RESEARCH_FILE
Network Turnover
Network turnover is the steady replacement of the people in a personal network while its overall size stays roughly stable. In Mollenhorst's Dutch panel study, only 48% of close network members were still in the network seven years later, and a major reason relationships discontinued was lack of meeting opportunities — the social contexts that produced them (work, school, clubs, neighborhoods) had disappeared.
SEE THE PRACTICE
Turn a thought this research explains into one clear move.
THE THOUGHT
“I'm the friend they outgrew”
YOUR RECORDED RESPONSE
“This is a season at the bar, not a discharge notice from the team.”
ONE PRIVATE MOVE
Open the last unanswered invite and write, just for yourself, the honest reason you went quiet instead of the story you assumed.
How it sounds in your head
The script says: 'Our friend group dissolved after the weddings and the babies — we failed each other.' The mechanism says: the group was held together by a context (same city, same Friday bar, same team), and when the context went, so did the default contact. Half of everyone's close network rotates in seven years; the ties that survive are the ones someone deliberately re-bases on a new context.