.

I watched his mouth move, and suddenly a thought surfaced: What exactly is he trying to sell tonight?

Once that thought surfaced, I couldn't hear a word after it. I picked up my phone, opened the chat with the friend who'd dragged me there, and changed his contact name to "Pending Review." Then I stood up and said I had to take a call.

On the elevator ride down, I realized something: I could never go back to the state of "a meal is just a meal." From that moment on, every face that appeared across from me would be automatically evaluated: Is the time he's occupying worth it?

I. Relationships with no money involved are all suspect.

This sounds harsh, but I've thought about it for a long time and can't find a flaw.

Someone I hadn't spoken to in ten years suddenly sends a 50-second voice message. I didn't listen. I transcribed it and read the first two lines—"How have you been?" "Long time no see." I swiped the chat away.

Before, I would have replied, "Not bad, you?" and waited for them to slowly circle to the point. I don't circle anymore, because I know the point is always coming. Since it's always coming, why walk with them through that stretch of "emotional paving"?

I've seen too many variations of this path: small talk → reminiscing → lamenting how time flies → making the ask. The first three steps are costs. Only the last is the objective. And I'm invited to participate in the first three because my time, in their eyes, costs nothing—or rather, they think my time should be "given for free" to old ties.

But my time isn't free. Every hour of mine has its price, and I didn't set that price—the market did. If someone wants to occupy it, they can either pay with money or with information of equivalent value. Paying with "long time no see" is fraud, in my book.

So I categorized these people directly. Not bad people—ineffective people. They're not malicious. They just don't understand one thing: adult trust doesn't flow through emotion. It flows through contract. The emotional channel leads only to sympathy, never to cooperation. And I don't need anyone's sympathy. I only need performance.

II. A relationship that's exchanged money is ten thousand times more reliable than one that's exchanged drinks.

My phone contacts are labeled in three tiers.

First tier: labeled with company names. Second tier: labeled with amounts. Third tier: nothing at all.

The third tier is the largest, but I almost never open them. The first and second tiers combined number less than a hundred, but I speak more words to them in a day than I speak to my mother.

Someone asked: "Doesn't that exhaust you? Calculating everything, grading everyone?"

I said: Not calculating exhausts me more. People who calculate clearly are less likely to fall out. Because the rules are upfront, expectations align, and no one has to guess. It's exactly those "we don't need to calculate between us" relationships that end most miserably—because what's inside that "no calculation" isn't loyalty, it's a price tag that can be adjusted at any moment.

I have a supplier I've worked with for six years. The terms in our contract have never changed. Once, when my cash flow was tight and I was ten days late on payment, before I could even say anything, he messaged me: "Don't rush this one. Get through your side first." At that moment, I thought—isn't this what a friend is? But I knew the foundation of this "friendship" wasn't emotion. It was every single payment made on time over six years, every single delivery that passed quality inspection without issue. He had used six years of performance to guarantee for me, and that's why I could believe, in a difficult moment, that his words weren't just politeness.

On the flip side: those people who slap my shoulder at a dinner table and say, "Bro, anything you need, just say the word"—I ran into trouble once, made a call, and the voice on the other end said, "Ah, things are tight for me too lately." I changed his contact name to "Void."

It's not that I'm calculating. Reality did the filtering for me. In front of real money, no one can hide their true colors. Those who can't hide—I keep. Those who can—I delete. Simple as that.

III. What I fear most is a gathering with "nothing substantive" on the table.

This year I turned down about thirty-something dinners.

Two reasons only: First, no clear agenda. Second, no transaction expectation. An invitation that fails both conditions is a waste of time to accept. Some think I'm being arrogant. But it's not arrogance—it's fear.

What I fear is the state of "talking for hours and nothing happening." That state makes me feel like I'm slowly killing myself. My time gets shredded into pieces, thrown onto a round table, and in return I get a heap of empty words with zero informational value—who's with who, who bought what, which industry is doomed—none of this has any value to me, yet I have to pay two hours for it.

What scares me more is that I catch myself performing in those settings. I start laughing too, nodding along, saying "exactly," "tough times," "should collaborate sometime." Every time I sit in my car after it's over, I feel like a fraud—I've traded fake emotions for fake warmth.

So I stopped going. It's not that I dislike those people. It's that I dislike the version of myself that shows up in those rooms.

IV. But I'm not entirely right, either.

For a stretch, I was absolutely certain. Certain to the point that I'd turned myself into a machine that "only recognizes contracts."

Until one night, around 2 AM. I opened my contacts, wanting to find someone to talk to—not about work, not about projects, just... anything. I scrolled from A to Z. Took about forty seconds. I stopped at a name. Three characters. No suffix, no company name, no amount. My thumb hovered over the call button for maybe three seconds.

Then I locked the screen.

It wasn't because I didn't know what to say. It was because I knew what the first words on the other end would be: "What's up? Something going on?"

He'd default to assuming that if I was calling, there must be some business. And what I wanted was no business at all.

In that instant I realized—it wasn't them who'd changed. It was me who'd shaped every relationship into the form of "only talk shop." I'd spent five or six years laying price tags on every road that led to me, and then shut out everyone unwilling to pay. Now there was no one outside. And only myself inside.

But that doesn't mean I'm going to change. I just confirmed the cost of this choice.

Every choice has a price. Loneliness is the interest I pay for clarity.

V. There's only one kind of person I take seriously now.

The kind who "knocks on the door with a proposal."

Not with a demand. Not with emotion. Not with "let's get to know each other." With a proposal. The proposal doesn't have to be complete, but it must have three things: what he wants, what he can give, and how he proposes to split it.

If those three things are clear, I sit down and talk properly. If they're not clear, or if they're clear but don't match my cards, I see them out politely. The whole process takes no more than fifteen minutes. No meal. No drinks. No "brother" talk.

Some think this is too cold. But I ask: what's the upside of being warm? Once you're warm, boundaries blur, expectations misalign, and in the end, everyone's uncomfortable. A little colder—rules are clear, lines are drawn. If it works, we go forward. If it doesn't, no one owes anyone.

I don't make friends anymore. That word is dead to me now. What I make are transaction counterparts, partners, performers.

These people are better than friends. Friends leave. Transaction counterparts don't—because as long as the transaction exists, so does the relationship. Friends morally blackmail. Transaction counterparts don't—because the contract spells it out. Friends say "you've changed." Transaction counterparts only ask whether you're in for next month's order.

I don't need to be understood. I only need to be performed with.

VI. One last thing.

At the start of this year, I added a line to my annual plan. Wrote it small:

"Social budget: 4 times a year, no output expected, pure observation. Permission to leave early."

I gave myself a quota of 4 "ineffective gatherings." Not because I need friends. But because I need to know what's happening in the world outside—what people who have no transactional relationship with me are thinking, how they see my industry, what their instincts are about prices.

This is information that "already-transacted" people can't give me. They're the same kind of person as me. We share the same information cocoon. I need someone standing outside the cocoon, carrying their biases and emotions, to tell me things that don't quite "make sense."

But these 4 are the full allowance. Once they're used, they're used.

I'm not going back. I'm just confirming the road ahead of me—and along the way, I've left a few chairs by the roadside for those who "won't bring a contract, but might occasionally say something useful."

Not many chairs. But enough.