If a friendship only works when music’s blasting and everyone’s around, it might just be a hangout, not a friendship.

Some connections are built out of shared circumstance rather than shared anything else. They work perfectly in a car with six people in it and fall apart the moment it is two of you at a table. That is not a con, and hangout friends are genuinely worth having. The mistake is expecting one of them to show up when something goes badly, then feeling betrayed when they do not.

Sort your people honestly, without ranking them as better or worse. Ask who you would text at midnight with bad news. Invest in the two or three on that shorter list and let the rest be what they already are.