ESFP Friendships

An Enthusiast knows an enormous number of people and likes almost all of them sincerely. This type will have a real conversation with somebody in a queue, stay in touch with a person they met on a trip nine years ago, and be able to tell you something specific and affectionate about forty different people.

None of that is superficial. The problem in this section is not the breadth. It is that being the person who makes things fun is a role, and roles are hard to step out of.

Friends are the family you choose.

— Edna Buchanan

What they give

Company that is actually good, which is rarer than the phrase suggests.

This type turns an ordinary afternoon into something people remember. They notice who has gone quiet and bring them in. They are the reason a group of individuals became a group, and the reason it still meets four years later.

They also do the material things. Food, a lift, a spare room, an afternoon of childcare, turning up on the day of the funeral and staying to clear up. This type does not merely sympathise — they arrive, and they are unbothered by the awkwardness that keeps other people away.

And they are safe with the difficult thing. Enthusiasts are close to unshockable and genuinely non-judgemental, which is why people tell them what they have not told anyone.

The role problem

Here is the specific difficulty, and this type rarely names it because naming it sounds like complaining about being liked.

An Enthusiast is the one who makes it fun. That is real, it is valued, and it is also a role — and once somebody has a role in a group, stepping outside it is disruptive. A friend who is used to you being the light in the room is not expecting to be handed something heavy, and will handle it badly the first time, which teaches this type not to do it again.

So the traffic runs one way. This type is told everything and tells very little, not because nobody would listen but because the first attempt was awkward and the second one never happened.

Being everybody’s favourite person is not the same as having somebody to call at four in the morning, and a great many Enthusiasts find that out in a bad year, at exactly the wrong moment.

Where else it goes wrong

Depth optional. Many of this type’s friendships stay permanently at the level of very good company. That is a legitimate choice and it becomes a problem when something serious happens and there is nobody in the circle who has ever heard anything real.

The unsaid grievance. When a friend is careless, this type does not raise it — it would spoil things. The warmth reduces very slightly, the friend cannot locate what changed, and the friendship cools by degrees over years with no conversation ever taking place.

Drift. Friendships that ran on this type’s initiative end when their attention moves, which it does without any decision being made. The friend concludes something happened. Nothing did, and that is somehow worse.

The joke at the wrong moment. Deflecting a sincere question is this type’s reflex, and a friend who has twice had something serious lightened stops bringing serious things.

The thing worth knowing about them

An Enthusiast who is genuinely struggling looks approximately like an Enthusiast.

The good mood is a default expression and the response to difficulty is to keep the room light, and the two are indistinguishable from outside. This type has frequently gone through something serious with everyone around them entirely unaware, and afterwards the friends are hurt to have been kept out of it — which surprises this type, who did not experience themselves as concealing anything.

What actually works

Three things, all against the grain.

Pick three and go deeper. Not the whole circle. Three people you deliberately tell something real to, before there is a crisis, so that the channel exists when there is one. The first time will be awkward. That is the cost, and it is small.

Answer before you joke. When a friend asks something real, respond to it first. The joke lands better afterwards anyway.

Say the small thing. When somebody is careless, one sentence, within a day. It prevents the slow cooling, which has ended more of your friendships than any argument ever has.

One thing to watch for this week: tell one friend something true that is not funny. Do not rescue the moment afterwards. Notice that they were glad, and notice how strongly you wanted to lighten it.